Seaweeds, also known as macroalgae, are among the most important primary producers and act as ecological engineers on rocky coasts of the world s oceans. In addition to their extreme ecological importance they are also of high economic relevance. Complementing available textbooks with its more research-oriented approach, this volume contains 22 chapters by renowned experts, grouped in five parts. In Part I fundamental processes and acclimation strategies of seaweeds towards the abiotic environment are covered. Part II focuses on the multitude of biotic interactions in seaweed communities, and in Part III the reader is introduced to the structure and function of the main seaweed systems of the world. The chapters of Part IV highlight and discuss the effects of global and local environmental changes on seaweeds and their communities. In the final Part V a comprehensive overview of developments in seaweed aquaculture, industrial applications and the overall economic importance of seaweeds is provided. Summarizing the advances in seaweed biology achieved within the last few decades, this book also identifies gaps in the present knowledge and needs for future research."

Mediterranean islands exhibit many similarities in their biotic ecological, physical and environmental characteristics. There are also many differences in terms of their human colonization and current anthropogenic pressures. This book addresses in three sections these characteristics and examines the major environmental changes that the islands experienced during the Quaternary period. The first section provides details on natural and cultural factors which have shaped island landscapes. It describes the environmental and cultural changes of the Holocene and their effects on biota, as well as on the current human pressures that are now threats to the sustainability of the island communities. The second section focuses on the landscapes of the largest islands namely Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Crete, Malta and the Balearics. Each island chapter includes a special topic reflecting a particular characteristic of the island. Part three presents strategies for action towards sustainability in Mediterranean islands and concludes with a comparison between the largest islands. Despite several published books on Mediterranean ecosystems/landscapes there is no existing book dealing with Mediterranean islands in a collective manner. Students, researchers and university lecturers in environmental science, geography, biology and ecology will find this work invaluable as a cross-disciplinary text while planners and politicians will welcome the succinct summaries as background material to planning decisions.

The poles undergo climate changes exceeding those in the rest of the world in terms of their speed and extent, and have a key role in modulating the climate of the Earth. Ecosystems adapted to polar environments are likely to become vulnerable to climate changes. Their responses allow us to analyse and foresee the impact of changes at lower latitudes. We need to increase our knowledge of the polar marine fauna of continental shelves, slopes and deep sea, as identifying the responses of species and communities is crucial to establishing efficient strategies against threats to biodiversity, using international and cross-disciplinary approaches. The IPY 2007-2009 was a scientific milestone. The outstanding contribution of Marine Biology is reflected in this volume and the next one on "Adaptation and Evolution in Marine Environments - The Impacts of Global Change on Biodiversity" from the series "From Pole to Pole", making these volumes a unique and invaluable component of the scientific outcome of the IPY.

The Ecological Bases for Lake and Reservoir Management provides a state-of-the-art review of the range of ecologically-based techniques necessary for the holistic management of lakes and their catchments. Most of the methods, case studies and national policies reviewed are directed towards management of the largest problem - eutrophication - with the emphasis on the multiple-scale approach needed for successful management and restoration. Case studies come from the USA and ten European countries, and range from single lakes through to lake districts and national inventories. Several essays precede the practical chapters with thought-provoking comments on the political, social and economic climate of water management.

What if the stories of trees and people are more closely linked than we ever imagined? Winner of the World Wildlife Fund's 2020 Jan Wolkers PrizeOne of Science News's "Favorite Books of 2020" A New York Times "New and Noteworthy" BookA 2020 Woodland Book of the YearGold Winner of the 2020 Foreword INDIES Award in Ecology & EnvironmentBronze Winner of the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award in Environment/Ecology People across the world know that to tell how old a tree is, you count its rings. Few people, however, know that research into tree rings has also made amazing contributions to our understanding of Earth's climate history and its influences on human civilization over the past 2,000 years. In her captivating book Tree Story, Valerie Trouet reveals how the seemingly simple and relatively familiar concept of counting tree rings has inspired far-reaching scientific breakthroughs that illuminate the complex interactions between nature and people. Trouet, a leading tree-ring scientist, takes us out into the field, from remote African villages to radioactive Russian forests, offering readers an insider's look at tree-ring research, a discipline known as dendrochronology. Tracing her own professional journey while exploring dendrochronology's history and applications, Trouet describes the basics of how tell-tale tree cores are collected and dated with ring-by-ring precision, explaining the unexpected and momentous insights we've gained from the resulting samples. Blending popular science, travelogue, and cultural history, Tree Story highlights exciting findings of tree-ring research, including the fate of lost pirate treasure, successful strategies for surviving California wildfire, the secret to Genghis Khan's victories, the connection between Egyptian pharaohs and volcanoes, and even the role of olives in the fall of Rome. These fascinating tales are deftly woven together to show us how dendrochronology sheds light on global climate dynamics and uncovers the clear links between humans and our leafy neighbors. Trouet delights us with her dedication to the tangible appeal of studying trees, a discipline that has taken her to austere and beautiful landscapes around the globe and has enabled scientists to solve long-pondered mysteries of Earth and its human inhabitants.

This book is the outcome of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "The Eastern Mediterranean as a laboratory basin for the assessment of contrasting ecosystems" that was held in Kiev, Ukraine, March 23-27, 1998. The scientific rationale of the workshop can be summarized as follows. The Eastern Mediterranean is the most nutrient impoverished and oligotrophic large water body known. There is a well-defined eastward trend in nutrient ratios over the entire Mediterranean that starts at the Gibraltar Straits and, through the western basin, proceeds to the Ionian and Levantine Seas. Supply of nutrients to the entire Mediterranean is limited by inputs from the North Atlantic and various river systems along the sea. The unique feature of the Mediterranean is the presence of an eastward longitudinal trend in available nitrate/phosphate ratios. This apparently induces a west-to-east variation in the structure of the pelagic food web and trophic interactions. In this context the Mediterranean, and in particular its Eastern basin, provides probably a unique platform to explore the hypotheses related to the suggested phosphate-limitation on production and to the shift between "microbial" and "classical" modes of operation of the photic food web. The major exception of the overall oligotrophic nature of the Eastern Mediterranean is the highly eutrophic system of the Northern Adriatic Sea. Here, during the last two decades the discharges of the northern rivers (especially of the Po), together with municipal sewage, have led to a very marked increase of nutrients and subsequent imponent eutrophication events.

This volume offers a comprehensive review of the chemical, biological and hydromorphological quality of the Danube. The first part examines the chemical pollution of surface waters, focusing on organic compounds (with special emphasis given to EU WFD priority substances and Danube River Basin specific pollutants), heavy metals and nutrients. Attention is also given to pollution of groundwater and drinking water resources by hazardous substances and to radioactivity in the Danube. The second part highlights the biology and hydromorphology of the Danube. It focuses on benthic macroinvertebrates, phytobenthos, macrophytes, fish, phytoplankton as well as microbiology, with chapters dedicated to gaps and uncertainties in the ecological status assessment and to invasive alien species. Further chapters dealing with the hydromorphology, sediment management and isotope hydrology complete the overall picture of the status of the Danube.

The proceedings of the joint BMB 15 and ECSA 27 Symposium provides the reader with some of the advances in the study of biology, ecology, and physical and biochemical modelling of enclosed or semi-enclosed marine, brackish and estuarine systems (the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the White Sea, the Black Sea, and the Ionian Sea). The book covers a wide range of topics in this field, including hydrography and modelling, eutrophication, environmental gradients, pelagic and benthic communities, introduced species and case studies of environmental impact. This volume of 28 papers summarizes current knowledge on the broad-scale topics of enclosed and semi-enclosed marine systems, and should be of interest to scientists, students and administrators within the field of marine ecology, environmental impact control and conservation.

It is not possible to understand the apparent stability of the Earth's climate and environment unless we can fully understand how the best possible environmental conditions may be maintained for life to exist. Human colonization of areas with natural biota, for industrial or agricultural activities, will lead to degradation of those natural communities and violation of the BRE (biotic regulation of the environment) principle. Thus to maintain an environment on Earth that is suitable for life it is necessary to preserve and allow the natural recovery of natural biotic communities, both in the oceans and on land. This book is devoted to a quantitative version of the BRE concept, and is built on a foundation of modern scientific knowledge accumulated in the fields of physics and biology.

This book discusses UV radiation, its effects on ecosystems and the likely evolutionary consequences of changed UV radiation environments, past, present and future. The first two chapters examine the history of the UV radiation climate of earth and the factors that determine organismal and ecosystem exposure. Their purpose is to give the reader a physical perspective on UV radiation and an understanding of the constantly changing UV environment that ecosystems are exposed to over time. Variations in the UV radiation environment occur at the local level (such as boundary layer and plant canopy effects) through to global-scale changes (such as alterations in the column abundance of UV-B protecting ozone). UV radiation regimes also vary over temporal scales. These alterations occur on time scales of seconds (the movement of clouds and plant canopies) to literally billions of years (gross long-term changes in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere). In the chapters that follow five specific biological and ecological topics in photobiology are considered. They are effects of UV radiation on amphibians, plants, corals, aquatic microbial ecosystems and Antarctic ecosystems that are exposed to the anthropogenically generated ozone 'hole'. These chapters consider UV radiation effects at a diversity of levels from the biochemical to the community. Their purpose is to provide the reader with our current understanding of the ecological effects of UV radiation, the areas where questions still remain and to provide a perspective from which the reader can better understand questions in evolutionary photobiology. The final chapter investigates the biological consequences of altered extraterrestrial ultraviolet fluxes, which are quite different from those experienced on the Earth. Our knowledge of the role of UV radiation in shaping ecologies and evolutionary change is still in its infancy. This book brings together a number of authors with the aim of helping to consolidate a better understanding of this interesting area of photobiology.

This book surveys a wide variety of mathematical models of diffusion in the ecological context. It is written with the primary intent of providing scientists, particularly physicists but also biologists, with some background in the mathematics and physics of diffusion, and shows how they can be applied to ecological problems. The secondary intent is to provide a specialized textbook for graduate students who are interested in mathematical ecology. The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of probability and differential equations. Each chapter in this new edition has been substantially updated by appropriate leading researchers in the field, and contains much new material covering developments in the field in the last 20 years.

Wetlands are very sensitive ecosystems, functioning as habitat for many organisms. Protection and regeneration of wetlands are of great importance in ecological research and in nature conservation. A great amount of research has been done on the hydrology, plants and animals in wetlands. Knowledge on soil organisms and soil ecological processes of wetlands is still lacking. This knowledge is highly needed for landscape planning purposes or climate change predictions. For climate change, trace gas emissions from wetlands are of great interest. The authors provide an overview of state-of-the-art on soil ecology of wetlands. The book is divided in the following main chapters: "Wetlands as habitats for soil organisms", "Soil ecological processes in fens and floodplains", "Carbon and nitrogen dynamics in soils with different water regimes" and "Trace gas emissions".

Migration of humans and animals, plants and even microbes is a ubiquitous global phenomenon. This book covers all forms of migration - plant, microbial, animal or human - and their mutual impact in detail. The contributions in this book are the result of an innovative International Conference and OECD Workshop aimed at triggering off the interdisciplinary dialogue between natural scientists and socioeconomists.

Meiobenthology is the science of the tiny animals that live in huge numbers in all aquatic sediments. This fully revised and enlarged second edition emphasizes new discoveries and developments in this field. Major progress has been made in three general areas: - Systematics, diversity and distribution, - Ecology, food webs, and energy flow, - Environmental aspects, including studies of anthropogenic impacts.

The meiobenthos of polar and tropical regions, deep-sea bottoms and hydrothermal vents are now studied in more detail. The high number of species found to survive under such extreme conditions puts them at the forefront of biodiversity studies. Molecular screening methods enable large numbers to be analyzed upon applying reasonable effort. The aim of this book is to synthesize these modern scientific achievements such that meiobenthology can play a key role in aquatic research and in assessing the health of our environment.

This book focuses on the emerging health issues due to climate change, particularly emphasizing the situation in developing countries. Thanks to recent development in the areas of remote sensing, GIS technology, and downscale modeling of climate, it has now become possible to depict and predict the relationship between environmental factors and health-related event data with a meaningful spatial and temporal scale. The chapters address new aspects of environment-health relationship relevant to this smaller scale analyses, including how considering people's mobility changes the exposure profile to certain environmental factors, how considering behavioral characteristics is important in predicting diarrhea risks after urban flood, and how small-scale land use patterns will affect the risk of infection by certain parasites, and subtle topography of the land profile. Through the combination of reviews and case studies, the reader would be able to learn how the issues of health and climate/social changes can be addressed using available technology and datasets. The post-2015 UN agenda has just put forward, and tremendous efforts have been started to develop and establish appropriate indicators to achieve the SDG goals. This book will also serve as a useful guide for creating such an indicator associated with health and planning, in line with the Ecohealth concept, the major tone of this book. With the increasing and pressing needs for adaptation to climate change, as well as societal change, this would be a very timely publication in this trans-disciplinary field.

Addressing the links between science and the real world with a sound scientific baseline, "Coastal Water Bodies" targets researchers of various disciplines whose interest lies in the integrated sustainable management of coastal water bodies. The main topic of this book is not the ecology according to its accepted meaning, but rather the places and people concerned the coastal zones of the Mediterranean that are rich in ecological value and the local people who survive thanks to these environmental resources.

Integration is the joint consideration of different aspects of water uses and values, and new ways of understanding and managing conflicts around water use are needed if people are to benefit from integration. Sustainability of the ecological and socioeconomic environments requires a climate in which conflicts, if they need to exist, are properly managed in a non-destructive manner.

China has been undertaking unprecedented ecological restoration efforts to deal with its problems of soil erosion, flooding, dust storms, and habitat loss. While there have been studies of these efforts, questions remain concerning whether they have been effectively implemented, what their induced socioeconomic and ecological impacts are, and how their performance can be improved.

Tackling these important questions in an integrated manner, An Integrated Assessment of China 's Ecological Restoration Programs is extraordinary for its broad coverage and methodological rigor. It provides a substantial improvement over the conventional approach of simply reporting projects undertaken and accepting uncritically the government assessment, and thus fills an important knowledge gap of the restoration efforts being implemented upon a variety of ecosystems in China.

The rapid growth of the discipline of aquatic ecology has been driven both by scientific interest in the complexities of aquatic ecosystems and by their enormous environmental importance and sensitivity. This book focuses on the remarkably diverse roles played by underwater plants, and is divided into three parts: 10 thematic chapters, followed by 18 case studies, and rounded off by three integrative chapters. The topics range from macrophytes as fish food to macrophytes as mollusc and microbe habitat, making this of interest to aquatic ecologists as well as limnologists, ecosystem ecologists, microbial ecologists, fish biologists, and environmental managers.

Throughout its history, the discipline of ecology has always been profoundly entangled with the history of space and place. On the one hand, ecology is a field science that has thrived on the study of concrete spatial entities, such as islands, forests or rivers. These spaces are the workplaces in which ecological phenomena are identified, observed and experimented on. They provide both epistemic opportunities and constraints that structure the agenda and the analytical sensibilities of ecological researchers. On the other hand, ecological knowledge and practices have become important resources through which spaces and places are classified, delineated, explained, experienced and managed. The impact of these activities reaches far beyond the realms of the ecological discipline. Many ecological concepts such as "biotopes," "ecosystems" and "the biosphere" have become entities that widely resonate in public life and policy making. This book explores the mutual entanglement between space and knowledge-making in the history of ecology. Its first goal is to explore to which extent a spatial perspective can shed new light on the history of ecological science. Second, it uses ecology as a critical site to gain broader insights into the history of the environment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Via a series of case studies - discussing topics that range from ecological field stations in the early-twentieth century Caribbean over wisent breeding in Nazi Germany to computer modelling in North American deserts - the book offers a tour through the changing landscapes of modern ecology.

Regional intercomparisons between ecosystems on different continents can be a powerful tool to better understand the ways in which ecosystems respond to global change. Large areas are often needed to characterize the causal mechanisms governing interactions between ecozones and their environments. Factors such as weather and climate patterns, land-ocean and land-atmosphere interactions all play important roles. As a result of the strong physical north-south symmetry between the western coasts of North and South America, the similarities in climate, coastal oceanography and physiography between these two regions have been extensively documented. High Latitude Rain Forests and Associated Ecosystems of the West Coast of the Americas presents current research on West Coast forest and river ecology, and compares ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest with those of South America.

This volume focuses on the nutrient and organic matter inputs in estuaries and other coastal ecosystems, their effects on geochemistry and community structure and possibilities for recovery of the systems to a trophic state that is beneficial for man and nature.
The book provides many examples of the effects of the enhanced supply of nutrients and organic matter on the chemical features of the water and on the structure, metabolism and trophic pathways of the biological communities.
Also included are several case studies providing considerable insight into the response of the different coastal ecosystems to long term changes in the trophic state of the water.
Current knowledge on modeling as a tool to manage the trophic state of the coastal ecosystems is also dealt with, making this book one of interests to scientist and students as well as managers.

The tropical plant family Pandanaceae comprises three genera, Freycinetia, Pandanus and Sararanga. One-hundred and fourteen genera and 226 species of fungi were found on dead leaves of Pandanaceae collected in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, New Zealand, Niue, Philippines, Seychelles, Vanuatu and Vietnam. Taxonomic issues within each fungus genus are discussed and reference made to preceding work. All species are written up with bibliographic details, relevant measurements of the current specimens, known habitat and distribution, collection details, and a discussion on taxonomic conclusions. New taxa (4 genera, 35 species) are fully described and illustrated, each with a plate showing relevant macro- and microscopic details. Keys and/or synoptic tables are provided to all species in 28 genera. In addition, details on almost 700 species of fungi described and recorded worldwide from the Pandanaceae are listed.