Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Coastal dunes occur in almost every latitude - from tropical to polar - and have been substantially altered by human activities. Many are already severely and irreversibly degraded. Although these ecosystems have been studied for a long time (as early as 1835), there has been a strong emphasis on the mid-latitude dune systems and a lack of attention given to the tropics where, unfortunately, much of the modern exploitation and coastal development for tourism is occurring.

This book brings together coastal dune specialists from tropical and temperate latitudes, which together cover a wide set of topics, including: geomorphology, community dynamics, ecophysiology, biotic interactions and environmental problems and conservation. A major product of this book is a set of recommendations for future research, identifying relevant topics where detailed knowledge is still lacking. It also identifies management tools that will promote and maintain the rich diversity of the dune environments in the context of continuing coastal development.

Modern Methods of Plant Analysis When the handbook Modern Methods of Plant Analysis was first introduced in 1954 the considerations were: 1. the dependence of scientific progress in biology on the improvement of existing and the introduction of new methods; 2. the difficulty in finding many new analytical methods in specialized journals which are normally not accessible to experimental plant biologists; 3. the fact that in the methods sections of papers the description of methods is frequently so compact, or even sometimes so incomplete that it is difficult to reproduce experiments. These considerations still stand today. The series was highly successful, seven volumes appearing between 1956 and 1964. Since there is still today a demand for the old series, the publisher has decided to resume publication of Modern Methods of Plant Analysis. It is hoped that the New Series will be just as acceptable to those working in plant sciences and related fields as the early volumes undoubtedly were. It is difficult to single out the major reasons for success of any publication, but we believe that the methods published in the first series were up-to-date at the time and presented in a way that made description, as applied to plant material, complete in itself with little need to consult other publications. Contributing authors have attempted to follow these guidelines in this New Series of volumes.

After the proton and carbon, nitrogen is, with oxygen, the most impor tant atom in organic and especially bioorganic molecules. However, the development of nitrogen spectroscopy is indeed very recent. This is due to the fact that nitrogen-14, which is the naturally abundant iso tope, suffers, for structural studies, from the disadvantages inherent in nuclei with a quadrupolar moment (Table 1.1). Actually, indirect 15N measurements were reported in the early days of double resonance spectroscopy and the first direct detection of 15N resonance signals at the natural abundance level was realized in 1964 (R 17) at 4.33 MHz 1 (~ 1T) using a 15 mm o.d. cell in the field sweep mode (~ 0.16 min- ). Signal-to-noise ratios only of 3-4 were obtained for neat liquids and this low sensitivity of the 15N resonance still remains the main dis advantage for 15 spectroscopy (Table 1.1). However, nitrogen-15 has, N probably more than any other nucleus, benefited from the advances of NMR technology, i.e. Fourier transformation, multinuclear facilities, wide-bore super conducting solenoids, and, with the new generation of spectrometers, 15N-NMR is entering the field of routine investigation. Nevertheless, in spite of these spectacular improvements, obtaining 15N spectra of diluted species or large biochemical molecules is often not very easy and a good knowledge of the relaxation properties pecu liar to 15N may be necessary in order to adjust the pulse sequences and the decoupler duty cycle correctly (Section 2).

In 1931 Vrey, Brickwedde, and Murphy discovered the hydrogen isotope deuterium. The isotopic enrichment was found to arise from the fact that the electrolysis oflight water is faster than of heavy water [1,2]. This success showed that although different isotopes of an element behave identically from a chemical standpoint the different isotopic masses nevertheless lead to both isotope effects on equilibrium as well as on rate constants of chemical reactions. Soon, ratios of equilibrium constants of isotopic reactions were called "equilibrium isotope effects" (EIE), ratios of isotopic rate constants "kinetic isotope effects" (KIE). Isotope effects have been found to be especially large for those elements which are directly involved in bond breaking and bond formation during the reaction studied [3]. Such effects are, therefore, referred to as "primary". Isotopic substitution in atomic sites which maintain all chemical bonds with their neighbors during the reaction of interest leads then only to smaller "secondary" isotope effects. Because of the unique mass relation between the different hydrogen isotopes hydrogen/deuterium isotope effects are particularly large and have attracted most attention. The largest contributions to these effects arise from changes in the vibrational frequencies of the reactants. The theory of equilibrium isotope effects has been founded by Vrey [4] and Bigeleisen [5,6] and has widely been accepted [3].

Coastal dunes occur in almost every latitude - from tropical to polar - and have been substantially altered by human activities. Many are already severely and irreversibly degraded. Although these ecosystems have been studied for a long time (as early as 1835), there has been a strong emphasis on the mid-latitude dune systems and a lack of attention given to the tropics where, unfortunately, much of the modern exploitation and coastal development for tourism is occurring.

This book brings together coastal dune specialists from tropical and temperate latitudes, which together cover a wide set of topics, including: geomorphology, community dynamics, ecophysiology, biotic interactions and environmental problems and conservation. A major product of this book is a set of recommendations for future research, identifying relevant topics where detailed knowledge is still lacking. It also identifies management tools that will promote and maintain the rich diversity of the dune environments in the context of continuing coastal development.