A comprehensive account of how abiotic and biotic interactions shape patterns of coastal marine biodiversity and ecosystem processes globally.

Traditional compartmentalization of biological sciences is increasingly breaking down or being considered irrelevant by new generations of biological scientists. Marine biologists have generally been ahead of such trends, as is evident from much recent research on plant-animal interactions in the marine benthos.

IN 1998, SCIENTISTS representing more than fifty international research organizations met to seek answers to environmental questions regarding pollution, ocean cleansing, and the impact that changes in sediment layers have on benthic organisms and the ecosystems that depend on them. Their findings consider these topics, identify opportunities for future investigations, and promote active partnerships between federal regulatory agencies and the academic community in order to preserve and enhance natural aquatic resources.

Marine ecosystems, a very wide topic, includes many different processes, groups of organisms and geographical peculiarities. The objective of this book is to present various topics of great importance for understanding the marine ecosystems, what they are, how they work and how we can model them in order to forecast their behaviour under changing conditions. They have been thoroughly reviewed and accepted for publication. The chapters cover aspects such as: Threats to ultraoligotrophic marine ecosystems (Ch. 1); Modelling the pelagic ecosystem dynamics: the NW Mediterranean (Ch. 2); The marine ecosystem of the Sub-antarctic, Prince Edward Islands (Ch. 3); Meiofauna as a tool for marine ecosystem biomonitoring (Ch. 4); Chemical interactions in Antarctic marine benthic ecosystems (Ch. 5); An Interdisciplinary Approach on Erosion Mitigation for Coral Reef Protection- A Case Study from the Eastern Caribbean (Ch. 6); A revisit to the evolution and ecophysiology of the Labyrinthulomycetes (Ch. 7); Seabed mapping and marine spatial planning: a case-study from a Swedish marine protected area (Ch. 8); Management strategies to limit the impact of bottom trawling on VMEs in the High Seas of the SW Atlantic (Ch. 9); Hydrocarbon contamination and the swimming behavior of the estuarine copepod Eurytemora affinis (Ch. 10), and Interactions between marine ecosystems and tourism on the Adriatic and Mediterranean (Ch. 11).

This is a book dedicated to show a series of case studies about how benthic habitats are organized and how they function as a tool for any environmental impact studies. The present book documents how the natural condition of these communities is and aims to expand our present knowledge about their organization. The human population growth is driving a very strong pressure over coastal areas, and now more than ever we urgently need elements to evaluate environmental impacts. One of the most striking situations is the loss of biodiversity and the increase of invasive species who modify the trophic networks as well as the community structure. Many endangered species and species related to fisheries depend on the benthic habitat for their basic life cycle stages (reproduction, recruitment, nursery and feeding grounds) who might be impacted by natural and human induced causes. Ranging from species richness studies to population and community structure chapters, this book will bring the reader many options on how to measure environmental impacts. In particular, an analysis of how these environmental studies are made in Mexico provided a good example of how the present report base model is overdue and expresses the need for another approach. Keep in mind the present model does not take into account any statistical approach and is not mandatory in terms of the synergic and accumulative impacts; the lack of this consistency makes evaluation impossible to tell if the impacts are really happening.