While developed societies made significant progress in reducing the discharge of many wastes— including industrial wastes, organic matter in sewage, sludge, contaminated sediments and other material dumped at sea, toxic compounds, and oil— into coastal waters, nutrient over-enrichment intensified and spread widely among the planet’s coastal environments during the last half of the 20 century. T...

The natural vegetation of Southern Brazil's coastal region includes grasslands formations that are poorly considered in conservation policy, due to the lack of knowledge about these systems. This study reports results from a regional-scale survey of coastal grasslands vegetation along a 536 km gradient on southern Brazil. We sampled 16 sites along the coastal plain with 15 plots (1 m²) per site...

Seasonal fluctuations of plant biomass and photosynthesis are key features of the Earth system because they drive variability of atmospheric CO(2), water and nutrient cycling, and food supply to consumers. There is no inventory of phytoplankton seasonal cycles in nearshore coastal ecosystems where forcings from ocean, land and atmosphere intersect. We compiled time series of phytoplankton bioma...

Local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity are two alternative mechanisms used by invasive plants for range expansion. We conducted a series of experiments to investigate the role of these mechanisms in the recent expansion of the invasive Ipomoea cairica from non-saline to salt-stressed coastal habitats. A comparison of the plant's photosynthetic traits and construction costs across habitats w...

Presently, climate change has increased the frequency of extreme meteorological events such as tropical cyclones. In the western Pacific basin, these cyclones are called typhoons, and in this area, around Taiwan Island, their frequency has almost doubled since 2000. When approaching landmasses, typhoons have devastating effects on coastal vegetation. The increased frequency of these events has ...

Alien plants represent a significant threat to species diversity and composition in natural habitats. Nevertheless, little is known about the dynamic of invasion process how its effects on native change over time. In this study, we explored vegetation changes that occurred invaded coastal dune habitats last 10–15 years (2005–2020), particularly addressing impacts alien diagnostic species. To mo...