We augment discussions about the Good Environmental Status of the North Sea by developing two extreme visions and assessing their societal benefits. One vision ('Then') assumes restoration of benthic functioning; we contend that trawling had already degraded the southern North Sea a century ago. Available information is used to speculate about benthic functioning in a relatively undisturbed sou...

the qom formation in ghohrud area, have been investigated in order to determine its biostratigraphy and palaeoecology. the thickness of qom formation is 325 meters at the study area and consists of thin, medium to thick bedded and massive limestons. they underline on eocene volcanic with disconformably and its upper boundary is overlain by alluvium. based on thin section studies 14 genera and 2...

Article history: Received 23 November 2016 Accepted 19 March 2017 Available online 6 April 2017 Since the late 1990s, the central basin of Lake Erie has reputedly experienced an increase in the frequency and severity of hypoxic events. However, total phosphorus (TP) loading, in-lake TP concentrations, chlorophyll a (Chl a), and sediment oxygen demand (SOD) have all declined in the central basin...

Coastal lagoons are highly variable and dynamic systems that have been rarely investigated in terms of benthic microbial loop. We present here the results of a comparative study aimed at investigating factors and benthic processes potentially affecting microbial loop functioning in three lagoon systems (Goro, Lesina and Marsala lagoons). The three lagoons were characterised by different geo-mor...

A generic method was developed for analysing the capabilities of optical remote sensing of aquatic systems in terms of environmental components and imaging sensor configurations. The method was based on a component based model of the entire system in which not only benthic composition but other environmental components such as water inherent optical properties (IOPs), bathymetry, sun elevation,...

Bacteria and archaea dominate the biomass of benthic deep-sea ecosystems at all latitudes, playing a crucial role in global biogeochemical cycles, but their macroscale patterns and macroecological drivers are still largely unknown. We show the results of the most extensive field study conducted so far to investigate patterns and drivers of the distribution and structure of benthic prokaryote as...

Community structure and assembly are determined in part by environmental heterogeneity. While reef-building corals respond negatively to warming (i.e. bleaching events) and ocean acidification (OA), the extent of present-day natural variability in pH on shallow reefs and ecological consequences for benthic assemblages is unknown. We documented high resolution temporal patterns in temperature an...

Diversity and ecological features of cyanobacteria of the genus Nodularia from benthic, periphytic and soil habitats are less well known than those of Nodularia from planktonic habitats. Novel benthic Nodularia strains were isolated from the Baltic Sea and their morphology, the presence of gas vacuoles, nodularin production, gliding, 16S rRNA gene sequences, rpoB, rbcLX and ndaF genes, and gvpA...

During the Deepwater Horizon blowout, thick layers of oiled material were deposited on the deep seafloor. This large scale benthic concentration of oil is suggested to have occurred via the process of Marine Oil Snow Sedimentation and Flocculent Accumulation (MOSSFA). This meta-analysis investigates whether MOSSFA occurred in other large oil spills and identifies the main drivers of oil sedimen...

[1] Benthic foraminiferal Cd/Ca is an important proxy for seawater paleonutrient concentrations and therefore deep ocean paleocirculation. Although previous work suggests that the incorporation of Cd into benthic foraminiferal calcite is insensitive to temperature, at least one species of planktonic foraminifer appears to be strongly influenced. The present study provides a closer look at the r...