BACKGROUND Determining national carbon stocks is essential in the framework of ongoing climate change mitigation actions. Presently, assessment of carbon stocks in the context of greenhouse gas (GHG)-reporting on a nation-by-nation basis focuses on the terrestrial realm, i.e., carbon held in living plant biomass and soils, and on potential changes in these stocks in response to anthropogenic ac...

Mineralisation of organic detritus in the marine surficial sediments generates a flux of dissolved inorganic nutrient between the sediment and overlying water column. This is a key process in the marine ecosystem, which links the food webs of the sea-floor and the overlying water-column, and is potentially affected by a range of interacting environmental and sedimentary factors. Here, we use Ge...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the levels of heavy metal bioconcentration of the mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) in Shadegan international wetland. Sampling including the water, waterbed sediment and mosquitofish was carried out from the selected sampling sites during October and November 2011, and analyzed by the ICP-OES. Results show that the water has poor qualitative condition, a...

The present study was conducted to examine the impact of cage aquaculture on benthic communities in coastal areas (depth 25 to 50 m) from fish farming operations located along the southeastern Black Sea (Ordu-Perşembe, Trabzon-Yomra and Rize central). Sampling was conducted seasonally from April 2007 to 2009. Sediment samples were taken using Ekman Grab (box core- 0.04 m2). Temperature, salinit...

The objectives of this study are to use different types of indexes to assess the current pollution status in Mengkabong lagoon and select the best index to describe the Mengkabong sediment quality. The indexes used in this study were Enrichment Factor (EF), Geo-accumulation Index (Igeo), Pollution Load Index (PLI) and Marine Sediment Pollution Index (MSPI). Different indexes give diverse status...

Bioassays on sea urchin early life stages have been used extensively in evaluating the pollution impact on seawater, coastal sediments, and other matrices as soil, freshwater sediment, and industry effluents. Here we review the literature in this field to determine whether testing whole sediment vs. pore water or elutriates by sea urchin bioassays provides a better estimation of actual risk. Th...

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are used as flame retardants in polymeric materials such as furnishing foam, rigid plastics and textiles. The U.S. has historically led the world production of these man-made chemicals and was responsible for about 50% of the total global demand in 2001. Paradoxically, scientific studies addressing sources, behavior and fate of PBDEs in the U.S. environmen...

Many marine invertebrates are able to regenerate lost tissue following injury, but regeneration can come at a cost to individuals in terms of reproduction, behavior and physiological condition, and can have effects that reach beyond the individual to impact populations, communities, and ecosystems. For example, removal and subsequent regeneration of clams' siphons, polychaetes' segments, and br...

The sediments of coastal wetlands contain large stores of carbon which are vulnerable to oxidation once disturbed, resulting in high levels of CO2 emissions that may be avoided if coastal ecosystems are conserved or restored. We used a simple model to estimate CO2 emissions from mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and tidal marshes based on known decomposition rates for organic matter in these eco...

As human pressure on the marine environment increases, safeguarding healthy and productive seas increasingly necessitates integrated, time- and cost-effective environmental monitoring. Employment of a Wave Glider proved very useful for the study of sediment transport in a shallow sandbank area in the Belgian part of the North Sea. During 22 days, data on surface and water-column currents and tu...