The social and economic benefits of the coastal zone make it one of the most treasured environments on our planet. Yet it is vulnerable to increasing anthropogenic pressure and climate change. Coastal management aims to mitigate these pressures while augmenting the socio-economic benefits the coastal region has to offer. However, coastal management is challenged by inadequate sampling of key en...

Introduction The coastal oceans are among the most challenging marine environments in the world. They are subject to the combined geometrical constraints of irregular coastlines and highly variable (steep and tall) bathymetry, and are forced both internally, laterally and surfacially by a complex array of tidal, wind and buoyancy forces on a broad range of space/time scales. The resulting coast...

Since its discovery in 1998, representatives of the extremely halophilic bacterium Salinibacter ruber have been found in many hypersaline environments across the world, including coastal and solar salterns and solar lakes. Here, we review the available information about the distribution, abundance and diversity of this member of the Bacteroidetes.

Vibrio alginolyticus is a ubiquitous Gram-negative bacterium which is normally distributed in the coastal and estuarine environments. It has been suggested to be an opportunistic pathogen to both marine animals and humans, Here, the completed genome sequence of V. alginolyticus ZJ-T was determined by Illumina high-throughput sequencing.

Over the past several decades, human activities have caused substantial enrichment of reactive nitrogen in China's coastal wetlands. Although anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), the process of oxidizing ammonium into dinitrogen gas through the reduction of nitrite, is identified as an important process for removing reactive nitrogen, little is known about the dynamics of anammox and its con...

Submerged aquatic vegetation or “SAV” includes both flowering and non-flowering plants that grow completely underwater. In the Chesapeake Bay region, the term “SAV” usually refers to various rooted aquatic angiosperms or “underwater grasses” found growing in shallow areas ranging from high salinity to freshwater tidal environments. Approximately 20 species are commonly found throughout Chesapea...

Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences from deep marine sediments identified a deeply branching clade, designated candidate division JS1. Primers for PCR amplification of partial 16S rRNA genes that target the JS1 division were developed and used to detect JS1 sequences in DNA extracted from various sedimentary environments, including, for the first time, coastal marine and brackish s...

Virtual geographic environments (VGE) are environments pertaining to the relationship between post-humans and 3-D virtual worlds. Post-humans are defined as a combination of humans in the real world with 3-D avatars in 3-D virtual worlds. VGE can be a platform for the public participation in spatial data analyses, in model computation and simulation, and in environmental planning and decision m...

Members of the cyanobacterial genus Synechococcus are abundant in marine environments. To better understand the genomic diversity of marine Synechococcus spp., we determined the complete genome sequence of a coastal cyanobacterium, Synechococcus sp. NIES-970. The genome had a size of 3.1 Mb, consisting of one chromosome and four plasmids.