A common belief is that, unlike today, ancient urban areas developed in a sustainable way within the environmental limits of local natural resources and the ecosystem's capacity to respond. This long-held paradigm is based on a weak knowledge of the processes underpinning the emergence of urban life and the rise of an urban-adapted environment in and beyond city boundaries. Here, we report a 60...

A scanning lidar system provides high-resolution two-dimensional measurements of ocean wave displacement. The airborne operation further enhances the speed of data acquisition. These properties allow rapid characterization of the ocean wave environment. In addition to active ranging, the scanning optics can obtain passive measurements of surface emissivity, yielding a digital image of the surfa...

Coastal ecosystems of Bushehr are shallow environments subject to human impacts, including shrimp aquaculture and urban expansion activities. A spatial-temporal study was conducted in order to assess the actual ecological status of the creeks, estuary and marine sites on the basis of their taxonomic composition and density of mesozooplankton. Zooplankton species distribution and abundance data ...

Extreme coastal inundation associated with the 2004 Indian Ocean and 1945 Makran tsunamigenic-earthquakes highlight the risk of tsunamis to coastlines of the northern Oman Sea. Foraminifera have been used as indicators of paleotsunamis in the past where allochthonous tests, found in low-energy environments such as in coastal lagoons, ponds, and marshes, indicate marine overwash. In this study, ...

A new oceanographic measurement concept, Acousti-cally Focused Ocean Sampling-AFOS, is presented, combining a tomographic network with small autonomous underwater vehicles. Using wireless local area network technology, the acoustic tomography data are recorded and processed in real time for achieving a low-resolution estimate of oceanographic parameters. The results are used to focus direct mea...

This project examined the effects of ecological factors and anthropogenic contaminants on benthic diatom communities near Casey Station, in the Windmill Islands, Antarctica. Preliminary sampling indicated significant compositional differences occurred between diatom communities in bays immediately adjacent to Casey Station and those more distant. Subsequently, a more detailed appraisal of spati...

The Special Issue (SI) on “Remote Sensing in Coastal Environments” presents a wide range of articles focusing on a variety of remote sensing models and techniques to address coastal issues and processes ranging for wetlands and water quality to coral reefs and kelp habitats. The SI is comprised of twenty-one papers, covering a broad range of research topics that employ remote sensing imagery, m...

Effective coastal planning incorporates the variety of user needs, values, and interests associated with coastal environments. This requires understanding how people relate to coastal environments as “places,” imbued with values and meanings, and accordingly, tools that can capture place and connect with people’s “sense of place” have the potential for supporting effective coastal management st...

Estrogens are ancient molecules that act as hormones in vertebrates and are biologically active in diverse animal phyla. Sewage contains natural and synthetic estrogens that are detectable in streams, rivers, and lakes. There are no studies reporting the distribution of steroidal estrogens in marine environments. We measured estrogens in sewage, injection-well water, and coastal tropical and of...

Catastrophic events recorded in selected coastal wetlands of New Zealand are reported. These date back over 6000 years, but become more well-defined in the past Millennium. Comparison between the historic and palaeoenvironmental record indicates that a reliance on the former does not include several significant nationwide events. By highlighting the details and effects of several locally genera...