Quantifying the scale and importance of individual dispersion between populations and life stages is a key challenge in marine ecology. The common sole (Solea solea), an important commercial flatfish in the North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, has a marine pelagic larval stage, a benthic juvenile stage in coastal nurseries (lagoons, estuaries or shallow marine areas) and a benth...

Nodularin (NOD) is a cyclic penta-peptide hepatotoxin mainly produced by Nodularia spumigena, reported from the brackish water bodies of various parts of the world. It can accumulate in the food chain and, for safety reasons, levels of NOD not only in water bodies but also in food matrices are of interest. Here, we report on a non-competitive immunoassay for the specific detection of NOD. A pha...

Using a broadly sampled, time-calibrated phylogeny of Cyanobacteria and photosynthetic eukaryotes, Sánchez-Baracaldo et al. (1) report that the mostrecent common ancestor (MRCA) of Archaeplastida likely inhabited a low-salinity (freshwater) habitat, providing an advance on a longstanding debate about the ecological context for the origin of plastids (2). The freshwater ancestry for Cyanobacteri...

The North Sea coast of the Dutch barrier island of Schiermonnikoog is covered by microbial mats that initiate a succession of plant communities that eventually results in the development of a densely vegetated salt marsh. The North Sea beach has a natural elevation running from the low water mark to the dunes resulting in gradients of environmental factors perpendicular to the beach. These grad...

Multi-objective optimization using genetic algorithm (GA) is carried out for the desalination of brackish and sea water using spiral wound or tubular modules. A few sample optimization problems involving two and three objective functions are solved, both for the operation of an existing plant (which is almost trivial), as well as, for the design of new plants (associated with a higher degree of...

The partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), concentration of total dissolved inorganic carbon, and total alkalinity were measured at both high tide and low tide in the surface water of three Georgia estuaries from September 2002 to May 2004. Of the three estuaries, Sapelo and Doboy Sounds are marine-dominated estuaries, while Altamaha Sound is a river-dominated estuary. During all sampling m...

In coastal areas groundwater quality may be degraded by intrusion of salt sea water into freshwater aquifers. The salinity of the groundwater changes its physical properties: an increase in salinity increases both the density and viscosity of the groundwater. These density differences are the primary driving force that allows salt water to move into the coastal aquifer, forming a salt water “we...

Secondary succession plays a critical role in driving community structure in natural communities, yet how succession dynamics vary with environmental context is generally unknown. We examined the importance of seedling and vegetative recruitment in the secondary succession of coastal marsh vegetation across a landscape-scale environmental stress gradient. Replicate bare patches were initiated i...

The ecosystems in brackish water regions are already exposed to stress, especially those living in estuaries with their fluctuating environment. The question raised here is whether these ecosystems are generally more susceptible to additional stress such as pollution, or if their ability to adapt to environmental changes leads to increased tolerance to pollution. The Baltic, as being the larges...

management of unconventional water management in agricultural lands reduces environmental risks and increases its productivity. the purpose of this study was evaluating and comparing the effect of wastewater, saltwater and brackish water on some soil physical and chemical properties. for this purpose, five study sites including control area, irrigation with saltwater, brackish water wastewater ...