Climate change related Sea Level Rise (SLR) increases the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems by posing threat to many coastal cities, urban centres and coastal population in developed as well as in developing countries. Coastal areas are predominantly rich in resources, easily accessible and facilitate infiltration of people and investments. The 8118 km long coastline in India is characterized...

Most coastal structures have been built in surf zones to protect coastal areas. In general, the transformation of waves in the surf zone is quite complicated and numerous hazards to coastal communities may be associated with such phenomena. Therefore, the behavior of waves in the surf zone should be carefully analyzed and predicted. Furthermore, an accurate analysis of deformed waves around coa...

III Riassunto V Papers published or prepared in the course of the PhD VII Preface IX General introduction 1 Chapter 1 Seed germination responses to varying environmental conditions and provenances in Crucianella maritima L., a threatened coastal species 9 Chapter 2 The effect of seagrass beach-cast on germination and growth of dune plants 16 Chapter 3 High levels of stranded wrack from seagrass...

BACKGROUND Marine microbial communities have been essential contributors to global biomass, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity since the early history of Earth, but so far their community distribution patterns remain unknown in most marine ecosystems. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The synthesis of 9.6 million bacterial V6-rRNA amplicons for 509 samples that span the global ocean's surface to...

Benthic infaunal communities are important components of coastal ecosystems. Understanding the relationships between the structure of these communities and characteristics of the habitat in which they live is becoming progressively more important as coastal systems face increasing stress from anthropogenic impacts and changes in climate. To examine how sediment characteristics and infaunal comm...

Thirty-four grass species were collected for phytolith analysis from a variety of coastal environments in the southeastern USA (Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana), including salt marshes, freshwater/brackish marshes, pine/oak forests, maritime hardwood forests, and sand dunes. Phytoliths produced by these modern grasses include a large diversity of shapes and types. We propose a preliminary relat...