We studied the population sizes and substrate incorporation patterns of three phylogenetic groups of Betaproteobacteria in a coastal subtropical lagoon that is characterized by a sharp transition from humic freshwater to turbid brackish water. Various cellular processes were addressed by short-term incubations with four radiolabelled compounds and microautoradiographic assessment of substrate i...

The Manzala Lagoon in Egypt's Nile ' »elta has become a sediment sink of reduced area and depth, with increased contaminant levels. Loss of much-needed fresh to brackish water reserves and decreased fish catches have serious ramifications. Herein, maps of temporal and regional sediment distributions in Manzala incorporate petrological and statistical analyses of 200 surficial and short core sam...

Historical descriptions of the Clipperton lagoon appear to converge on the fact that it became isolated from the surrounding ocean around 1858. Since then, because of the high precipitation rate which largely exceeds evaporation in this region of the eastern tropical Pacific, a brackish lens has formed on top of the saline oceanic waters. In 1980, literature data show that the thickness of this...

The Oder estuary, especially the large, shallow Szczecin (Oder) Lagoon (687 W, average depth 3.8 m) suffers from severe and ongoing eutrophication due to heavy loads, mainly by the Oder river. Poor water quality nowadays is a main obstacle for further touristic development around the lagoon. Long-term nutrient concentrations show a high interannual variability and a decline during recent years....

Testicular histology of mature grass goby (Zosterisessor ophiocephalus) collected in Bizerta lagoon showed several types of histological lesions. A high prevalence of these lesions was detected in stations influenced by discharges of industrial and/or urban activities. These results highlight the reproductive disturbance of gobies from Bizerta lagoon.

The large Oder (Szczecin) Lagoon (687 km2) at the German-Polish border, close to the Baltic Sea, suffers from severe eutrophication and water quality problems due to high discharge of water, nutrients and pollutants by the river Oder. Sewage treatment around the lagoon has been very much improved during the last years, but large amounts of sewage still enter the Oder river. Human pathogenic vir...

We assessed mercury contamination of water, sediment, and selected aquatic biota from two lagoons in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (southern Lake Superior). These nearshore lagoon systems appear to be mercury-sensitive environments with unusually high rates of production of methylmercury, a highly toxic compound that readily bioaccumulates in aquatic food webs. Concentrations of methyl...

We studied the spatial variability and within-year temporal changes in hydrological features, grain size composition and chemical characteristics of sediments, as well as macrofaunal assemblages, along a heavily modified inlet in the Gulf of Oristano (western Sardinia, Italy). The inlet connects the Cabras lagoon to the gulf through a series of convoluted creeks and man-made structures, includi...

The high prevalence of dioecy in marine angiosperms or seagrasses (>50% of all species) is thought to enforce cross-fertilization. However, seagrasses are clonal plants, and they may still be subject to sibling-mating or bi-parental inbreeding if the genetic neighborhood is smaller than the size of the genets. We tested this by determining the genetic neighborhoods of the dioecious seagrass Tha...

Current trends of animal production concentration and new regulations promote the need for environmentally safe alternatives to land application of liquid manure. These technologies must be able to substantially remove nutrients, heavy metals, and emissions of ammonia and odors and disinfect the effluent. A new treatment system was tested full-scale in a 4360-swine farm in North Carolina to dem...