N estuarine and marine ecosystems—e.g., seagrass meadows, marshes, and mangrove forests— serve many important functions in coastal waters. Most notably, they have extremely high primary and secondary productivity and support a great abundance and diversity of fish and invertebrates. Because of their effects on the diversity and productivity of macrofauna, these estuarine and marine ecosystems a...

heavy metals in the surface sediments of the two coastal ecosystems of cochin, southwest india were assessed. the study intends to evaluate the degree of anthropogenic influence on heavy metal concentration in the sediments of the mangrove and adjacent estuarine stations using enrichment factor and geoaccumulation index. the inverse relationship of cd and zn with texture in the mangrove sedimen...

No other environmental variable of such ecological importance to estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems around the world has changed so drastically, in such a short period of time, as dissolved oxygen. While hypoxic and anoxic environments have existed through geological time, their occurrence in shallow coastal and estuarine areas appears to be increasing, most likely accelerated by human act...

Complexity theory proposes that spatial self-organization, the process whereby small-scale, localized interactions among the components of a system generate complex spatial structures at large spatial scales, explains the formation of autogenic spatial patterns in ecosystems. We question this premise by reviewing three estuarine ecosystems - mussel beds, mudflats and salt marshes - where self-o...

BACKGROUND Estuaries are highly productive ecosystems that can export organic matter to coastal seas (the 'outwelling hypothesis'). However the role of this food resource subsidy on coastal ecosystem functioning has not been examined. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We investigated the influence of estuarine primary production as a resource subsidy and the influence of estuaries on biodiversit...

Nitrogen supply is often assumed to limit marine primary production. A global analysis of total nitrogen (N) to phosphorus (P) molar ratios shows that total N:P is low (<16:1) in some estuarine and coastal ecosystems, but up to 100:1 in open oceans. This implies that elements other than N may limit marine production, except in human impacted, estuarine or coastal ecosystems. This pattern may re...

1. Amid signs that estuarine ecosystems are increasingly degraded and may reach new thresholds of irreversible decline, restoration ecologists and coastal managers world-wide have joined the debate on how best to reverse the trends of the recent past. 2. Any meaningful effort at reversal must, however, recognize that humans are an integral part of the landscape, particularly in urban estuarine ...