The 15th Franco-Japanese Symposium of Oceanography “Marine Productivity, Perturbations and Resilience of Socio-Ecosystems,” organized by the long-standing partners Société franco-japonaise d'Océanographie de France and Société franco-japonaise d'Océanographie du Japon, reviewed the impacts of natural (storms, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) and man-made (pollution, buildings in coastal areas, aquaculture, tourism, sports, diving, etc.) perturbations inflicted on coastal and marine e...

Based on the material presented at a conference organized by the Centre d’Océanologie of Marseille, held in 2008, this text covers a wealth of hot topics related to the way mankind interacts with the marine environment. With the state of our oceans and seas becoming an increasing source of concern worldwide, this timely addition to the debate features the latest research in both France and Japan.The book’s chapters present work on many of the key areas of oceanographic study. The c...

Coastal and estuarine environments at the interface of terrestrial and marine areas are among the most productive in the world. However, since the beginning of the industrial era, these ecosystems have been subjected to strong anthropogenic pressures intensified from the second half of the 20th century, when there was a marked acceleration in the warming (climate change) of the continents, particularly at high latitudes. Coastal ecosystems are highly vulnerable to alteration of their physi...

This book documents the effects of natural hazards on coastal ecosystems in detail. The sea is an indispensable component of the Earth system, and human societies obtain many goods and services from the marine environment. Global warming threatens marine ecosystems through seawater temperature rise, acidification, sea-level rise and the increased frequency of severe storms. The repeated effects of tsunamis also have major impacts on coastal ecosystems. Increases in population and industry ...

The new revised edition of a classic Earth science textThis newly revised edition of Global Environment discusses the major elements of the geochemical cycles and global fluxes found in the atmosphere, land, lakes, rivers, biota, and oceans, as well as the human effects on these fluxes. Retaining the strengths of the original edition while incorporating the latest discoveries, this textbook takes an integrated, multidisciplinary, and global approach to geo...

The climate of the Earth is always changing. As the debate over the implications of changes in the Earth's climate has grown, the term climate change has come to refer primarily to changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted to be coming, mainly as a result of human behavior. This book serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the non-s...

This book presents both state-of-the art knowledge from Recent coral reefs (1.8 million to a few centuries old) gained since the eighties, and introduces geologists, oceanographers and environmentalists to sedimentological and paleoecological studies of an ecosystem encompassing some of the world's richest biodiversity. Scleractinian reefs first appeared about 300 million years ago. Today coral reef systems provide some of the most sensitive gauges of environmental change, expressing the c...

The extent to which human activity has influenced species extinctions during the recent prehistoric past remains controversial due to other factors such as climatic fluctuations and a general lack of data. However, the Holocene (the geological interval spanning the last 11,500 years from the end of the last glaciation) has witnessed massive levels of extinctions that have continued into the modern historical era, but in a context of only relatively minor climatic fluctuations. This makes a...

The oceans represent a vast, complex and poorly understood ecosystem. Marine Ecological Processes is a modern review and synthesis of marine ecology that provides the reader with a lucid introduction to the intellectual concepts, approaches, and methods of this evolving discipline. Comprehensive in its coverage, this book focuses on the processes controlling marine ecosystems, communities, and populations and demonstrates how general ecological principles--derived from terrestrial...

This book presents an integrated approach to the study of the evolution of the Archean lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere, and as such it is a unique contribution to our understanding of the early Earth and life. The structural and geochemical make-up of both the oceanic and continental crust of the Archean Earth is documented in some case studies of various cratons, and the implications of the Phanerozoic plate and plume tectonic processes for the Archean geology are discussed in sever...

Europe is a continent with a high coast-to-surface ratio, and European seas encompass a broad range of settings and regimes. The sustainable development of living and non-living marine resources, the protection of the marine environment and the provision of marine-based services are critical to economic prosperity and to the quality of life of European citizens. Addressing these concerns, marine-science researchers conducted a workshop reviewing major topics of European marine research. Th...

Although the main focus of this book is on the estuaries, its scope goes well beyond this particular coastal feature. Indeed, the estuary can only be considered as part of the life cycle of the entire river and the marine area it feeds into: an area particularly subject to human and natural pressures.The main estuaries and deltas of West and Central Africa region provide a variety of goods and services to its coastal population. The most important of them are related to critical fis...