Sustainable development depends on the maintenance and restoration of healthy ecosystems that support services valued by society, services that are under threat from a broad spectrum of anthropogenic pressures. The scientific community has responded by calling for an ecosystem-based approach (EBA) to managing and mitigating the impacts of these pressures on ecosystem health - an approach that has been embraced in both national and international environmental policies. However, given the synergies among multiple pressures; the complex nature of ecosystems and the nonlinearity of ecosystem dynamics; and the cost of monitoring everything, everywhere, all the time, EBAs are in the formative years of their development. In this context, the rationale for an analysis such as this is to provide information needed to inform EBAs designed to maintain or restore coastal ecosystems services (metrics of ecosystem health).
Coastal Ecosystems: Evolution and Comparative Analysis advances our understanding of the ecology of large estuarine systems and the impacts of anthropogenic pressures on ecosystem services, assesses the efficacy of management actions implemented over the last two decades to mitigate these impacts, and evaluates the effects of local pressures that are occurring globally, such as, coastal development, nutrient pollution, and over fishing plus invasive species and chemical contamination, etc. in the context of global scale pressures that have local consequences like climate-driven pressures including sea level rise, increases in water temperature, acidification, and acceleration of the water cycle.
Volume highlights include:
- Brief summary of conclusions on management actions taken since past two decades to date to mitigate impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the Northern Adriatic and Chesapeake Bay and their respective ecosystem services
- An update on current anthropogenic pressures in the context of climate change
- Assessments of current ecosystem states in terms of the extent and condition of critical coastal habitats, patterns of stratification and circulation, food web dynamics from phytoplankton to fish, nutrient cycling, water quality, and toxic algal events
- Ecosystem-based approaches to managing anthropogenic pressures on coastal marine ecosystems
Coastal Ecosystems: Evolution and Comparative Analysis is a valuable resource for researchers in a wide range of subjects, including geography, environmental management, geology, geomorphology, sedimentology, oceanography, ecology and coastal/civil engineering.
