Marine Ecological Processes

This book includes a comprehensive review of the processes controlling marine ecosystems, communities, and populations, as well as introduces concepts, approaches, and methods in the fast-changing fields of marine ecology and oceanography. This third edition maintains the structure of previous editions, introducing marine environments, dwelling on population, community, and ecosystem levels of organization, and emphasizing relevant biogeochemical and hydrodynamic mechanisms. The content is updated to include major features that new research has revealed in recent decades, but still highlights links to originators of critical ideas in the history of marine sciences. The greatest change in this edition is an expansion of each chapter to capture new awareness, and implications, of the rapid change affecting all aspects marine environments, driven by anthropogenic forces operating through climate and oceanographic mechanisms. 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 and freshwater systems as well--apply to marine ecosystems. Global warming and increased eutrophication and wetland destruction in recent years has made the study of ecological processes even more important for the preservation of marine environments. This thoroughly updated and expanded edition will provide students of marine ecology, marine biology, and oceanography with numerous illustrations, examples, and references which clearly impart to the reader the current state of research in thisfield: its achievements as well as unresolved controversies.