Overviews of the source, supply and variability of DOM, surveys of the processes that mediate inputs to microbial food webs, and syntheses consolidating research findings provide a comprehensive review of what is known of DOM in freshwater. This book will be important to anyone interested in understanding the fundamental factors associated with DOM that control aquatic ecosystems."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides examples of pollutants, such as accidental oil spills and non-degradable plastic debris, which affect marine organisms of all taxa. Terrestrial runoff washes large amounts of dissolved organic materials from agriculture and industry, toxic heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and persistent organic pollutants which end up into rivers, coastal habitats, and open waters. While this book is not intended to encyclopaedically list all kinds of pollution, it rather exemplifies the problems by concentrating on a number of serious and prominent recent developments. The chapters in this book also discuss measures to decrease and remove aquatic pollution to mitigate the stress on aquatic organisms. Aquatic ecosystems provide a wide range of ecological and economical services. In addition to providing a large share of the staple diet for a fast growing human population, oceans absorb most of the anthropogenically emitted carbon dioxide and mitigate climate change. As well as rising temperatures and ocean acidification, pollution poses increasing problems for aquatic ecosystems and organisms reducing its functioning and services which are exposed to a plethora of stress factors.

Evidence now suggests that the roles of essential fatty acids as growth promoters and as indices of health and nutrition are fundamentally similar in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Lipids in Aquatic Ecosystems integrates this divergent literature into a coordinated, digestible form. Chapters are organized so as to discuss and synthesize the flow of lipids from lower to higher trophic levels, up to and including humans. Linkages between the production, distribution and pathways of these essential compounds within the various levels of the aquatic food webs, and their ultimate uptake by humans and other terrestrial organisms, are highlighted throughout the book. This book will be of interest to researchers and resource managers working with aquatic ecosystems.

Concern about future supplies of fresh water to society, to meet the full range of human needs, now comes very high on the priority list of global societal issues. An overarching issue, which this book addresses, is whether global climate change is a dominant driver of change in the structure and function of all natural water-based ecosystems, or whether direct human population growth and accelerated consumption are playing an equal or greater role. This book divides the whole aquatic realm into 21 ecosystems, from those on land (both saline and fresh water) to those of the open and deep oceans. It draws on the understanding of leading ecologists to summarize the state and likely condition by the year 2025 of each of the ecosystems. Written for academic researchers and environmental professionals, the aim is to put the climate change debate into a broader context as a basis for conservation science and planning.

Ecologists have long struggled to predict features of ecological systems, such as the numbers and diversity of organisms. The wide range of body sizes in ecological communities, from tiny microbes to large animals and plants, is emerging as the key to prediction. Based on the relationship between body size and features such as biological rates, the physics of water and the amount of habitat available, we may be able to understand patterns of abundance and diversity, biogeography, interactions in food webs and the impact of fishing, adding up to a potential 'periodic table' for ecology. Remarkable progress on the unravelling, describing and modelling of aquatic food webs, revealing the fundamental role of body size, makes a book emphasising marine and freshwater ecosystems particularly apt. In this 2007 book, the importance of body size is examined at a range of scales that will be of interest to professional ecologists, from students to senior researchers.

Combining background knowledge and practical tools, Handbook of Inland Aquatic Ecosystem Management gives you an overview of how to manage inland waters in a holistic manner. It examines the problems that threaten aquatic inland water ecosystems and presents a set of toolboxes for solving them. The book focuses on lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers,