The northern Adriatic Sea is transient, most recently flooded between 18,000 to 6,000 years ago following the last glacial maximum, and it will drain again with the onset of the next glacial period. Despite its youth, uniformly shallow depth, and flat sediment floor, it hosts a broad range of bottom-dwelling sea life ecologically resembling communities that have existed in the shallow sea since the Ordovician Period, some 500 million years ago. The northern Adriatic is a natural laboratory in which to test hypotheses concerning the shift from the Paleozoic prevalence of stationary suspension-feeders living on the surface of the sediment and feeding from the overlying waters to, more recently, bottom-dwelling animals living dominantly in or actively seeking temporary refuge within the sediments of the sea floor, regardless of where they feed. Across the northern Adriatic Sea there is an ecological gradient from Paleozoic-style surface-dwelling communities in the east to "modern" communities living almost exclusively within the sediments in the west. Therefore, within the relatively small area of the northern Adriatic, there is an existing gradient similar to the profound ecological change from Paleozoic to more modern marine life. During the early twentieth century, life at the bottom of the Adriatic was systematically sampled from the east to the west coasts, revealing the most common animals and their distribution. In this book Frank K. McKinney combines these findings with more recent, local studies to understand better the ecological structure of the Adriatic's floor. Specifically, he uses the predation, sediment textures and deposition rates, currents, and nutrients of northern Adriatic bottom communities to evaluate hypotheses concerning the conditions that drove surface-dwelling animals to seek long-term refuge within sea floor sediment. Though the northern Adriatic has been well studied since the advent of the marine sciences, it is not widely known by paleontologists. With this volume, McKinney illuminates what this "living laboratory" can tell us about the evolution of multicellular life on Earth.

Artificial Reefs in European Seas focuses on artificial reef research in the Mediterranean and NE Atlantic. The book describes most of the long-term projects running in European seas, presents the legal and economic issues, and suggests future uses for artificial reefs in the European context. Readership: Professionals working on or interested in the uses of artificial reefs for fishery management, coastal zone management, aquaculture and nature conservation. The case studies of reef research programmes make the book ideal for degree students studying topics in ecology, and fisheries and coastal management.

Global Change in Marine Systems analyses and appraises societal and governing responses to change affecting marine social and ecological systems around the world. Acknowledging the stakes – local societies that depend on marine systems for food, livelihoods and wellbeing can suffer great hardship – this book highlights and explains similarities and distinctions between successful and unsuccessful responses. The book presents an analytical framework (‘I-ADApT’) that enables decision-makers to consider possible responses to global change based on experiences elsewhere. Here an international group of researchers from the natural and social sciences apply the ‘I-ADApT’ framework to twenty enlightening case studies, covering a wide range of marine systems challenged by critical global change issues around the world. The innovative research presented here guides marine system researchers, policymakers, decision-makers and practitioners in responding to global change in a timely and appropriate manner. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in environmental studies, natural resources, marine resources, environmental sociology, sustainability, and climate change.

This is a presentation of some of the recent research activities and developments in the field of continental shelf geology. The book is organized around four major themes: stratigraphy and sedimentary geology of siliciclastic shelves; modern siliciclastic shelves - architecture, sea level, tectonics and sediment supply; nearshore and coastal environments; and new techniques in continental shelf research.

Suppose one were given the task of mapping the general circulation in an unfamiliar ocean. The ocean, like our own, is subdivided into basins and marginal seas interconnected by sea straits. Assuming a limited budget for this undertaking, one would do well to choose the straits as observational starting points. To begin with, the currents flowing from one basin to the next, over possibly wide and time-varying paths, are confined to narrow and stable routes within the straits. Mass, heat and chemical budgets for individual basins can be formulated in terms of the fluxes measured across the straits using a relatively small number of instruments. The confinement of the flow by a strait can also give rise to profound dynamical conse quences including choking or hydraulic control, a process similar to that by which a dam regulates the flow from a reservoir. The funneling geometry can lead to enhanced tidal modulation and increased velocities, giving rise to local instabilities, mixing, internal bores, jumps, and other striking hydraulic and fine scale phenomena. In short, sea straits repre sent choke points which are observationally and dynamically strategic and which contain a full range of fascinating physical processes.

There has lately been a growth in the number and level of studies of contourite deposits. Most recent studies of contourites have two major lines of interest. One, propelled by the oil industry's continuous move into increasingly deep waters, concerns their economic significance. The other involves the stratigraphic/ palaeoceanographic record of ocean circulation changes imprinted on contourite deposits that can be a key to understanding better the climate-ocean connection. The application of many different theoretical, experimental and empirical resources provided by geophysics, sedimentology, geochemistry, petrology, scale modeling and field geology are used in the 16 papers of this volume, proposing answers to those two main aspects. The papers are subdivided into two major categories (economic interest and stratigraphic/palaeoceanographic significance), with case studies ranging from well-documented drifts to new examples of modern and fossil series, involving a large diversity of geographic and physiographic scenarios worldwide

The book “Geophysics and Ocean Waves Studies” presents the collected chapters in two sections named “Geophysics” and “Ocean Waves Studies”. The first section, “Geophysics”, provides a thorough overview of using different geophysical methods including gravity, self-potential, and EM in exploration. Moreover, it shows the significance of rock physics properties and enhanced oil recovery phases during oil reservoir production. The second section, “Ocean Waves Studies”, is intended to provide the reader with a strong description of the latest developments in the physical and numerical description of wind-generated and long waves, including some new features discovered in the last few years. The section is organized with the aim to introduce the reader from offshore to nearshore phenomena including a description of wave dissipation and large-scale phenomena (i.e., storm surges and landslide-induced tsunamis). This book shall be of great interest to students, scientists, geologists, geophysicists, and the investment community.