Changes in nutrient concentrations and sediment texture of the seagrass beds were recorded for two years from July 1996 to June 1998 at monthly intervals at two stations (Station 1--Manoli island; Station 2--Chinnapalam) of the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve. Different nutrients in water showed varied concentrations in different seasons. Phosphate concentration varied between 2.32 and ...

Ascophyllum nodosum is the most important commercial seaweed. Seaweeds have been applied as soil conditioners in improving plant growth and development in agricultural crops. In current study and for the first time, extracts of brown seaweed A. nodosum improved the growth of Robinia pseudoacasia L., an ornamental tree. This research investigated the effect of cultivation beds (sand, perlite, co...

Coralline algal (maerl) beds are widespread, slow-growing, structurally complex perennial habitats that support high biodiversity, yet are significantly understudied compared to seagrass beds or kelp forests. We present the first eddy covariance (EC) study on a live maerl bed, assessing the community benthic gross primary productivity (GPP), respiration (R), and net ecosystem metabolism (NEM) d...

Nitrogen (N) uptake (kg ha-1) of field-grown potatoes was measured in 4.32 m2 lysimeters that were filled with coarse sand, loamy sand, and sandy loam and subjected to full (FI), deficit (DI), and partial root-zone drying (PRD) irrigation strategies. PRD and DI as water-saving irrigation treatments received 65% of FI after tuber bulking and lasted for six weeks until final harvest. Results show...

Lower Pliocene temperate carbonates exhibit landward-downlapping beds at the southern margin of the Carboneras Basin in south-eastern Spain. This rarely documented stratal geometry resulted from the accumulation of bedded bioclastic carbonate sand and gravel by longshore currents along a spit platform located a few hundred metres from the palaeoshoreline. The top of the spit platform was covere...

Bioturbation long has been ‘blamed’ for eliminating late Proterozoic-style sedimentary structures and fabrics. While the presence of diverse and complex burrows in lowermost Cambrian strata is indisputable, analysis of Precambrian– Cambrian successions in southeast Newfoundland demonstrate that this burrowing style did not produce typical Phanerozoic-style ichnofabrics. Three hundred meters of ...

A class of reptiles known as sand swimmers adapts to hot environments by submerging beneath desert sands during the day and so provide a unique probe into the dynamics of intruders in granular beds. To understand the mechanism for swimming in an otherwise solid bed, we study a simple model of periodic contraction and extension of large intruders in a granular bed. Using an event-driven simulati...

Series of laboratory tests were carried out to study the extent of scour caused by a three-dimensional wall jets exiting from a square cross-section nozzle and into a non-cohesive sand beds. Previous observations have indicated that the effect of the tail water depth was significant for densimetric Froude number greater than ten. However, the present results indicate that the cut off value coul...

The strength of the contacts between small glass spheres and the surface of a quartz crystal resonator has been probed based on the increase of resonance frequency induced upon sphere contact. The acoustic interaction between the sphere and the plate is modeled as a low-frequency coupled resonance; the dependence of the resonant parameters on overtone order lends support to this model. After ex...