Marine eukaryotic organisms are fundamental components of marine planktonic systems, and are significant fraction of the biomass and activity in marine system. Their diversity in South China Sea, however, has remained elusive, since the small cells lack morphologicalfeatures features for identification. We studied small eukaryotic organisms (planktonic protists) genetic diversity in South China...

Based on three ornithogenic sediment profiles and seabird subfossils therein from the Xisha Islands, South China Sea, the relative population size of seabirds over the past 1000 years was reconstructed using reflectance spectrum. Here we present an apparent increase and subsequent decline of seabirds on these islands in the South China Sea. Seabird populations peaked during the Little Ice Age (...

Investigation of baroclinic tides in the northern South China Sea

The relationship between the interannual variations of the East Asian summer monsoon and that of the tropical SST shows considerable variations. In this study, rainfall in the southeastern coastal area of China (SEC) during 1951–96 is used to composite the tropical SST, 850-hPa wind, and 500-hPa height. The results relative to the May–June rainfall, which represents most of the SEC summer monso...

As a way of turning sea into land for living space for humans, the actions of sea reclamation bring about significant benefits. Nevertheless, it is also an under-recognized threat to the environment and the marine ecosystem. Based on images in two periods, sea reclamation information of countries around the South China Sea was extracted from 1975 to 2010. The spatial state and driven forces of ...

The international maritime disputes in the South China Sea have now escalated following China’s construction of man-made islands and a new United States Naval presence that includes a guided missile destroyer. However, territorial claims between the nations surrounding these waters are not new. As both a major global shipping lane (it is considered one of the most trafficked sea lanes in the wo...

BACKGROUND Subseafloor sediments accumulate large amounts of organic and inorganic materials that contain a highly diverse microbial ecosystem. The aim of this study was to survey the bacterial community of subseafloor sediments from the South China Sea. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Pyrosequencing of over 265,000 amplicons of the V3 hypervariable region of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene was per...

We study the wind climate and its long-term variability in the North Sea and South China Sea, areas relevant for offshore wind energy development, using satellite-based wind data, because very few reliable long-term in-situ sea surface wind observations are available. The Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) ocean winds extrapolated from 10 m to 100 m using the Charnock relationship and the ...

In order to contribute to knowledge about structure of marine diazotrophic communities in the sediments of South China Sea, the molecular diversity of the nifH gene, which encodes the Fe protein of the nitrogenase complex, was assessed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification using PolF/R primers, followed by cloning and sequencing. Sequences of nifH genes were amplified from environmen...

The taxonomy of the mottled rabbitfish Siganus fuscescens species complex has long been challenging. In this study, we analyzed microsatellite genotypes, mitochondrial lineages, and morphometric data from 373 S. fuscescens individuals sampled from the northern Philippines and Hong Kong (South China Sea, Philippine Sea and Sulu Sea basins), to examine putative species boundaries in samples compr...