UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Sundarbans is the single largest deltaic mangrove forest in the world, formed at estuarine phase of the Ganges - Brahmaputra river system. Primary productivity of marine and coastal phytoplankton contributes to 15% of global oceanic production. But unfortunately estuarine dynamics of tropical and subtropical estuaries have not yet received proper attention in spite of t...

The availability of data sets for time periods of more than a year is scarce for tropical environments. Advances in hardware and software speed-up the re-analysis of old data sets and facilitates the description of population oscillations. Using recent taxonomic literature and software we have updated and re-analized the information on crustacean diversity and population fluctuations from a set...

This paper investigates the performance of MERIS reduced resolution data to monitor water quality parameters in the Berau estuary waters, Indonesia. Total Suspended Matter (TSM) and Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration were derived from MERIS data using three different algorithms for coastal waters: standard global processor (MERIS L2), C2R and FUB. The outcomes were compared to in situ measurem...

Hydrostatic balances between fresh and saline groundwater and saline surface water control the physical and chemical framework of subterranean estuaries, but they are responsive to high frequency (waves and tides), low frequency (seasonal recharge patterns), and episodic (storm) events. In this study, we document a salinity and pressure perturbation to the subterranean estuary in east-central F...

Eutrophication has often been one of the major problems encountered in estuaries and coastal waters. The oxic/anoxic status of an estuary can be effectively determined by measurement of the Sediment Oxygen Demand (SOD). The present study forms a pioneering attempt to evaluate the SOD of the Cochin Backwater System (CBS), a tropical eutrophic estuary in the south-west coast of India. The CBS exh...

Our understanding on the importance of viral lysis in the functioning of tropical estuarine ecosystem is limited. This study examines viral infection of prokaryotes and subsequent lysis of cells belonging to different morphotypes across a salinity gradient in monsoon driven estuarine ecosystem (Cochin estuary, India). High standing stock of viruses and prokaryotes accompanied by lytic infection...

Offshore catches of banana prawns, Penaeus merguiensis, are correlated with the extent of mangrove forests. However, recent evaluation has questioned whether the apparent relationship between juvenile penaeids and mangroves reflects specific utilisation of mangroves or just the use of shallow, organically rich, muddy habitats. We investigated this by focussing on juvenile P. merguiensis within ...