Microbial Carbon Sources on the Shelf and Slope of the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. (August 2005) Carlton David Rauschenberg, B.S., DePaul University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Luis A. Cifuentes Over the past five years, gas chromatography/combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) analyses of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) has been increasingly used to link organic matter (...

Seagrass bed ecosystems occupy the most important part of coastal shelf in the French West Indies. They also constitute nurseries for many invertebrates and fishes harvested by local fisheries. In Guadeloupe, coastal fish stocks are declining meanwhile several agroecosystems revealed to be heavily contaminated by pollutants (agricultural lands, rivers, mangroves, seagrass beds, and coral reefs)...

Benthic microorganisms are key players in the recycling of organic matter and recalcitrant compounds such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in coastal sediments. Despite their ecological importance, the response of microbial communities to chronic PAH pollution, one of the major threats to coastal ecosystems, has received very little attention. In one of the largest surveys performed so far o...

Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences from deep marine sediments identified a deeply branching clade, designated candidate division JS1. Primers for PCR amplification of partial 16S rRNA genes that target the JS1 division were developed and used to detect JS1 sequences in DNA extracted from various sedimentary environments, including, for the first time, coastal marine and brackish s...

The compositions and transfer processes affecting coastal sea sediments from the Seto Inland Sea and the Pacific Ocean are examined through the construction of comprehensive terrestrial and marine geochemical maps for western Japan. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggests that the elemental concentrations of marine sediments vary with particle size, and that this has a greater effect than...

Seagrasses are amongst the most valuable ecosystems on shallow subtidal soft bottoms worldwide (COSTANZA et al., 1997; TUYA et al., 2014). They are considered as ecological engineers (WRIGHT & JONES, 2006), providing food, shelters and nursery areas for a variety of fish and invertebrates (HEMMINGA & DUARTE, 2000; COMO et al., 2008; ESPINO et al., 2015). Moreover, seagrass beds stabilize sedime...

Within the tropical marine study site of Guánica Bay, Puerto Rico, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are subjected to coastal and oceanic currents coupled with marine microbial and geochemical processes. To evaluate these processes a hydrodynamic model was developed to simulate the transport of PCBs within nearshore and offshore marine areas of Guánica Bay. Material transport and circulation inf...

Offshore fish farming is predicted to increase in the near future driven by the lack of coastal space. In this review I discuss the environmental issues of offshore farming from experience in coastal farms. Even more so than in coastal farms, a rapid and wide dispersal of dissolved waste products is predicted for offshore farms. Despite wider dispersal of particulate waste products, fast sinkin...

AIMS To determine the persistence of the faecal indicator organism Escherichia coli in recreational coastal water and sediment using laboratory-based microcosms and validation with in situ measurements. METHODS AND RESULTS Intact sediment cores were taken from three distinct coastal sites. Overlying estuarine water was inoculated with known concentrations of E. coli and decay rates from both ...

A comparative survey was done of the formation of radiolabeled end-products during 35S0,2-reduction measurements in coastal sediments of Denmark. The distribution of reduced 35S in acid-volatile sulfides (AVS), pyrite, and elemental sulfur in the upper O-15 cm of sediment depended on the sulfur chemistry and on the overall sulfate reduction rates. In sediments with relatively low metabolic rate...