Comparative analysis of trophic networks was carried out to evaluate environmental management actions aimed at countering an environmental crisis in Orbetello Lagoon, Italy. Two mass-balance models of this shallow water coastal system were constructed, for 1995 and 1996. During this period, there was an observed change in the composition of the submerged vegetation that indicated a significant ...

The main scientific goal of COSTAS project is to bring useful knowledge to the understanding of the conditions, which favor the accumulation and transfer of organic and metallic contaminants at the primary trophic levels (autotrophes and hetetrophes), and then within the food web of small pelagic fish (anchovy and sardine) in the Gulf of Lion, Western Mediterranean.

There is increasing interest and concern over the impacts of mercury (Hg) inputs to marine ecosystems. One of the challenges in assessing these effects is that the cycling and trophic transfer of Hg are strongly linked to other contaminants and disturbances. In addition to Hg, a major problem facing coastal waters is the impacts of elevated nutrient, particularly nitrogen (N), inputs. Increases...

Community approaches to investigating ocean acidification (OA) effects suggest a high tolerance of microand mesozooplankton to carbonate chemistry changes expected to occur within this century. Plankton communities in the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea frequently experience pH variations partly exceeding projections for the near future both on a diurnal and seasonal basis. We conducted a large...

Rather than being evenly spread throughout the ocean, the distribution of fish and plankton biomass is generally quite patchy. In most parts of the ocean, horizontal and vertical gradients exist, such that biomass (and diversity) generally decrease as one moves further offshore or deeper in the water column. The general explanation underlying these trends is that primary and secondary productio...

The modeling of mid-trophic organisms of the pelagic ecosystem is a critical step in linking the coupled physical–biogeochemical models to population dynamics of large pelagic predators. Here, we provide an example of a modeling approach with definitions of several pelagic mid-trophic functional groups. This application includes six different groups characterized by their vertical behavior, i.e...

in this study, three stations of the north persian gulf were analyzed in order to determinethe effect of trophic levels on the concentration of harmful pahs in fish and sediment. in all cases,similar distributions were observed in which benzo(a)pyrene largely predominated andbenzo(b)fluoranthene and pyrene were the second major compounds in fish tissues. the predominantcomponents of pahs in sed...

Lake Annecy is the second largest natural lake in France, with intensive commercial and recreational fisheries. However, there is limited knowledge of its trophic interaction. A preliminary Ecopath model was fitted to study the trophic interaction in the lake using the available data on most of the ecosystem compartments. Fourteen functional groups were used in the present analysis. Most of the...

Biodiversity at multiple levels — genotypes within species, species within functional groups, habitats within a landscape — enhances productivity, resource use, and stability of seagrass ecosystems. Several themes emerge from a review of the mostly indirect evidence and the few experiments that explicitly manipulated diversity in seagrass systems. First, because many seagrass communities are do...

Over the period 1953-1979, a battery factory on the Hudson River in New York released approximately 53 tons of cadmium (Cd) and nickel hydride wastes into Foundry Cove. The most common aquatic benthic species, the oligochaete Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri, rapidly evolved resistance to Cd. The capacity for detoxification and internal storage of Cd resulted in a strong potential for trophic transfer ...