Arrested development and increased incidence of sandprawn embryonic aberrations along an intertidal human recreation gradient.

Anthropogenic pressures are increasing in coastal ecosystems globally, yet identifying robust indicators of change and managing coastal resources can be complicated by phenotypic plasticity and differential life-history responses of key organisms. We illustrate this using biogeochemical and sandprawn (Kraussillichirus kraussi) response metrics along a human recreation gradient (trampling, sandprawn harvesting) in a South African lagoonal ecosystem. Benthic compaction, oxygen depletion and high porewater ammonia concentrations were associated with greatest recreation intensity.

Human Health and Ocean Pollution.

Background: Pollution - unwanted waste released to air, water, and land by human activity - is the largest environmental cause of disease in the world today. It is responsible for an estimated nine million premature deaths per year, enormous economic losses, erosion of human capital, and degradation of ecosystems. Ocean pollution is an important, but insufficiently recognized and inadequately controlled component of global pollution.

Stoichiometric multitrophic networks reveal significance of land-sea interaction to ecosystem function in a subtropical nutrient-poor bight, South Africa.

Nearshore marine ecosystems can benefit from their interaction with adjacent ecosystems, especially if they alleviate nutrient limitations in nutrient poor areas. This was the case in our oligo- to mesotrophic study area, the KwaZulu-Natal Bight on the South African subtropical east coast, which is bordered by the Agulhas current. We built stoichiometric, multitrophic ecosystem networks depicting biomass and material flows of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in three subsystems of the bight.

Spatial and temporal variability of carbon budgets of shallow South African subtropical estuaries.

Estuarine carbon fluxes constitute a significant component of coastal CO emissions and nutrients recycling, but high uncertainty is still present due to the heterogeneity of these areas. Although South Africa has nearly 300 estuaries, very little is known about their contribution to carbon emissions or sequestration. This study aims to provide a first estimation of the carbon emissions and nutrient fluxes of South African sub-tropical estuaries through a direct quantification of respiration, primary production and nutrient regeneration of benthic and planktonic communities.

Spatial variation in the ecological relationships among the components of Beijing's carbon metabolic system.

In this paper, we construct a spatially explicit model of carbon metabolism for the flows of carbon among the components of an urban area. We used the model to identify spatial heterogeneity in the ecological relationships within a carbon metabolic network. We combined land-use and cover type maps for Beijing from 1990 to 2010 with empirical coefficients and socioeconomic data to quantify the flows.