http://www.no-sea-and-earth-pollution.org/ALBATROSS-ARTICLES_files/pollution-of-the-marine-environment-derraik-2002.pdf

The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris: a review.

The conservation and sustainable use of marine resources is a highlighted goal on a growing number of national and international policy agendas. Unfortunately, efforts to assess progress, as well as to strategically plan and prioritize new marine conservation measures, have been hampered by the lack of a detailed, comprehensive biogeographic system to classify the oceans. Here we report on a new global system for coastal and shelf areas: the Marine Ecoregions of the World, or MEOW, a nested system of 12 realms, 62 provinces, and 232 ecoregions. This system provides considerably better spatial resolution than earlier global systems, yet it preserves many common elements and can be cross-referenced to many regional biogeographic classifications. The designation of terrestrial ecoregions has revolutionized priority setting and planning for terrestrial conservation; we anticipate similar benefits from the use of a coherent and credible marine system.

/pdf/marine-ecoregions-of-the-world-a-bioregionalization-of-3cjevubm8l.pdf

Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas

Many calcified structures produce periodic growth increments useful for age determination at the annual or daily scale. However, age determination is invariably accompanied by various sources of error, some of which can have a serious effect on age-structured calculations. This review highlights the best available methods for insuring ageing accuracy and quantifying ageing precision, whether in support of large-scale production ageing or a small-scale research project. Included in this review is a critical overview of methods used to initiate and pursue an accurate and controlled ageing program, including (but not limited to) validation of an ageing method. The distinction between validation of absolute age and increment periodicity is emphasized, as is the importance of determining the age of first increment formation. Based on an analysis of 372 papers reporting age validation since 1983, considerable progress has been made in age validation efforts in recent years. Nevertheless, several of the age validation methods which have been used routinely are of dubious value, particularly marginal increment analysis. The two major measures of precision, average percent error and coefficient of variation, are shown to be functionally equivalent, and a conversion factor relating the two is presented. Through use of quality control monitoring, ageing errors are readily detected and quantified; reference collections are the key to both quality control and reduction of costs. Although some level of random ageing error is unavoidable, such error can often be corrected after the fact using statistical (‘digital sharpening)’ methods.

Accuracy, precision and quality control in age determination, including a review of the use and abuse of age validation methods

A global strategy to conserve biodiversity must aim to protect representative examples of all of the world's ecosystems, as well as those areas that contain exceptional concentrations of species and endemics. Although lacking the richness of tropical forests, deserts, tropical lakes, and subpolar seas all contain distinct species, communities, and ecological phenomena. We analyzed global patterns of biodiversity to identify a set of the Earth's terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecoregions that harbor exceptional biodiversity and are representative of its ecosystems. We placed each of the Earth's ecoregions within a system of 30 biomes and biogeographic realms to facilitate a representation analysis. Biodiversity features were compared among ecoregions to assess their irreplaceability or distinctiveness. These features included species richness, endemic species, unusual higher taxa, unusual ecological or evolutionary phenomena, and the global rarity of habitats. This process yielded 238 ecoregions-the Global 200-comprised of 142 terrestrial, 53 freshwater, and 43 marine priority ecoregions. Effective conservation in this set of ecoregions would help conserve the most outstanding and representative habitats for biodiversity nn this planet.

/pdf/the-global-200-priority-ecoregions-for-global-conservation-4akjilpcdm.pdf

The Global 200: Priority ecoregions for global conservation

The Global 200: a representation approach to conserving the earth's most biologically valuable ecoregions.

Connectivity is an important concept in landscape ecology, but has several meanings. Here, I treat this term generically, including interactions among land- and seascape elements, transfers of nutrients among them, and interactions among closely related species comprising guilds. Complex relationships between the natural histories of estuary-dependent fishes are best understood in the context of the “coastal realm”, the heterogeneous and diverse portion of Earth where land, sea, and atmosphere interact with great intensity through exchanges of energy and materials. Especially for anadromous fishes, estuaries form especially important conduits between terrestrial watersheds and the coastal ocean. For this reason, these species may be termed “estuary-dependent”. However, for many species that use estuaries, dependency may be difficult to define. I illustrate coastal-realm connectivities for two groups of closely related estuarine species from different latitudes: (1) clupeids of the US east coast, and (2) salmonids of the Bering Sea. These groups inhabit coastal-ocean waters as adults and use estuaries and/or freshwaters for reproduction or as nursery areas. Both groups have evolved metapopulation structures, perhaps also contingent patterns of behavior, that indicate hierarchical interactions within metaestuarine or metafluvial systems. Their natural histories suggest an estuary-dependent adaptive complex involving opportunistic life histories and redundancies within species guilds, which offer resiliency for these guilds under conditions of ecological and/or environmental change. I conclude that: (1) estuarine connectivities are best illustrated for fishes that can be shown to be estuary dependent at some life-history stage; (2) resiliency for functionally important guilds may also offer resiliency to their ecosystems; and (3) further understanding connectivities among coastal fishes and their changing environments depends on the fusion of natural history with land–seascape ecology on multiple scales.

Connectivities of estuarine fishes to the coastal realm

Marine and coastal areas are classified in this paper according to attributes of the physical environment and by the faunal assemblages involved. Oceanic and coastal-margin realms are defined and mapped with the marginal seas and archipelagos named according to their connections to oceanic realms. There are seven types of ocean realms and thirteen types of coastal-margin realms. Latitudinal symmetry is present between hemispheres and from ocean basin to ocean basin. The defining characteristics for these realms are the seasonal variations in ocean surface currents and the companion seasonal variations in the main wind-currents of the atmosphere.Forty faunal provinces are indicated on the six maps of the oceanic and coastal realms. As sufficient database for their inclusion is not yet available, coastal marine and coastal terrestrial floristics and vegetation are not considered in this classification.While the boundaries between faunal provinces do not always match boundaries between ocean and coastal realms, the foundation is laid for a binominal designation system with the coastal or oceanic realm as ‘genus’ and the faunal province as the ‘epithet’—e.g. Western Subtropical—Cortezian. With this system, global intercomparisons become manageable. For example, the Western Subtropical-Cortezian can be directly contrasted with the Western Subtropical—Louisianian and the Western Subtropical—Southwestern Australian.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0376892900014211

Classification of Coastal and Marine Environments

This paper presents and evaluates two perspectives on changing climate–walrus–human relationships in the Beringian region, from the viewpoints of marine biology and ecology, and from that of indigenous hunters. Bridging these types of knowledge is vital in order to grasp the complexity of the processes involved and for advancing understanding of subarctic marine ecosystems that are currently experiencing rapid ecological and social change. We argue that despite substantial gaps and distinctions, information generated by scientists and indigenous hunters have many similarities. Differences in interpretation are primarily due to scaling and temporal rates of change of knowledge, which could be rectified through more active sharing of expertise and records, enhanced documentation of indigenous observations, more collaborative research, and increased insight from the social sciences.

Pacific walruses, indigenous hunters, and climate change: Bridging scientific and indigenous knowledge

Pacific walrus: Benthic bioturbator of Beringia

The whale problem : a status report

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