The Ecology of Sandy Shores, Third Edition, provides both a holistic and conceptual introduction for beginners, while also presenting an in-depth and cutting-edge analysis for researchers interested in sandy shores. This new edition focuses on resource use, and has also been updated to include recent findings, enhanced illustrations, and additional coverage on beach fisheries and global/climate change. In addition, this release presents insights on food webs, greater coverage on global biodiversity patterns in sandy beaches, and new insights on population patterns, behavior and threats.
Research on beaches is difficult because of the dynamic nature of the environment. There is no other book covering the ecology of sandy beaches, despite the extent and economic importance of these systems. The Ecology of Sandy Shores is designed to both provide the conceptual basis to introduce students to the basic principles of sandy shore ecology and to serve as a ready reference for doctoral students and researches working on these systems. It can also serve as a handbook for land and coastal managers.
1. Introduction
2. The Physical Environment
3. The Interstitial Environment
4. Beach and Surf-Zone Flora
5. Sandy Beach Invertebrates
6. Adaptations to Sandy Beach Life
7. Benthic Macrofauna Communities
8. Benthic Macrofauna Populations
9. Interstitial Ecology
10. Surf-Zone Zooplankton and Nekton
11. Other Marine and Terrestrial Vertebrates
12. Energetics and Nutrients Cycling
13. Coastal Dune Ecosystems and Dune/Beach Interactions
14. Fisheries
15. Human Impacts
16. Climate Change
17. Management and Conservation
Glossary
References
Appendices
Dr Anton McLachlan has had a long and established career in beach ecology. He has worked around the world and has headed up multiple departments and research institutions including: the Director for the Institute for Coastal Research, Chair of the Dept. of Zoology and has held a number of Dean positions at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. He has over 90 publications to date.
Dr Omar Defeo has been active in the field of marine sciences since receiving his PhD in 1993. His fields of interest are human impact in coastal marine communities and populations, stock assessment and management, population dynamics of exploited marine stocks and sandy beach ecology. He has won many awards for his research and consultancy work, including He won the 2010 Elsevier Scopus Prize for Uruguay. He has published over 130 works to date.
Before his passing in 2005, Dr Alec Brown, who co-authored the first and second edition, had a long, and distinguished, career both researching and teaching about sandy beach ecology. Before his death, he published his 200th work. He cited the Ecology of Sandy Shores, for which he was the primary author, as one of the 2 works he was most proud of in his career. His work is still often referenced in the 10 years since his passing, and in fact in 2014 alone he was cited 107 times.