San Diego Bay in California is a shallow estuary surrounded by a large population centre. Geological forces and changes in sea levels from the last Ice Age combine to make the Bay and the adjacent highlands and mesas. Human activity has also influenced the Bay. Humans built several major cities and filled significant parts of the Bay. Making and Unmaking of San Diego Bay describes the natural history and evolution of the San Diego Bay Area over the last 50 million years through the present and into the future.
Key features:
- Summarizes a complex geological, geographical, and ecological history
- Reviews how the San Diego Bay has changed and will likely change in the future
- Examines the different roles of various drivers of Bay ecosystem function
- Includes the role of humans – both first people and modern populations – on the Bay
- Explores San Diego Bay as an example of general bay ecological and environmental issues
Chapter 1. California Then and Now
Chapter 2. Geological Forces that Built San Diego Bay
Chapter 3. Water
Chapter 4. Geomorphology of the San Diego Region
Chapter 5. Early Biology of the San Diego Region
Chapter 6. Humans Arrive
Chapter 7. San Diego Bay Today
Chapter 8. Biology of the San Diego Bay Region
Chapter 9. Restoring the Bay
Chapter 10. Future of the Bay
Gary C. Howard is a science editor and writer. He spent over 20 years at the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California San Francisco. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and at Harvard University. He has edited several books, including three books for CRC Press.
Matthew R. Kaser is a Senior Partner at Bell & Associates in San Francisco and has been a part-time lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences at California State University East Bay. He was on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics, UCSF, an NIH Fellow at Habor-UCLA Medical Center and held postdoctoral researcher positions at the University of California Irvine, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and at Oxford University.