Download or read book The Use of Environmental DNA in Evaluating Conservation Efforts Within Southern California s Marine Waters written by Tanner Anthony Waters and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental DNA metabarcoding (eDNA) is an evolving methodology of biodiversity monitoring. By leveraging shed and excreted DNA from organisms in a marine environment, researchers can perform DNA amplification and sequencing to identify what species were present at a site without the need for visual identification. This thesis uses eDNA to evaluate conservation efforts in Southern California as well as further establish and refine eDNA as a survey tool. In Chapter 1, I evaluate seagrass beds in three distinct geographic settings in Southern California. We demonstrate that nearly half of community composition is associated with whether seagrass was found off the mainland, off an island, or in an embayment. In addition, when compared to traditional monitoring, eDNA was able to identify roughly ~50% to 400% greater number of fish species at each site. In Chapter 2, I create a novel eDNA droplet digital PCR assay for the detection of the invasive species Caulerpa prolifera that was found in Newport Bay in 2021 and found it to have the lowest eDNA steady state of any previously tested species. We demonstrate the critical importance of benchmarking eDNA assays before their use by managers and highlight some limitations for using eDNA in species detection. In Chapter 3, we perform two years of monthly sampling of MPAs using community scientists and UCLA researchers. We find that MPAs are distinct from nonMPAs in multivariate space for both fish and metazoan communities and that metazoan communities in MPAs are more diverse and stable compared to nonMPAs. We also show the scalability that eDNA has in biodiversity monitoring through the incorporation of volunteers into field sampling. Together, these chapters better our understanding of marine conservation in Southern California and further demonstrate the utility and limitations of eDNA metabarcoding for monitoring marine biodiversity.
Download or read book Sea Otter Conservation written by Shawn Larson and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sea otters are good indicators of ocean health. In addition, they are a keystone species, offering a stabilizing effect on ecosystem, controlling sea urchin populations that would otherwise inflict damage to kelp forest ecosystems. The kelp forest ecosystem is crucial for marine organisms and contains coastal erosion. With the concerns about the imperiled status of sea otter populations in California, Aleutian Archipelago and coastal areas of Russia and Japan, the last several years have shown growth of interest culturally and politically in the status and preservation of sea otter populations. Sea Otter Conservation brings together the vast knowledge of well-respected leaders in the field, offering insight into the more than 100 years of conservation and research that have resulted in recovery from near extinction. This publication assesses the issues influencing prospects for continued conservation and recovery of the sea otter populations and provides insight into how to handle future global changes. - Covers scientific, cultural, economic and political components of sea otter conservation - Provides guidance on how to manage threats to the sea otter populations in the face of future global changes - Highlights the effects that interactions of coastal animals have with the marine ecosystem
Download or read book Environmental DNA written by Pierre Taberlet and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental DNA (eDNA) refers to DNA that can be extracted from environmental samples (such as soil, water, feces, or air) without the prior isolation of any target organism. The analysis of environmental DNA has the potential of providing high-throughput information on taxa and functional genes in a given environment, and is easily amenable to the study of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. It can provide an understanding of past or present biological communities as well as their trophic relationships, and can thus offer useful insights into ecosystem functioning. There is now a rapidly-growing interest amongst biologists in applying analysis of environmental DNA to their own research. However, good practices and protocols dealing with environmental DNA are currently widely dispersed across numerous papers, with many of them presenting only preliminary results and using a diversity of methods. In this context, the principal objective of this practical handbook is to provide biologists (both students and researchers) with the scientific background necessary to assist with the understanding and implementation of best practices and analyses based on environmental DNA.
Download or read book Southern California Coastal Water Research Project Annual Report written by Southern California Coastal Water Research Project and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecosystems of California written by Harold Mooney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 1008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for CaliforniaÕs remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem typeÑits distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of CaliforniaÕs ecological patterns and the history of the stateÕs various ecosystems, outlining how the challenges of climate change and invasive species and opportunities for regulation and stewardship could potentially affect the stateÕs ecosystems. The text explicitly incorporates both human impacts and conservation and restoration efforts and shows how ecosystems support human well-being. Edited by two esteemed ecosystem ecologists and with overviews by leading experts on each ecosystem, this definitive work will be indispensable for natural resource management and conservation professionals as well as for undergraduate or graduate students of CaliforniaÕs environment and curious naturalists.
Download or read book Marine Animal Forests written by Sergio Rossi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last decades there has been an increasing evidence of drastic changes in marine ecosystems due to human-induced impacts, especially on benthic ecosystems. The so called “animal forests” are currently showing a dramatic loss of biomass and biodiversity all over the world. These communities are dominated by sessile suspension feeder organisms (such as sponges, corals, gorgonians, bivalves, etc.) that generate three-dimensional structures, similar to the trees in the terrestrial forest. The animal forest provide several ecosystem services such as food, protection and nursery to the associated fauna, playing an important role in the local hydrodynamic and biogeochemical cycles near the sea floor and acting also as carbon sinks. The present book focus its attention on these three dimensional animal structures including, for the first time, all the different types of animal forests of the world in a single volume.
Download or read book Marine Algae of California written by Isabella A. Abbott and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-01 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a complete, systematic treatment of the marine algae (seaweeds) flora of California. The 726 species treated are each illustrated by a detailed line drawing made from an actual specimen. The two authors have drawn upon their phycological research to offer a definitive representation of benthic marine algae from the Californian coast. The floristic treatment in this first paperback edition should aid accurate and speedy identification of flora due to the improved keys, descriptions, illustrations and more detailed coverage of taxa, and should enhance the reader's knowledge of Californian macro-algae.
Download or read book Marine Protected Areas written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the ocean-and the resources within-seem limitless, there is clear evidence that human impacts such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution disrupt marine ecosystems and threaten the long-term productivity of the seas. Declining yields in many fisheries and decay of treasured marine habitats, such as coral reefs, has heightened interest in establishing a comprehensive system of marine protected areas (MPAs)-areas designated for special protection to enhance the management of marine resources. Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate how MPAs can be employed in the United States and internationally as tools to support specific conservation needs of marine and coastal waters. Marine Protected Areas compares conventional management of marine resources with proposals to augment these management strategies with a system of protected areas. The volume argues that implementation of MPAs should be incremental and adaptive, through the design of areas not only to conserve resources, but also to help us learn how to manage marine species more effectively.
Download or read book Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Science in Assessing the Health Status of Marine Ecosystems 2nd Edition written by Angel Borja and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2017-03-22 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marine management requires approaches which bring together the best research from the natural and social sciences. It requires stakeholders to be well-informed by science and to work across administrative and geographical boundaries, a feature especially important in the inter-connected marine environment. Marine management must ensure that the natural structure and functioning of ecosystems is maintained to provide ecosystem services. Once those marine ecosystem services have been created, they deliver societal goods as long as society inputs its skills, time, money and energy to gather those benefits. However, if societal goods and benefits are to be limitless, society requires appropriate administrative, legal and management mechanisms to ensure that the use of such benefits do not impact on environmental quality, but instead support its sustainable use.
Download or read book Sustainability or Collapse written by Robert Costanza and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from a range of disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. Human history, as written traditionally, leaves out the important ecological and climate context of historical events. But the capability to integrate the history of human beings with the natural history of the Earth now exists, and we are finding that human-environmental systems are intimately linked in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. In Sustainability or Collapse?, researchers from a range of scholarly disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. The contributors focus on the human-environment interactions that have shaped historical forces since ancient times and discuss such key methodological issues as data quality. Topics highlighted include the political ecology of the Mayans; the effect of climate on the Roman Empire; the "revolutionary weather" of El Niño from 1788 to 1795; twentieth-century social, economic, and political forces in environmental change; scenarios for the future; and the accuracy of such past forecasts as The Limits to Growth.
Download or read book The Ecology of Marine Fishes written by Dr. Larry G. Allen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-02-15 with total page 1353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marine fishes have been intensively studied, and some of the fundamental ideas in the science of marine ecology have emerged from the body of knowledge derived from this diverse group of organisms. This unique, authoritative, and accessible reference, compiled by 35 luminary ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and ichthyologists, provides a synthesis and interpretation of the large, often daunting, body of information on the ecology of marine fishes. The focus is on the fauna of the eastern Pacific, especially the fishes of the California coast, a group among the most diverse and best studied of all marine ecosystems. A generously illustrated and comprehensive source of information, this volume will also be an important launching pad for future research and will shed new light on the study of marine fish ecology worldwide. The contributors touch on many fields in biology, including physiology, development, genetics, behavior, ecology, and evolution. The book includes sections on the history of research, both published and unpublished data, sections on collecting techniques, and references to important earlier studies.
Download or read book Elasmobranch Biodiversity Conservation and Management written by Sarah L. Fowler and published by IUCN. This book was released on 2002 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Darwin Elasmobranch Biodiversity Conservation and Management project in Sabah held a three-day international seminar that included a one-day workshop in order to highlight freshwater and coastal elasmobranch conservation issues in the region and worldwide, to disseminate the result of the project to other Malaysian states and countries, and to raise awareness of the importance of considering aspects of elasmobranch biodiversity in the context of nature conservation, commercial fisheries management, and for subsistence fishing communities. These proceedings contain numerous peer-reviewed papers originally presented at the seminar, which cover a wide range of topics, with particular reference to species from freshwater and estuarine habitats. The workshop served to develop recommendations concerning the future prospects of elasmobranch fisheries, biodiversity, conservation and management. This paper records those conclusions, which highlight the importance of elasmobranchs as top marine predators and keystone species, noting that permanent damage to shark and ray populations are likely to have serious and unexpected negative consequences for commercial and subsistence yields of other important fish stocks.
Download or read book The Benefits of Marine Protected Areas written by Australian Government - Department of the Environment and Heritage - Environment Australia and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecological Genomics written by Christian R. Landry and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-25 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researchers in the field of ecological genomics aim to determine how a genome or a population of genomes interacts with its environment across ecological and evolutionary timescales. Ecological genomics is trans-disciplinary by nature. Ecologists have turned to genomics to be able to elucidate the mechanistic bases of the biodiversity their research tries to understand. Genomicists have turned to ecology in order to better explain the functional cellular and molecular variation they observed in their model organisms. We provide an advanced-level book that covers this recent research and proposes future development for this field. A synthesis of the field of ecological genomics emerges from this volume. Ecological Genomics covers a wide array of organisms (microbes, plants and animals) in order to be able to identify central concepts that motivate and derive from recent investigations in different branches of the tree of life. Ecological Genomics covers 3 fields of research that have most benefited from the recent technological and conceptual developments in the field of ecological genomics: the study of life-history evolution and its impact of genome architectures; the study of the genomic bases of phenotypic plasticity and the study of the genomic bases of adaptation and speciation.
Download or read book Bridging Divides written by Stephan Gollasch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-09-24 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maritime canals dissolve natural barriers to the dispersal of marine organisms, providing novel opportunities for natural dispersal, as well as for shipping-mediated transport. This book is the first to assess the impacts of the world’s three principal maritime canals – the Kiel, the Panama, the Suez – as invasion corridors for alien biota. These three canals differ in their hydrological regimes, the types of biotas they connect, and in their permeability to invasions.
Download or read book The Status of Natural Resources on the High seas written by Southampton Oceanography Centre and published by IUCN. This book was released on 2001 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book World Seas An Environmental Evaluation written by Charles Sheppard and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2018-09-07 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Seas: An Environmental Evaluation, Second Edition, Volume Three: Ecological Issues and Environmental Impacts covers global issues relating to our seas, including a biological description of the coast and continental shelf waters, the development and use of the coast, landfills and their effects, pollutant discharges over time, the effects of over-fishing, and the management methods and techniques used to ensure continued ecosystem functioning. The relative importance of water-borne and airborne routes differ in different parts of the world is explored, along with extensive coverage of major habitats and species groups, governmental, education and legal issues, fisheries effects, remote sensing, climate change and management. This book is an invaluable, worldwide reference source for students and researchers concerned with marine environmental science, fisheries, oceanography and engineering and coastal zone development. Provides scientific reviews of regional issues, empowering managers and policymakers to make progress in under-resourced countries and regions Covers environmental issues arising from the human use of both the sea and its watershed Presents informed commentary on major trends, problems and successes, and recommendations for the future
