Author: Thomas Schlacher
Main concepts and themes covered:
- Multiple ecosystem services provided by estuaries
- Estuaries at the centres of human settlements, civilisations and the arts (many great cities of the world are on estuaries);
- Estuaries support cities and function as pollution dispersal, shipping routes, aquaculture sites, and recreation;
- Estuarine habitats: advantages and challenges for biota;
- Variable salt concentrations in estuaries;
- Salt as a powerful preservative: sensitivity of proteins, osmotic pressure, etc.;
- Strategies by organisms to deal with salt;
- Physiological differences between freshwater and saltwater fish;
- Sediments in estuaries: muds rule!
- Turbidity in estuaries vs settling velocity of fine particles;
- Origin of the estuarine fauna and classification by salinity tolerances;
- Biodiversity of the estuaries: usually lower than other marine habitats;
- The productivity of estuaries: matching some of the most productive systems on earth;
- Types of primary producers in estuaries
- Why nitrogen (N) is important: the chlorophyll-a connection
- Why phosphorous (P) matters: the ATP-ADP connection