Ocean Ecology: Marine Life in the Age of Humans

By: J. Emmett Duffy

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Synopsis: A comprehensive introduction to ocean ecology and a new way of thinking about ocean life Marine ecology is more interdisciplinary, broader in scope, and more intimately linked to human activities than ever before. Ocean Ecology provides advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners with an integrated approach to marine ecology that reflects these new scientific realities, and prepares students for the challenges of studying and managing the ocean as a complex adaptive system. This authoritative and accessible textbook advances a framework based on interactions among four major features of marine ecosystems―geomorphology, the abiotic environment, biodiversity, and biogeochemistry―and shows how life is a driver of environmental conditions and dynamics. Ocean Ecology explains the ecological processes that link organismal to ecosystem scales and that shape the major types of ocean ecosystems, historically and in today's Anthropocene world.