Coasts and Estuaries - by Eric Wolanski & John W Day & Michael Elliott & Ramachandran Ramesh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Coasts and Estuaries: The Future provides valuable information on how we can protect and maintain natural ecological structures while also allowing estuaries to deliver services that produce societal goods and benefits. These issues are addressed through chapters detailing case studies from estuaries and coastal waters worldwide, presenting a full range of natural variability and human pressures. Following this, a series of chapters written by scientific leaders worldwide synthesizes the problems and offers solutions for specific issues graded within the framework of the socio-economic-environmental mosaic. These include fisheries, climate change, coastal megacities, evolving human-nature interactions, remediation measures, and integrated coastal management.

The problems faced by half of the world living near coasts are truly a worldwide challenge as well as an opportunity for scientists to study commonalities and differences and provide solutions. This book is centered around the proposed DAPSI(W)R(M) framework, where drivers of basic human needs requires activities that each produce pressures. The pressures are mechanisms of state change on the natural system and Impacts on societal welfare (including well-being). These problems then require responses, which are the solutions relating to governance, socio-economic and cultural measures (Scharin et al 2016).

Review Quotes

"Within each section the chapters deal with very different issues and have a different focus. For example, some authors address a specific system or issue, whereas others have taken a much broader approach, synthesizing information from a number of systems within a wider geographic region. Chapters vary in length, and therefore information contained within them varies greatly in detail. Some authors have included short, focused boxed essays, whereas others have not. For these reasons I believe that some chapters are of more value than others. Because the book mainly concentrates on soft sediment in resolution, with labelling that is difficult to read. There is also a randomness in the use of colour and puzzlingly, the size of maps and diagrams varies from full page to quite small. Bringing this 700+ page multi-author volume together will have been a mammoth task for the editors. Despite the quality of some of the images, maps, and diagrams, the book will be of value to those scientists and resource managers working on risk assessments and management of coastal systems. environments, I was surprised that there was very little information on the impact of armouring shorelines and erosion control. Whilst I found that useful tables and figures accompany the text of most chapters, the quality of the figures and illustrations is variable. Some diagrams are sharp and clear, whereas others are rather poor" --The Marine Biologist