An Introduction to Biological Oceanography is completely revised and updated based on the prior edition by Carol M. Lalli and Timothy Parsons. This revision aims to provide scientific understanding of how biological processes in the ocean work and how they are affected by physical, chemical and geological processes. This understanding is foundational for humans to assess our impact on the oceans, how to best implement conservation and management practices and ultimately, ensure sustainability of the many ways humans depend on the ocean. A rich tapestry of images supports the text, including data figures, info-graphics and artistic renditions. Since the book was last published, major new discoveries, including a new domain of life and global human impacts that change the oceans and biosphere have required a revision and amendment of the prior edition. However, many themes in this book remain timeless, such as the interactions of light with water and the importance and beauty of species diversity. A major theme is to develop intuition and predictive skills to relate environmental conditions with biological processes and structures, such as production and food webs across seasons or latitudes. This volume is designed so that it can be read on its own. The science of oceanography as a whole is multidisciplinary, and early chapters include fundamental principles in physics, chemistry and geology to highlight how underlying mechanisms constrain biological processes in the ocean. For the same reason, there is also some basic biology, particularly ecology covered.
1. The Ocean makes Earth Habitable Water
2. The abiotic environment
3. Marine environments and their drivers
4. Marine Biodiversity and Biogeography
5. Primary production
6. Secondary production and trophic transfer
7. The biogeochemical footprint of ocean biology
8. What about me? Ocean Biology and the human species
9. Ocean biology and climate change
10. Challenges ahead
Appendices: Units, Conversions, Maps Problems with answersA day on a research ship
As a seagoing oceanographer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography whose research focuses on marine planktonic food web structure and function. She combines in-situ work in the temperate and polar ocean of primary production and phytoplankton mortality, laboratory measurements of plankton behavior and physiology, and theoretical modeling work to establish linkages between microscopic events and macroscopic phenomena. Previously, Dr. Menden-Deuer was a research fellow at Princeton University with Simon Levin and a lecturer at Western Washington University. She received her PhD in 2004 and MSc in 1998, both in oceanography at the University of Washington with Daniel Grünbaum and Evelyn Lessard, respectively. She received her first degree in 1996 from the University of Bonn, Germany, having worked with Victor Smetacek at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Sciences, and spent a year at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She has also been active in enhancing diversity and science communication in oceanography and serves on the editorial boards of oceanographic publications and the Board of Directors of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).
