Open Journal of Ecology

Volume 11, Issue 3 (March 2021)

ISSN Print: 2162-1985   ISSN Online: 2162-1993

Google-based Impact Factor: 1.38  Citations  

Drivers of Change in Estuarine and Coastal Marine Environments: An Overview

HTML  XML Download Download as PDF (Size: 326KB)  PP. 224-239  
DOI: 10.4236/oje.2021.113017    1,039 Downloads   3,525 Views  Citations
Author(s)

ABSTRACT

Anthropogenic climate and non-climate drivers of change are causing significant impacts on estuarine and coastal marine environments. Climate change poses a particular threat to the structure and function of biotic communities in these environments because it acts on the most extensive temporal and spatial scales relative to other anthropogenic drivers of change. The interaction of multiple environmental drivers exacerbates degradation of ecosystem condition. Estuaries are most susceptible to climate-change mediated biotic shifts and direct anthropogenic impacts due to burgeoning human population growth and development in coastal watersheds. Multiple anthropogenic drivers of change, which often interact synergistically, alter physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Ecological responses may be increasingly nonlinear, with cumulative effects manifested by marked changes in organism abundance, distribution, diversity, and productivity. Detrimental biotic effects in impacted coastal environments cascade up from individual organisms to population and community levels, culminating in ecosystem-level changes including reduced services. Multiple drivers of change and their impacts are increasing in estuarine and coastal marine environments with greater anthropogenic forcing in the coastal zone and global effects of climate change, creating greater challenges for environmental management and conservation programs.

Share and Cite:

Kennish, M. (2021) Drivers of Change in Estuarine and Coastal Marine Environments: An Overview. Open Journal of Ecology, 11, 224-239. doi: 10.4236/oje.2021.113017.

Cited by

[1] The influence of environmental context on community composition in artificial rockpools associated with seawalls
Marine Environmental …, 2024
[2] Anthropogenic drivers of estuarine change
Climate change and estuaries, 2023
[3] Extension of the Practical Salinity Scale to Estimate Major Ion Concentrations: Application to the San Francisco Estuary
Estuaries and Coasts, 2023
[4] Phytoplankton community as monitoring tool in the terminal stretch of a micro-tidal estuary facing the Tyrrhenian Sea
Advances in …, 2023
[5] Threads Outweigh Opportunities for the Shrimp Fishery in the Colombian Pacific Ocean under climate change scenarios
Vargas, 2023
[6] Introduction to Climate Change and Estuaries
Climate Change and …, 2023
[7] Estuaries: Origin, Historical Development, and Classifications
Climate Change and Estuaries, 2023
[8] Systematic mapping of phytoplankton literature about global climate change: revealing temporal trends in research
Hydrobiologia, 2023
[9] Scale-dependent influence of multiple environmental drivers on estuarine macrobenthic crustaceans
Gordillo, AM Lohrer, E Douglas… - Frontiers in Marine …, 2023
[10] Evaluating ecosystem-based management alternatives for the Puget Sound, USA social-ecological system using qualitative watershed models
Frontiers in Marine Science, 2022
[11] Challenges in Estuarine and Coastal Science
2022
[12] Wildfires cause rapid changes to estuarine benthic habitat
Pinto… - Environmental …, 2022
[13] Management strategies to mitigate anthropogenic impacts in estuarine and coastal marine environments: a review
Open Journal of Ecology, 2022
[14] Combined effects of salinity and trematode infections on the filtration capacity, growth and condition of mussels
Marine Ecology …, 2022
[15] Long-term multiscale analysis of temporal variability in the fish community in Terminos Lagoon
Ríos, A Sosa-López, YE Torres-Rojas… - Estuarine, Coastal and …, 2022
[16] Climate Change and Invasive Species
[17] Linking land to sea restoration to optimise management of coastal ecosystems

Copyright © 2025 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.