Following the exciting exploration of hot vent and cold seep ecosystems, the rediscovery of cold-water coral ecosystems with high-technology instrumentation is currently another hot topic in multidisciplinary marine research. Conventionally, coral reefs are regarded as restricted to warm and well-illuminated tropical seas, not associated with cold and dark waters of higher latitudes. However, ongoing scientific missions have shed light on the global significance of this overlooked ecosystem. Cold-water coral ecosystems are involved in the formation of large seabed structures such as reefs and giant carbonate mounds, and they represent unexploited paleo-environmental archives of earth history. Like their tropical cousins, cold-water coral ecosystems harbour rich species diversity. Despite the great water depths, commercial interests overlap more and more with the coral occurrences. Human activities already impinge directly on cold-water coral reefs causing severe damage to this vulnerable ecosystem. In this volume, the current key institutions involved in cold-water coral research have contributed 62 state-of-the-art articles from geology and oceanography to biology and conservation.
評分
評分
評分
評分
本站所有內容均為互聯網搜索引擎提供的公開搜索信息,本站不存儲任何數據與內容,任何內容與數據均與本站無關,如有需要請聯繫相關搜索引擎包括但不限於百度,google,bing,sogou 等
© 2025 book.quotespace.org All Rights Reserved. 小美書屋 版权所有