ENV 2A02 Coastal and Marine Ecology

For external readers, this unit forms part of University of East Anglia's degree programmes in Ecology and Environmental Sciences.

To effectively function as a professional ecologist it is essential to be able to make effective use of the scientific literature.  This course seeks to develop student's skills in finding their way around the literature and making the best use of the material they find. This is achieved by encouraging students to read extensively, and to discuss their reading with each other. The course does not attempt to give a general coverage of marine and coastal ecology, but selects particular sections of the field and studies them in some detail, with the specific aim of exposing students to the relevant primary literature.  Recurring themes include:

• the extent to which it is possible (or not possible) to make generalisations which apply to a range of marine environments.
• How do we go about understanding the functioning of marine systems?  What are the limitations of non-experimental approaches, and what options are available to answer ecological and evolutionary questions if experiments are not possible?

In addition to this I try and let students see how science works in practice - the ways in which scientists collect pieces of a puzzle bit by bit; make mistakes and argue with each other - a rather different picture from the nice tidy world of "just so stories" which is sometimes portrayed in textbooks.

Introductory handout covering reading lists etc. and Word document containing main list of references

Alastair Grant

Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
UK

Powerpoint slides of lectures - note that copyright reasons mean that some images cannot be included in these files

Introductory lecture

Rocky Shore Lecture

Competition and Predation on hard substrates

Ecology of Soft Sediments

Handout on interactions on hard substrates (hardcopy distributed 1st February)

Competition and Predation in soft sediments (partial lecture)

Pollution lectures (sections only of 1 and 3)

Phytoplankton lecture (part only)

Eutrophication lecture (part only)

Reproduction of marine organisms

Reproduction of marine organisms part 2

Supply side ecology - as a Word document that is a little rough round the edges

Links to some web pages that give useful links to web based material on marine biology:

• A site produced by an EU funded project called Biomar that includes pictures of a wide range of European marine species and habitats.

• A number of marine journals are available electronically but not in the UEA library. See http://www.lib.uea.ac.uk/libinfo/database/erhome2.htm for details of the main journal providers and http://webpac.lib.uea.ac.uk/ueaer.html for the catalogue of electronic resources, which contains hyperlinks to online journals. For most (but not all) journal articles that are available electronically, you will see a button marked "view full text" when you display the individual record for the article. If there is no full text button displayed, try clicking on the little button that says "S F X". This will successfully lead you to most electronic journals that are available. Some of the most useful electronic journals are Marine Environmental Research and Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, available via ScienceDirect. Science of the Total Environment, Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management, Journal of Marine Systems and Environmental Pollution may be useful and Marine Pollution Bulletin is available here too, although we have paper copies in the library. To access Elsevier journals, go to the Science Direct home page and click on the "group wide login" button [access Science direct via the "personal login" button, but need to register a username and password with the site - a personal Athens password will not work]. It is also possible to search for articles by particular authors or that contain particular words by doing searches directly on the ScienceDirect, EBSCO or JSTOR sites. Other relevant electronic titles are:

Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems

Marine Ecology

Older issues of Ecology, Ecological Monographs, Ecological Applications, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Journal of Ecology and Journal of Animal Ecology are available at http://www.jstor.ac.uk.

and you may find this site at Nottingham University useful, although we do not have access to all the journals indexed there. Another index site is http://www.libra.titech.ac.jp/online.html, although chunks of this are in japanese.

In addition, I have put a large number of articles into the short loan collection (all of the items preceded by a * on the main reading list).

• Web resources on the EU Water Framework directive:
  The English text of the directive,
  Some commentary from WWF and links to other web resources
  Some guidance on its implementation from SEPA,
  A general information leaflet produced by the Scottish Executive
• A collection of resources being put together by SUNY Stony Brook: http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/ - this includes some lists of references which will supplement the reading lists which I have already distributed.
• Some links on harmful algal blooms maintained by The International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae (ISSHA) http://www.cbr.nrc.ca/issha/New_ISSHA/Links_Index.htm
• Marine Biology Web Pages at: http://www.iag.net/~seank/marbio.html,
• A page of links maintained by the UK Marine Biological Association: http://www.mba.ac.uk/MBA%20Information/others.htm
• A report by the Australian Museum on the conservation of marine invertebrates: http://www.austmus.gov.au/display.cfm?id=945 (lots of useful references)
• Various other compilations of links:

http://www.il-st-acad-sci.org/sealinks.html

• Some pages on deep sea biology, including some pictures of organisms: http://www.bmi.net/yancey/
• Some pages and links about planktonic animals and plants, including a number of images: http://www.euronet.nl/users/janpar/virtual/ocean.html
• The Quality Status Report on the North Sea and the North East Atlantic, produced by OSPAR (Oslo and Paris Commissions) in 2000: http://www.ospar.org/eng/html/qsr2000/QSR2000welcome3.htm. This also contains some useful background information on the environment and the ecology of these parts of the ocean.
• An archive of satellite images of ocean colour, indicating phytoplankton standing stock http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS/IMAGES/GALLERY.html
• A European Environment Agency report on eutrophication http://reports.eea.eu.int/ENVIASSRP04/en (see pages 81-93 for marine bits).
• Some BBC news items about the Sea Empress oil spill http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1171000/1171586.stm
• Some information on nudibranch molluscs (sea slugs) and links to other marine pages:   http://www.pictonb.freeserve.co.uk/
• Report on impact of introduced marine species in Norwegian waters
• A compilation of water quality critera for freshwater:  http://www.pwc.bc.doe.ca/ec/frap/Eais/ 
• A document on marketability of sea urchin gonads which caught my interest

If you come across anything else which is of particular interest, please email me with details .

Alastair Grant, 23rd January 2003