Oceans

ISBN-13: 9780765682291 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 168 str.

James Fargo Balliett

Opis

Covering 71 percent of the planet, these saline bodies of water provided the unique conditions necessary for the building blocks of life to form billions of years ago. This book explains how our oceans continue to support and influence life in important ways: by providing the largest global source of protein in the form of fish populations, by creating and influencing weather systems, and by absorbing waste streams such as airborne carbon. It is shown how oceans have an almost magnetic draw-almost half of the world's population lives within a few hours of an ocean. Although oceans are vast in size, exceeding 328 million cubic miles (1.37 billion cubic kilometers), they have been influenced by and have influenced humans in numerous ways. The book includes three detailed case studies. The first focuses on the most remote locations along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where new ocean floor is being formed twenty-thousand feet underwater. The second considers the Maldives, a string of islands in the Indian Ocean, where increasing sea levels may force residents to abandon some communities by 2020. The third describes the North Sea at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, where fishing stocks have been dangerously depleted as a result of multiple nations' unrelenting removal of the smallest and largest species.

Spis treści

Part I Introduction to Oceans; Chapter 1 Oceans Around Us; Chapter 2 Humans and Oceans; Chapter 3 Ocean Locations; Part II Oceans of the World Case Studies; Chapter 4 Gulf of Alaska Pacific Ocean; Chapter 5 Mid-Atlantic Ridge Atlantic Ocean; Chapter 6 Maldive Islands Indian Ocean; Chapter 7 Antarctic Peninsula Southern Ocean; Chapter 8 North Sea Atlantic Ocean; Chapter 9 Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Pacific Ocean; Chapter 10 Sargasso Sea Atlantic Ocean; Part III Oceans Conclusion; Chapter 11 State of the Oceans; Chapter 12 Future of the Oceans;