Ptolemy's Almagest shares with Euclid's Elements the glory of being the scientific text longest in use. From its conception in the second century up to the late Renaissance, this work determined astronomy as a science. During this time the Almagest was not only a work on astronomy; the subject was defined as what is described in the Almagest. The cautious emancipation of the late middle ages and the revolutionary creation of the new science in the 16th century are not conceivable without reference to the Almagest. This text lifted European astronomy to the high standard of knowledge on which...

When I was asked to organize this symposium on marine producti vity, it made me reflect on what aspects of this subject would be stimulating to a heterogeneous group of laboratory-oriented physiolo gists and biochemists. In recent years there have been several books which discusses the methodology commonly used in primary production studies and described the magnitude of photosynthetic CO reduction 2 in various areas of the world's oceans. I therefore decided to dis pense with these conventional aspects of primary production and invite researchers to speak on a variety of problems relating...

stable isotope ratios act as naturally-occurring tracers for organic matter, making possible, under certain conditions, the quantification of coastal-offshore exchanges. In general, organic matter has isotope ratios characteristic of its origin (e. g. plants with different modes of photosynthesis and different growth conditions, anthropogenic compounds). These ratios are maintained as the organic matter moves through the biosphere and geosphere. A mixture of organic matter from two sources has isotope ratios intermediate between those of the two sources, in proportion to the fraction of...

Numerical simulations are in world wide use for the investigation of hydro- and thermodynamic processes in natural waters. In spite of the fact that great achievements have been brought about in this field, numerous questions still remain unanswered, with respect to fundamental formulations as well as to methods of solu tion. One of the principal objectives of research in our days is the verification of numerical models. The Symposium on "Mathematical Modelling in Estuarine PhysiCS" was held at Hamburg, Aug. 24 - 26, 1978, with the objective of for mulating the present standing of research...

Federal programs applicable to the oceans and coastal zone have evolved incrementally in response to perceived needs to expedite emerging mari time development while conserving valuable marine resources. As a re sult, the current federal marine effort is divided among a plethora of programs administered by a number of agencies within different Depart ments. The programs themselves are conducted under the authority of multiple statutes with varying reaches and objectives: as a result they often overlap and conflict. There is no assurance, moreover, that the coverage of federal programs is...

This book has its genesis in materials collected in the Hestern Central Atlantic region in preparation for a regional seminar on the Changing Law of the Sea and its Implications for Fisheries in the Hestern Atlantic. The Seminar, which was organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and funded by the Norwegian government, was held in Havana, Cuba, 1980. Most of the materials were gathered by the authors as a result of direct contact with the fisheries authorities of the region, and supplemented where possible by information obtained from public sources for the remaining...

The present lecture notes cover a first course in th most common types of stratified flows encountered in Environ mental Hydraulics. Most of the flows are buoyancy flows, i.e. currents in which gravity acts on small density differences. Part I presents the basic concepts of stagnant, densit- stratified water, and of flowing non-miscible stratified fluids. The similarity to the (presumed) well-known open channel flow, subject to a reduced gravity, is illustrated. Part II treats the miscible density stratified flows. In outlining the governing equations, the strong coupling between the...

The last one or two decades have witnessed an increased interest in to pographic Rossby waves, both from a theoretical computational as well as an observational point of view. However, even though long periodic pro cesses were observed in lakes and ocean basins with considerable detail, it appears that interpretation in terms of physical models is not suffi ciently conclusive. The reasons for this lack in understanding may be sought both, in the insufficient spatial resolution or the brevity of the time series of the available data and the inadequacy of the theoretical understanding of long...

This book reports on the findings of, and swnmarizes the conclusions from, the Port Hacking Estuary Project, a model-guided, multidisciplinary study of an estuarine ecosystem. The Project began in 1973, at a time when it was thought that environmental problems could be solved readily by assembling a multidisciplinary team of research scientists and having them co-ordinate their research around the construction of an ecosystem model. But a decade has passed and time has not been easy on this approach. The anticipated predictive dynamic models have not been produced and bitter argument has...

A wealth of information on osmotic and ionic reaulation in Estuarine and Marine Animals has been accumulated over the past decades. Beyond early studies of whole-animal responses to changes in envi- ronmental salinities, efforts have been made later on to identify, to localize and to characterize the organs and structures responsible for the control of the characteristics of the cell's environmental fluid. When considering the problem of cell volume control in animals facing media of fluctuating salinities, we are indeed dealing with two different categories of mechanisms. A first one is...