In many countries, saltmarshes represent a diminishing resource that threatens both natural changes and human activities. Suggestions that the rate of sea-level rise may accelerate, combined with a possible increase in mid-latitude storms, have raised concerns that the rate of saltmarsh loss may also accelerate, and that existing sea defences may be placed under even greater pressure. Saltmarshes are of increasing interest to a wide range of environmental scientists, engineers, conservationists, and planners concerned with coastal zone management. They are especially keen to understand the...

The climate of the Earth has undergone many changes and for those times when geologic data are widespread and abundant the Mesozoic appears to have been one of the warmest intervals. This was a time during which the single continent Pangea disintegrated into continental units similar to those of today, a time when there were no significant polar ice caps and sea level was generally much higher than at the present time, and a time when dinosaurs apparently dominated terrestrial faunas and the flowering plants evolved. Understanding this alien world, ancestral to ours, is intrinsically...