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The suffix -bacter is used in microbiology for many genera and is intended to mean "bacteria".
== Meaning ==
Bacter is a Neo-Latin (i.e. Modern Latin) term coined from bacterium, which in turn derives from the Greek βακτήριον, meaning small staff (diminutive of βακτηρία). Consequently, it formally means "rod".
It differs from the suffix -bacterium in grammatical gender, as the suffix -bacter is male, whereas the suffix -bacterium) is neuter; this was decided in Juridical (or Judicial) Opinion n° 3 of the Bacteriological Code.
Nevertheless, for historical reasons, two archaeal species finish in -bacter: Methanobrevibacter and Methanothermobacter.
== Usage ==
Juridical Opinion n° 2 in the Bacteriological Code discusses the declension of the word, given that authors differently assumed the genitive case of bacter to be bactris (3rd declension words of Latin origin ending in =ter), bacteri (2nd declension) or bacteris (3rd declension, used for words of Greek origin, such as astris). The Opinion opts for the latter: consequently, higher taxa are formed with the stem =bacter- and not =bactr-. In Juridical Opinion n° 3 it was established to be masculine.
For example, Campylobacter is a genus of Campylobacterales.
These rules were established so that the specific epithets were paired with the correct gender as imposed by the Bacteriological Code and the correct higher taxon names were formed.
An interesting effect of this is that the genus Fibrobacter gives its name both to the phylum Fibrobacteres, which obeys Latin grammar, and to the class Fibrobacteria, which follows the recommendation of using the suffix -ia
== Genera ==
== See also ==
-monas
Bacteriological Code
bacterial taxonomy has a discussion of endings of Bacterial phyla
== References ==

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The suffix -monas is used in microbiology for many genera and is intended to mean "unicellular organism".
== Meaning ==
The suffix -monas found in many genera in microbiology is similar in usage to -bacter, -bacillus, -coccus or -spirillum. The genera with the suffix are not a monophyletic group and the suffix is chosen over -bacter, often simply out of stylistic preferences to match with Greek words.
The first genus to be given the suffix -monas was Pseudomonas, a genus of gammaproteobacteria. The generic epithet Pseudomonas was coined by Walter Migula in 1894, who did not give an etymology.
Since the 7th edition of Bergey's manual (=top authority in bacterial nomenclature), other authors have given the etymology to be: Greek pseudēs (ψευδής, false) and monas (μονάς, single unit or monad), which can mean "false unit". However, "false unit" conceptually does not make much sense, namely, it does not mean "an organism which may falsely appear as a single unit but it is not" as it is not found in multicellular chains nor was it ever described as such. One speculation is that the name was chosen simply out of aesthetics, while the most plausible theory states that Migula intended it as false Monas, a nanoflagellate protist (Chrysophyceae: Ochromonadales: Ochromonadaceae: Chrysomonadida: Ochromonadidae). Subsequently, the term "monas" was used in the early history of microbiology to denote single-celled organisms.
== Grammar ==
In English to make a vernacular name for members of a genus, i.e. trivialising the scientific name, the scientific name is taken and written with sentence case and in roman type (i.e. "standard") as opposed to uppercase italic, the plurals are generally constructed by adding an "s", regardless of Greco-Roman grammar. In the case of genera ending in monas the ending is changed to monad with plural -monads. Example: a member of the genus Pseudomonas is a pseudomonad, while two are pseudomonads. The use of the stem for non-nominative cases is seen more often in botany, where trivialisation is more common, e.g. a bromeliad is a member of the genus Bromelia.
== Archaeal genera ==
== Bacterial genera ==
== See also ==
-bacter
== References ==

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The suffix -onym (from Ancient Greek: ὄνυμα, lit. 'name') is a bound morpheme, that is attached to the end of a root word, thus forming a new compound word that designates a particular class of names. In linguistic terminology, compound words that are formed with suffix -onym are most commonly used as designations for various onomastic classes. Most onomastic terms that are formed with suffix -onym are classical compounds, whose word roots are taken from classical languages (Greek and Latin).
For example, onomastic terms like toponym and linguonym are typical classical (or neoclassical) compounds, formed from suffix -onym and classical (Greek and Latin) root words (Ancient Greek: τόπος / place; Latin: lingua / language). In some compounds, the -onym morpheme has been modified by replacing (or dropping) the "o". In the compounds like ananym and metanym, the correct forms (anonym and metonym) were pre-occupied by other meanings. Other, late 20th century examples, such as hypernym and characternym, are typically redundant neologisms, for which there are more traditional words formed with the full -onym (hyperonym and charactonym).
The English suffix -onym is from the Ancient Greek suffix -ώνυμον (ōnymon), neuter of the suffix ώνυμος (ōnymos), having a specified kind of name, from the Greek ὄνομα (ónoma), Aeolic Greek ὄνυμα (ónyma), "name". The form -ōnymos is that taken by ónoma when it is the end component of a bahuvrihi compound, but in English its use is extended to tatpuruṣa compounds.
The suffix is found in many modern languages with various spellings. Examples are: Dutch synoniem, German Synonym, Portuguese sinónimo, Russian синоним (sinonim), Polish synonim, Finnish synonyymi, Indonesian sinonim, Czech synonymum.
According to a 1988 study of words ending in -onym, there are four discernible classes of -onym words: (1) historic, classic, or, for want of better terms, naturally occurring or common words; (2) scientific terminology, occurring in particular in linguistics, onomastics, etc.; (3) language games; and (4) nonce words. Older terms are known to gain new, sometimes contradictory, meanings (e.g., eponym and cryptonym). In many cases, two or more words describe the same phenomenon, but no precedence is discernible (e.g., necronym and penthonym). New words are sometimes created, the meaning of which duplicating existing terms. On occasion, new words are formed with little regard to historical principles.
== Words that end in -onym ==

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acronym: considered to be a "word" in its original sense formed from the initials of one or more words that is pronounceable like a normal word, such as NATO, sometimes in distinction to initialism; reflecting a historical development from its component word initials
agoronym: a name of a square or a marketplace. agronym: a name of a field or a plain. allonym: an author's name of another person — often, a well-known person's name; an alternative term for a pseudonym
anacronym: an acronym so well-established that its origin as an abbreviation is no longer widely known and its component initials are in danger of no longer being recognized (a blend of anachronism and acronym)
andronym: a male name, or a man's name adopted by a woman as a pseudonym. anonym: something created anonymously, or its creator; an unknown author; this term now generally replaced by pseudonym
anemonym: name of a hurricane or violent wind
anepronym: a portmanteau of anacronym and eponym; an original eponym of a trademark term that becomes so well established that it is used to define other objects that share its own definition (e.g., aspirin)
anthroponym: a proper name of a human being, individual or collective. anthropotoponym: a type of toponym (place name) that is derived from an anthroponym
antonym: a word with the exact opposite meaning of another word; an antithesis: often shown in opposite word pairs such as "high" and "low" (compare with "synonym")
apronym: a word which, as an acronym or backronym, has a meaning related to the meaning of the words constituting the acronym or backronym; such as PLATO for "Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching" alluding to Plato, the philosopher and teacher
aptronym: a name appropriate to its owner's occupation or physical properties, such as "Goldsmith" or "Longman" (compare with "charactonym") — coined by Franklin P. Adams
asteroidonym: a proper name of an asteroid. astionym: a name of a town or city. astronym: a name of a star (or more loosely of a constellation, or other heavenly body). autoethnonym: an ethnonym of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by an ethnic group as a self-designation (see also: endoethnonym). autoglossonym or autoglottonym: a glossonym / glottonym (language name) of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by native speakers as a designation for their language. autolinguonym: a linguonym (language name) of endonymic (native) origin, same as autoglossonym / autoglottonym (see also: endolinguonym). autonym: Botanical nomenclature for an automatically created name. Not to be confused with onomastic autonym, formerly used as a variant term for endonym. backronym: an ordinary word understood as an (usually amusing or ironic) acronym (a portmanteau of back + acronym), such as Fiat understood as "Fix It Again Tomorrow"
basionym: the first name published for a biological taxon (species, genus, etc.), which remains the defining name for the taxon even when the taxon has been transferred to a new name
caconym: a bad name, either from poor formation (as through mixing Greek and Latin) or unpleasantness (as through lengthiness or cacophony)
capitonym: a word that changes its meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when it is capitalized, such as March and march or Polish and polish. charactonym: a name of a fictional character reflected in his personality traits, such as Shakespeare's Pistol or Bottom (compare with "aptronym")
choronym: a proper name of a region or a country. chrematonym: a proper name of a particular (unique) object, natural or artificially made. For example: Hope Diamond (proper name of a famous diamond), Bayeux Tapestry (proper name of a famous tapestry), or Wanamaker Organ (proper name of a famous musical instrument). chresonym: Biol. use of a taxonomic name; historically sometimes referred to as a synonym. Sometimes divided into orthochresonyms (correct usages) and heterochresonyms (names incorrectly applied). chrononym: a proper name of a time period, like the Bronze Age, or the Middle Ages. co-hyponym: a word that shares the same superordinate term as another word. For example: "lily" and "rose" are co-hyponyms in the superordinate category "flower."
cometonym: a proper name of a comet. comonym: a name of a village. contronym or antagonym or autoantonym: a word that may have opposite meanings in different contexts, such as cleave meaning "stick together" or "split apart"
cosmonym: a proper name of a cosmic feature, outside Earth. cryptonym: a code name; a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word
demonym: a name, derived from a place name, for residents of that place (e.g., Utahn, from Utah, or Sioux Cityan, from Sioux City) — coined by George H. Scheetz, according to Paul Dickson in What Do You Call a Person From...? A Dictionary of Resident Names. The term first appeared in print in 1988 in Names' Names: A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon by George H. Scheetz. See also taxonym. dromonym: a name of a road or any other communication or transport route by land, water or air. drymonym: a proper name of a wood or forest. ecclesiastonym: a name referring to members of a religious entity, e.g. Methodist, Protestant, Rastafarian, Wiccan (from Greek ekklisiastís 'churchgoer')
ecclesionym: a name of a church. endochoronym: a choronym (regional or country name) of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by native population as a designation for their region or country. endoethnonym: an ethnonym of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by an ethnic group as a self-designation (see also: autoethnonym). endolinguonym: a linguonym (language name) of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by native speakers as a designation for their language (see also: autolinguonym). endonym: a self-assigned name by locals of a place, or a group of people; formerly also known as autonym, but that term is polysemic (not to be confused with the autonym in botany). endotoponym: a type of toponym (place name) of endonymic (native) origin, created and used by native population as a designation for some toponymic feature in their homeland. eponym: a botanical, zoological, artwork, or place name that derives from a real or legendary person; a name for a real or hypothetical person from whom a botanical, geographical, artwork or zoological name is derived; a person after whom a medical condition is named, or the condition so named. A type of taxonym. ergonym: a name of an incorporated work-oriented entity, like a workshop, company or any firm in general. ethnochoronym: a choronym derived from an ethnonym. ethnohydronym: a hydronym that is formed from an ethnonym. ethnonym: a name of an ethnic group. ethnotoponym: a type of toponym that is formed from an ethnonym. exochoronym: a choronym (regional or country name) of exonymic (foreign) origin, created and used by those who don't belong to the native population of a referred territory. exoethnonym: an ethnonym of exonymic (foreign) origin, created and used as a designation for an ethnic group by those who do not belong to it. exolinguonym: a linguonym (language name) of exonymic (foreign) origin, created and used by those who are not native speakers of that language. exonym: a name used by one group of people for another group, but who call themselves by a different name, such as "Germans" for "Deutsche"; a place name used by one group that differs from the name used by the people who live there, such as "Cologne" for "Köln".

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exotoponym: a type of toponym (place name) of exonymic (foreign) origin, created and used by those who don't belong to the native population of a region in which the referred toponymic feature is located. gamonym: a name bestowed as a consequence of marriage. Judy Jones married Count Stephen Smith: her gamonyms include Mrs. Stephen Smith, Judy Smith, and Countess Smith. geonym: a name of a geographic feature, on Earth. glacionym: a name of a glacier. glossonym or glottonym: a name of a language
gynonym: a female name, or a woman's name adopted by a man as a pseudonym. hagionym: a name of a saint. hagiotoponym: a type of toponym (place name) derived from a hagionym (name of a saint). helonym: a name of a swamp, marsh, or bog. heterochresonym: (biological taxonomy) see chresonym. heteronym: a word that is spelled in the same way as another but that has a different sound and meaning, for example "bow" as in "bow of a ship" or "bow and arrow" (compare "homonym")
hodonym: a name of a street or road (also odonym). holonym: a word for the whole of which other words are part, in the way house contains roof, door and window; or car contains steering-wheel and engine (compare "meronym")
homonym: 1: a: a word pronounced like another, but differing in meaning or derivation or spelling—also known as a homophone (e.g. to, too, two). b: a word spelled like another, but differing in derivation or meaning or pronunciation—also known as a homograph or heteronym (lead, to conduct, and lead, the metal). Compare autantonym, contronym, and heteronym. c: a word spelled and pronounced like another, but differing in meaning (pool of water, and pool, the game). 2: a namesake. 3: Biol. a taxonomic designation that is identical to another one of the same rank, but based on a different type; only one of the homonyms is considered a valid designation (see homonym (biology)). Compare to synonym. hydronym: a name of river, lake, sea or any other body of water. hypernym: sometimes spelled hyperonym, a generic word that stands for a class or group of equally ranked items, such as "tree" for "beech" or "elm", or "house" for "chalet" or "bungalow". A hypernym is said to be "superordinate" to a hyponym. hypocoronym, hypocorism, or hypocoristic: a colloquial, usually unofficial, name of an entity; a pet-name or "nickname"
hyponym: an item that belongs to and is equally ranked in a generic class or group, for example "lily" or "violet" in the class of "flowers"; or "limousine" or "hatchback" in the class of "automobiles". A hyponym is said to be "subordinate" to a hyperonym. insulonym: a name of an island. isonym: 1: a word having the same root or stem as another — also known as paronym. Compare exonym, heteronym, paronym, and synonym. 2: one person's surname that is the same as another person's surname. 3: Biol. a taxonomic designation that is identical to another designation, and based on the same type, but published at a different time by the same or other authors (see isonym (taxonomy)). limnonym: a name of a lake or a pond. logonym: a polysemic term, with several meanings. linguonym: a name of a language
macrotoponym: a type of toponym that designates an important toponymic feature, that has a wider (regional, national, continental, global) significance. meronym: a word that names a part that belongs to and is therefore subordinate to a larger entity; a part-whole relationship, such as "door" or "window" in "house", or "engine" or "steering-wheel" in "car" (compare "holonym")
meteoronym: a proper name of a meteor. metonym: a word that substitutes a part for the whole it is associated with, for example "crown" for "monarch"; metonymy is the figure of speech incorporating a metonym
matronym or matronymic: a name of a human being making reference to that person's mother (contrast "patronym")
mononym: a word indicating the "single name" as generally applied to people e.g. Madonna or Plato. morphonym: a name of a taxonomic species. microtoponym: a type of toponym that is used locally, as designation for some toponymic feature that has only a local significance. necronym: a reference to or name of a person who has died. numeronym: is a number-based word. oceanonym: a name of an ocean. odonym: a name of a street or road (also hodonym). oikonym, also (Latinized) oeconym or econym: a name of a house or other building. oronym: 1: a name of a hill, mountain, or mountain-range; 2: a neologism for same-sounding (homophonic) words or phrases. orthonym: The correct word for a concept in a specified language. By extension in some religious and ideological cults, the one that appears in the database of the ideological or religious registry of name (such as the church or nationalist civil register). orthochresonym: (biological taxonomy) see chresonym. paedonymic: a name adopted from one's child's name, as in the kunya of Islamic names or when one is identified by means of one's child's name ("Tim's dad"). paronym: a word that is related to another word and derives from the same root; a cognate word, such as dubious and doubtful
patronym or patronymic: a name adopted from the father's or ancestor's name, for example "Johnson" from "John," "MacDonald" from "Donald," "O'Brien" from "Brien," or "Ivanovich" from "Ivan"
pelagonym: a name of a sea. phaleronym: a name of a medal, or any other honorary decoration. phantonym: a word that looks like it would mean one thing, when in reality it means something completely different. Such as "noisome" meaning "smelly" or "unhealthy" and not "noisy". phytonym: a name of an individual plant. planetonym: a proper name of a planet. plesionym or near-synonym: word that is almost synonymous with another word, but not quite
poetonym: a fictional or literary name
politonym: a name referring to members of a political entity
potamonym: a name of a river or a stream. prosoponym: a personal name; full name of an individual person. pseudonym: a false and fictitious name, especially one adopted by an author; a pen name
retronym: a compound or modified noun that replaces an original simple noun, for example "analog watch" now means what "watch" used to mean before the invention of the digital watch, and motorcycles became "solo motorcycles" when others were built with sidecars
speleonym: a name of a cave or some other subterranean feature. synonym: 1: a word equivalent in meaning or nearly so to another word; a word that may be substituted for another word that has the same or a similar meaning, such as near and close (compare "antonym"). 2: In Biology, one or more names given to the same taxon, and so considered equivalent. Usually, only one of them is considered as correct (senior synonym in animal taxonomy, accepted name in plant taxonomy), while the other are considered deprecated (see synonym (taxonomy)).

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tautonym: a binomial or scientific name in the taxonomy of living things in which the generic and specific names are the same, such as Gorilla gorilla; a scientific name in which the specific name is repeated, such as Homo sapiens sapiens as distinct from Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; a noun component that is repeated, such as aye-aye or tom-tom; a personal name where both forename and surname are identical, such as Francis Francis
taxonym: a name used for classification or identification purposes, usually signifying a relationship to something. Taxonyms include binomens, names of clades or taxas, demonyms, ethnonyms, and eponyms. Examples include canine, hominid, and Dryad. teknonym: a name that refers to a parent by the name of one of their children. textonym: a word that is generated by a single sequence of numerals keyed in to a mobile telephone; for example, 726 produces pam, ram, sam, and ran. Also called homonumeric words. theonym: a name of a god or a goddess. The names societies give their gods at times is useful in understanding the origin of their language as well as their view of a particular deity. Analysis of theonyms has been useful in understanding the connections of Indo-European languages, and possibly their religions, in particular. In Abrahamic faiths the origin and meaning of the Tetragrammaton is sometimes deemed to have important historical or even metaphysical meaning. theronym: a name — especially a product name — that has been derived from the name of an animal. topoanthroponym: an anthroponym that is derived from a toponym. topoethnonym: an ethnonym that is derived from a toponym. toponym: a place or geographical name; the name of an area of the body, as distinguished from the name of an organ
troponym: a verb conveying a meaning that is a particular case of the meaning of another verb. For example, to duel is a troponym of to fight; to write is a troponym of to communicate; etc. The concept of troponym is to verbs as that of hyponym is to nouns. urbanonym: a name of an urban element (street, square etc.) in towns and cities. zoonym: a name of an animal.
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Sources ===
== Further reading ==
Brown, A. F. (1963). Normal and Reverse English Word List. Vol. 1–8. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Herbst, Richard C. (1979). Herbst's Backword Dictionary for Puzzled People. New York: Alamo Publishing Company.
Lehnert, Martin (1971). Reverse Dictionary of Present-Day English. Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie.
Laurence Urdang, ed. (1981). -Ologies & -Isms: A Thematic Dictionary (2nd ed.). Detroit: Gale Research Company.
== External links ==
Words That End In nym : Words That End With nym
Nym Words
Onyms

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The suffix -phoresis means "migration":
Phoresis, where one organism attaches itself to another for travel.
Diffusiophoresis, motion observed in liquid environments where chemical gradients are generated by contact between solutions with different solute concentrations
Electrophoresis, motion of dispersed particles relative to a fluid under the influence of a spatially uniform electric field
Isotachophoresis, technique in analytical chemistry used to separate charged particles
Necrophoresis, disposal of bodies of dead members of their colony in social insects
Thermophoresis, phenomenon observed when a mixture of two or more types of motile particles (particles able to move) is subjected to the force of a temperature gradient and the different types of particles respond to it differently
== See also ==
Apheresis ('taking away'), where a constituent of blood is separated out and the remainder returned to the circulation
== External links ==
The dictionary definition of -phoresis at Wiktionary

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-yllion (pronounced ) is a proposal from Donald Knuth for the terminology and symbols of an alternate decimal superbase system. In it, he adapts the familiar English terms for large numbers to provide a systematic set of names for much larger numbers. In addition to providing an extended range, -yllion also dodges the long and short scale ambiguity of -illion.
Knuth's digit grouping is exponential instead of linear; each division doubles the number of digits handled, whereas the familiar system only adds three or six more. His system is basically the same as one of the ancient and now-unused Chinese numeral systems, in which units stand for 104, 108, 1016, 1032, ..., 102n, and so on (with an exception that the -yllion proposal does not use a word for thousand which the original Chinese numeral system has). Today the corresponding Chinese characters are used for 104, 108, 1012, 1016, and so on.
== Details and examples ==
In Knuth's -yllion proposal:
1 to 999 still have their usual names.
1000 to 9999 are divided before the 2nd-last digit and named "foo hundred bar." (e.g. 1234 is "twelve hundred thirty-four"; 7623 is "seventy-six hundred twenty-three")
104 to 108 − 1 are divided before the 4th-last digit and named "foo myriad bar". Knuth also introduces at this level a grouping symbol (comma) for the numeral. So 382,1902 is "three hundred eighty-two myriad nineteen hundred two."
108 to 1016 − 1 are divided before the 8th-last digit and named "foo myllion bar", and a semicolon separates the digits. So 1,0002;0003,0004 is "one myriad two myllion, three myriad four."
1016 to 1032 − 1 are divided before the 16th-last digit and named "foo byllion bar", and a colon separates the digits. So 12:0003,0004;0506,7089 is "twelve byllion, three myriad four myllion, five hundred six myriad seventy hundred eighty-nine."
etc.
Each new number name is the square of the previous one — therefore, each new name covers twice as many digits. Knuth continues borrowing the traditional names changing "illion" to "yllion" on each one.
Abstractly, then, "one n-yllion" is
10
2
n
+
2
{\displaystyle 10^{2^{n+2}}}
. "One trigintyllion" (
10
2
32
{\displaystyle 10^{2^{32}}}
) would have 232 + 1, or 42;9496,7297, or nearly forty-three myllion (4300 million) digits (by contrast, a conventional "trigintillion" has merely 94 digits — not even a hundred, let alone a thousand million, and still 7 digits short of a googol). Better yet, "one centyllion" (
10
2
102
{\displaystyle 10^{2^{102}}}
) would have 2102 + 1, or 507,0602;4009,1291:7605,9868;1282,1505, or about 1/20 of a tryllion digits, whereas a conventional "centillion" has only 304 digits.
The corresponding Chinese "long scale" numerals are given, with the traditional form listed before the simplified form. Same numerals are used in the Ancient Greek numeral system, and also the Chinese "short scale" (new number name every power of 10 after 1000 (or 103+n)), "myriad scale" (new number name every 104n), and "mid scale" (new number name every 108n). Today these Chinese numerals are still in use, but are used in their "myriad scale" values, which is also used in Japanese and in Korean. For a more extensive table, see Myriad system.
== Latin- prefix ==
In order to construct names of the form n-yllion for large values of n, Knuth appends the prefix "latin-" to the name of n without spaces and uses that as the prefix for n. For example, the number "latintwohundredyllion" corresponds to n = 200, and hence to the number
10
2
202
{\displaystyle 10^{2^{202}}}
.
== Negative powers ==
To refer to small quantities with this system, the suffix -th is used.
For instance,
10
−
4
{\displaystyle 10^{-4}}
is a myriadth.
10
−
16777216
{\displaystyle 10^{-16777216}}
is a vigintyllionth.
== See also ==
Nicolas Chuquet – French mathematician (c.1445–c.1455 – c.1488–1500)
Jacques Pelletier du Mans – French humanist, poet, mathematician (1517–1582)
Knuth's up-arrow notation – Method of notation of very large integers
The Sand Reckoner – Work by Archimedes
== References ==
Donald E. Knuth. Supernatural Numbers in The Mathematical Gardener (edited by David A. Klarner). Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 1981. 310—325.
Robert P. Munafo. The Knuth -yllion Notation ( Archived 2012-02-13 at the Wayback Machine 2012-02-25), 1996–2012.

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Above and Beyond is a 1952 American World War II docudrama film directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama about Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. The film stars Robert Taylor as Tibbets and features a love story with Eleanor Parker as his wife.
== Plot ==
Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. is assigned to a dangerous mission testing a new bomber, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The perilous assignment has caused his wife Lucy to worry for his life and whether their marriage can survive the constant separations.
After a year of scrutiny, Maj. Gen. Vernon C. Brent, who championed Tibbets as a test pilot, selects him to lead a new unit in the Pacific war flying the B-29, armed with a new secret weapon. Scientists of the Manhattan Project explain their secret weapon, the atomic bomb. Along with Maj. Bill Uanna, the only other person who knows what the mission will entail, Tibbets is expected to keep strict discipline over the personnel assigned to a B-29 conversion unit at Wendover Field, Utah. When families of crew members are brought to Wendover, tensions erupt between the Tibbetses over his secrecy concerning the mission.
T the B-29 designated for the Hiroshima bombing is named the Enola Gay and is flown to the Pacific island base of Tinian. After the bomb is dropped, Tibbets realizes the devastation that he has caused as he sees the flash and subsequent atomic blast. Back on Tinian, the crew is mobbed and although a second mission is mounted, it proves unnecessary with the end of the war after the bombing of Nagasaki. Tibbets returns home, flying first to Washington, where he has a joyous reunion with his wife.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
The film was suggested by screenwriter Beirne Lay Jr., a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, to General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). The men had previously discussed the high rate of divorce among flight crews and felt that a film depicting the problem might help raise morale.
Lay suggested a film based on the experiences of Colonel Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group during World War II. LeMay approved, and after writing an outline, Lay transferred scriptwriting duties to Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. Although Tibbets lent his full approval and support to the film, he felt that he was too closely involved to be objective and suggested Lt. Col. Charles F.H. Begg, commander of the nuclear-ordnance squadron, and Charles Sweeney, pilot of the Nagasaki bombing, as technical advisors. Begg, Major Norman W. Ray and Major James B. Bean served as USAF technical advisors.
The film was originally titled Eagle on His Cap. Studio principal photography began on February 5, 1952 before transferring to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, which was predominantly utilized for the airfield scenes at Wendover Air Force Base, Boeing's Wichita testing area and Tinian. The production wrapped on March 26, 1952.
For dramatic effect, some incidents were somewhat exaggerated, such as the scene in which the Hiroshima bomb is armed mid-flight. The filmmakers added some turbulence to increase tension, although the actual flight was perfectly smooth throughout. In addition, the entire mission is depicted in daylight, although the actual takeoff from Tinian was in full darkness at 2:45 a.m. However, the scene in which Tibbets' wife summons a nuclear scientist from Los Alamos to repair a drain, believing him to be a janitor, is accurate.
Coproducer Norman Panama claimed that the system that he and Melvin Frank implemented for The Reformer and the Redhead (1950) by which all shots and dialogue were precisely planned and diagrammed, with suggestions welcomed from the cast and crew, saved $76,000 per day of production.
A sequel film focusing on the worries faced by wives of military aviators was contemplated but never materialized.
== Release ==
Robert Taylor urged MGM to allow him to promote the film on television, and he appeared with Paul Tibbets on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town show, an unusual step at a time when the major studios disapproved of its stars appearing on television, which they saw as a threat. Although the studio was hesitant about the television appearance, the publicity gained was important to the film's initial success.
== Reception ==
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:So long as attention is directed to the strictly technical activities of preparing for and delivering the mysterious atomic bomb, this tediously long and earnest picture has substance and plausibility ... But the long-drawn and intimate attention that the script writers and the picture give to the heartthrobs of Colonel and Mrs. Tibbets is a bit on the ostentatious side. Not only is it directed to make a lot out of ordinary things, such as the normal discomforts of a family at an Air Force base during the war, but it is carried beyond practical reason in ripping the couple apart. Although it is generously planted that they are rapturously in love, it is also assumed that they would split up over the colonel's deep absorption in his job.Critic Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times, despite praising Tibbets as "a courageous individual who had a great respect for other men's lives", wrote: "Above and Beyond" might be charged with being too long, because it exceeds a full two hours by a couple of minutes. Shorter, it would have been somewhat more acceptable for the general public. However, for those who are interested in a well-documented feature with human interest, this screen event is unique.According to MGM records, the film earned $2,647,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1,333,000 overseas, resulting in a profit of $1,037,000.
== Awards ==
Above and Beyond was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Original Motion Picture Story for Beirne Lay Jr. and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture for Hugo Friedhofer.
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Bibliography ===
== External links ==
Above and Beyond at IMDb
Above and Beyond at the TCM Movie Database (archived)
Above and Beyond at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Above and Beyond at Rotten Tomatoes
About the RCA811-K radio that gives Mrs. Tibbets the news about Hiroshima

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Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (2002) is a book by philosopher Nick Bostrom. It investigates how to reason when one suspects that evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"—when the evidence has been pre-filtered by the condition that some observer was appropriately positioned to "receive" it. This conundrum is sometimes called the "anthropic principle", "self-locating belief", or "indexical information".
The book first discusses the fine-tuned universe hypothesis and its possible explanations, notably considering the possibility of a multiverse. Bostrom argues against the self-indication assumption (SIA), a term he uses to characterize some existing views, and introduces the self-sampling assumption (SSA). He later refines SSA into the strong self-sampling assumption (SSSA), which uses observer-moments instead of observers to address certain paradoxes in anthropic reasoning.
== Self-sampling assumption ==
The self-sampling assumption (SSA) states that:
All other things equal, an observer should reason as if they are randomly selected from the set of all actually existent observers (past, present and future) in their reference class.
For instance, if there is a coin flip that on heads will create one observer and on tails will create two, then we have two possible worlds, one with one observer and one with two. These worlds are equally probable, so the SSA probability of being the first (and only) observer in the heads world is 1 ⁄2, that of being the first observer in the tails world is 1 ⁄2 × 1 ⁄2 = 1 ⁄4, and the probability of being the second observer in the tails world is also 1 ⁄4.
This is why SSA gives an answer of 1 ⁄2 probability of heads in the Sleeping Beauty problem.
Unlike SIA, SSA is dependent on the choice of reference class. If the agents in this example were in the same reference class as a trillion others, then the probability of being in the heads world upon the agent being told they are in the Sleeping Beauty problem is ≈ 1 ⁄3, similar to SIA.
SSA may imply the doomsday argument depending on the choice of reference class.
In Anthropic Bias, Bostrom suggests refining SSA to what he calls the strong self-sampling assumption (SSSA), which replaces "observers" in the SSA definition by "observer-moments". This coincides with the intuition that an observer who lives longer has more opportunities to experience existing, and provides flexibility to refine reference classes in certain thought experiments to avoid paradoxical conclusions.
== Self-indication assumption ==
The self-indication assumption (SIA) is a philosophical principle defined in Anthropic Bias. It states that:
All other things equal, an observer should reason as if they are randomly selected from the set of all possible observers.
Note that "randomly selected" is weighted by the probability of the observers existing: under SIA you are still unlikely to be an unlikely observer, unless there are many of them.
For instance, if there is a coin flip that on heads will create one observer and on tails will create two, we have three possible observers (1st observer on heads, 1st on tails, 2nd on tails). Each has an equal probability for existence, so SIA assigns 1 ⁄3 probability to each. Alternatively, this could be interpreted as saying there are two possible observers (1st observer on either heads or tails, 2nd observer on tails), the first existing with probability one and the second existing with probability 1 ⁄2, so SIA assigns 2 ⁄3 to being the first observer and 1 ⁄3 to being the second. This is the same as in the first interpretation. This is why SIA gives an answer of 1 ⁄3 probability of heads in the Sleeping Beauty problem.
Notice that, unlike SSA, SIA is not dependent on the choice of reference class, as long as the reference class is large enough to contain all subjectively indistinguishable observers. If the reference class is large, SIA will make it more likely, but this is compensated by the much reduced probability that the agent will be that particular agent in the larger reference class.
Although this anthropic principle was originally designed as a rebuttal to the doomsday argument (by Dennis Dieks in 1992), it has general applications in the philosophy of anthropic reasoning, and Ken Olum has suggested its importance to the analysis of quantum cosmology.
Bostrom argued against the SIA, as it would allow purely a priori reasoning to settle the scientific question of whether the universe is infinite/open rather than finite/closed.
Olum has written in defense of the SIA. Nick Bostrom and Milan Ćirković have critiqued his defense.
Matthew Adelstein has also defended the SIA, arguing that all alternatives imply the soundness of the doomsday argument and other even stranger conclusions.
== Reviews ==
A review by Virginia Commonwealth University said the book "deserves a place on the shelf" of those interested in these subjects.
== See also ==
Anthropic principle
Bayesian inference
Self-indication assumption doomsday argument rebuttal
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (full text)

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Apollo 13 is a 1995 American docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan. The screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission and is an adaptation of the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
The film tells the story of astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard the ill-fated Apollo 13 for the United States' fifth crewed mission to the Moon, which was intended to be the third to land. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of much of its oxygen supply and electrical power, which forces NASA's flight controllers to abandon the Moon landing and improvise scientific and mechanical solutions to get the three astronauts to Earth safely. Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA's assistance in astronaut and flight-controller training for his cast and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced-gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the weightlessness experienced by the astronauts in space.
Released in theaters by Universal Pictures in the United States on June 30, 1995, Apollo 13 received critical acclaim and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture (winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound). The film also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, as well as two British Academy Film Awards. In total, the film grossed over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases and becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 1995.
It is listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made (2004). In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

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== Plot ==
On July 20, 1969, astronaut Jim Lovell hosts a party where guests watch Neil Armstrong's televised first steps on the Moon from Apollo 11. Lovell, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells his wife Marilyn that he will return to the Moon to walk on its surface.
Three months later, as Lovell is conducting a VIP tour of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, his boss Deke Slayton informs him that his crew will fly Apollo 13 instead of 14, swapping flights with Alan Shepard's crew. Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise train for their mission. Days before launch in April 1970, Mattingly is exposed to German measles, and the flight surgeon demands his replacement with Mattingly's backup, Jack Swigert. Lovell resists breaking up his team, but relents when Slayton threatens to bump his crew to a later mission. As the launch date approaches, Marilyn has a nightmare about her husband dying in space, and tells Lovell she will not go to Kennedy Space Center to see him off for an unprecedented fourth launch. She later changes her mind and surprises him.
On launch day, Flight Director Gene Kranz in Houston's Mission Control Center gives the go for launch. As the Saturn V rocket climbs through the atmosphere, a second stage engine cuts off prematurely, but the craft reaches its Earth parking orbit. After the third stage fires again to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert performs the maneuver to turn the Command Module Odyssey around to dock with the Lunar Module Aquarius and pull it away from the spent rocket.
Three days into the mission, by order of Mission Control, Swigert turns on the liquid oxygen stirring fans. An electrical short causes a tank to explode, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking. Consumables manager Sy Liebergot convinces Kranz that shutting off two of Odyssey's three fuel cells offers the best chance to stop the leak, but this does not work. With only one fuel cell, mission rules dictate the Moon landing be aborted. Lovell and Haise power up Aquarius to use as a "lifeboat", while Swigert shuts down Odyssey to save its battery power for the return to Earth. Kranz charges his team with bringing the astronauts home, declaring "failure is not an option". Consumables manager John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help him improvise a procedure to restart Odyssey for the landing on Earth.
As the crew watches the Moon pass beneath them, Lovell laments his lost dream of walking on its surface, then turns his crew's attention to the business of getting home. With Aquarius running on minimal electrical power and rationed water supply, the crew suffers from freezing conditions, and Haise develops a urinary tract infection. Swigert suspects Mission Control is concealing the fact they are doomed; Haise angrily blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident; but Lovell quashes the argument. As Aquarius's carbon dioxide filters run out, concentration of the gas approaches a dangerous level. Ground control improvises a "Rube Goldberg" device to make the Command Module's incompatible filter cartridges work in the Lunar Module. With Aquarius's navigation systems shut down, the crew makes a vital course correction manually by steering the Lunar Module and controlling its engine.
Mattingly and Aaron struggle to find a way to power up the Command Module systems without drawing too much power, and finally read the procedure to Swigert, who restarts Odyssey by drawing the extra power from Aquarius. When the crew jettisons the Service Module, they are surprised by the extent of the damage, raising the possibility that the ablative heat shield was compromised. As they release Aquarius and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, no one is sure that Odyssey's heat shield is intact. The tense period of radio silence due to ionization blackout is longer than normal, but the astronauts report all is well, and the world watches Odyssey splash down and celebrates their return.
As helicopters bring the crew aboard the USS Iwo Jima for a hero's welcome, Lovell's voice-over describes the cause of the explosion, and the subsequent careers of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly, Kranz, and himself. He wonders if and when mankind will return to the Moon.
== Cast ==
Apollo 13 crew:
Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell
Bill Paxton as Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise
Kevin Bacon as backup Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert
Gary Sinise as prime Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded shortly before the mission
Other astronauts:
Mark Wheeler as Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong
Larry Williams as Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin
David Andrews as Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad
Ben Marley as Apollo 13 backup Commander John Young
Brett Cullen as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) 1 "Andy" (a composite astronaut, based on Jack R. Lousma and William Pogue)
Ned Vaughn as CAPCOM 2 (a composite astronaut)
NASA ground personnel:
Ed Harris as White Team Flight Director Gene Kranz.
Chris Ellis as Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton
Joe Spano as NASA Director, a composite character loosely based on Manned Spacecraft Center director Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.
Marc McClure as Black Team Flight Director Glynn Lunney
Clint Howard as White Team Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager (EECOM) Sy Liebergot
Ray McKinnon as White Team Flight Dynamics Officer (FIDO) Jerry Bostick
Todd Louiso as White Team Flight Activities Officer (FAO)
Gabriel Jarret as White Team Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Systems Engineer (GNC)
Andy Milder as White Team Guidance Officer (GUIDO)
Jim Meskimen as White Team Telemetry, Electrical, EVA Mobility Unit Officer (TELMU)
Loren Dean as EECOM John Aaron
Christian Clemenson as Flight Surgeon Dr. Charles Berry
Carl Gabriel Yorke as SIM (Simulator) 1
Xander Berkeley as Henry Hurt, a fictional NASA Office of Public Affairs staff member
Endre Hules as Günter Wendt, pad leader
Civilians:

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Kathleen Quinlan as Marilyn Gerlach Lovell, Jim's wife
Jean Speegle Howard (Ron Howard's mother) as Blanche Lovell, Jim's mother
Mary Kate Schellhardt as Barbara Lovell, Jim's older daughter
Max Elliott Slade as James "Jay" Lovell, Jim's older son
Emily Ann Lloyd as Susan Lovell, Jim's younger daughter
Miko Hughes as Jeffrey Lovell, Jim's younger son
Rance Howard (Ron Howard's father) as the Lovell family minister
Tracy Reiner as Mary Haise, Fred's wife
Michele Little as Jane Conrad
Cameos:
Jim Lovell appears as Captain Leland Kirkemo of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima; Howard had intended to make him an admiral, but Lovell himself, having retired as a captain, chose to appear in his actual rank (and wearing his own Navy uniform).
Marilyn Lovell appears among the spectators during the launch sequence.
Jeffrey Kluger appears as a television reporter.
Horror film director Roger Corman, a mentor of Howard, appears as a congressman being given a VIP tour by Lovell of the Vehicle Assembly Building, as it had become something of a tradition for Corman to make a cameo appearance in his protégés' films.
CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite appears in archive news footage and can be heard in newly recorded announcements, some of which he edited himself to sound more authentic.
Cheryl Howard (Ron Howard's wife) and Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's eldest daughter) as uncredited background performers in the scene where the astronauts wave goodbye to their families.
== Production ==
=== Development ===
The movie rights to Jim Lovell's book Lost Moon were being shopped to potential buyers before it was written. He stated that his first reaction was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to play him.
=== Pre-production ===
The original screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert was written with Costner in mind because of his facial similarities with Lovell. By the time Ron Howard acquired the director's position, Tom Hanks had expressed interest in doing a film based on Apollo 13. When Hanks' representative informed him that a script was being passed around he had it sent to him, and Costner's name never came up in serious discussion. Hanks was ultimately cast as Lovell because of his knowledge of Apollo and space history.
Because of his interest in aviation, John Travolta asked Howard for the role of Lovell, but was politely turned down. John Cusack was offered the role of Fred Haise but turned it down, and the role went to Bill Paxton. Brad Pitt was offered the role of Jack Swigert, but also turned it down in favor of Seven, so the role went to Kevin Bacon. Howard invited Gary Sinise to read for any of the characters, and Sinise chose Ken Mattingly.
After Hanks had been cast and construction of the spacecraft sets had begun, John Sayles rewrote the script. While planning the film, Howard decided that every shot would be original and that no mission footage would be used. The spacecraft interiors were constructed by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center's Space Works, which also restored the Apollo 13 Command Module. Two individual Lunar Modules and two Command Modules were constructed for filming. Composed of some original Apollo materials, they were built so that different sections were removable, which allowed filming to take place inside them. Space Works also built modified Command and Lunar Modules for filming inside a Boeing KC-135 reduced-gravity aircraft, and the pressure suits worn by the actors, which are exact reproductions of those worn by the Apollo astronauts, right down to the detail of being airtight. When suited up with their helmets locked in place, the actors were cooled by and breathed air pumped into the suits, as in actual Apollo suits.
The Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center consisted of two control rooms on the second and third floors of Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA offered the use of the control room for filming, but Howard declined, opting instead to make his own replica. Production designer Michael Corenblith and set decorator Merideth Boswell were in charge of the construction of the Mission Control set at Universal Studios. It was equipped with giant rear-screen projection capabilities, and a complex set of computers with individual video feeds to all the flight controller stations. The actors playing the flight controllers could communicate with each other on a private audio loop. The Mission Control room built for the film was on the ground floor. One NASA employee, a consultant for the film, said the set was so realistic that he would leave at the end of the day and look for the elevator before he remembered he was not in Mission Control. The recovery ship USS Iwo Jima had been scrapped by the time the film was made, so her sister ship, New Orleans, was used instead.
To prepare for their roles in the film, Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon all attended the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. While there, astronauts Jim Lovell and David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, did actual training exercises with the actors inside a simulated Command Module and Lunar Module. The actors were also taught about each of the 500 buttons, toggles, and switches used to operate the spacecraft. The actors then traveled to Johnson Space Center in Houston where they flew in the KC-135 to simulate weightlessness in outer space.
Each member of the cast performed extensive research for the project to provide an authentic story. Technical adviser Scott was impressed with their efforts, stating that each actor was determined to make every scene technically correct, word for word.
In Los Angeles, Ed Harris and all the actors portraying flight controllers enrolled in a Flight Controller School led by Gerry Griffin, an Apollo 13 flight director, and flight controller Jerry Bostick. The actors studied audiotapes from the mission, reviewed hundreds of pages of NASA transcripts, and attended a crash course in physics.
Reportedly, Pete Conrad expressed interest in appearing in the film.
=== Filming ===

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Principal photography for Apollo 13 started in August 1994.
Howard anticipated difficulty in portraying weightlessness in a realistic manner. He discussed this with Steven Spielberg, who suggested filming aboard the KC-135 airplane, which can be flown in such a way as to create about 23 seconds of weightlessness, a method NASA has always used to train its astronauts for space flight. Howard obtained NASA's permission and assistance to obtain three hours and 54 minutes of filming time in 612 zero-g maneuvers. Filming in this environment was a time and cost saver because the stage recreation and computer graphics would have been expensive. The final three weeks of filming took place in the stages on the Universal Studios Lot in Universal City, California, where two life-size replicas of both the command module and the lunar module were built for simultaneous shooting on different soundstages. Air-cooling units lowered the temperatures inside each soundstage to around 38 °F (3 °C), to simulate the conditions necessary for condensation and the visibility of the actors' breath inside the spacecraft. Filming wrapped on February 25, 1995. The final scene to be filmed was the splashdown sequence at the film's conclusion, which was shot on a large, artificial lake on the Universal lot.
==== Safety ====
While filming in a 25-second burst of weightlessness was "charged and frenetic", the cast and crew only suffered from bumps and bruises, and most injuries occurred when they bumped on non-padded items. The cast and crew of Apollo 13 describe the weightlessness experience as being in a "vomit comet" and "roller coaster ride", but the motion sickness afflicted only a few members.
During filming of the low-temperature scenes in the Universal stages, signs that explained frostbite symptoms were posted on the stages' walls, and the crew worked in parkas.
=== Post-production ===
The visual effects supervisor was Robert Legato.
To avoid awkward visible switches to stock news footage in a live action film, he decided to produce the Saturn V launch sequence using miniature models and digital image stitching to create a panoramic background. On Howard's request to "shoot it like Martin Scorsese would shoot it", Legato studied Scorsese's scenes of pool games from The Color of Money, and copied his technique of creating a sense of rhythm by repeating two or three frames between each cut (just enough to be undetectable) for the engine ignition sequence. Legato says this scene inspired James Horner's soundtrack music for the launch. The long-range shot of the vehicle in flight was filmed using a $25 1:144 scale model Revell kit, with the camera realistically shaking, and it was digitized and re-filmed off of a high resolution monitor through a black filter, slightly overexposed to keep it from "looking like a video game".
The exhaust of the attitude control thrusters was generated with computer-generated imagery (CGI). This was also attempted to show the astronaut's urine dump into space, but wasn't high enough resolution to look right, so droplets sprayed from an Evian bottle were photographed instead.
The producers wanted to use CGI to render the splashdown, but Legato adamantly insisted this would not look realistic. Real parachutes were used with a prop capsule tossed out of a helicopter.
During weightless filming, all of the dialogue had been rendered unusable by the loudness of the plane. This required Hanks, Bacon and Paxton to attend ADR sessions, where they redubbed all of the lines for the weightless scenes.
== Soundtrack ==
The score to Apollo 13 was composed and conducted by James Horner, and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony. The soundtrack was released in 1995 by MCA Records and has seven tracks of score, eight period songs used in the film, and seven tracks of dialogue by the actors at a total running time of nearly seventy-eight minutes. The music also features solos by vocalist Annie Lennox and Tim Morrison on the trumpet. The score was a critical success and garnered Horner an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.
== Release ==
=== Theatrical ===
Apollo 13 was released on June 30, 1995, in North America and on September 22, 1995, in the United Kingdom.
In September 2002 and for its 30th anniversary in September 2025, the film was re-released in IMAX. It is the first film to be digitally remastered using IMAX DMR technology.
=== Home media ===
Apollo 13 was released on VHS on November 21, 1995, and on LaserDisc the following week. On September 9, 1997, the film debuted on a THX certified widescreen VHS release.
A 10th-anniversary DVD of the film was released in 2005; it included both the original theatrical version and the IMAX version, along with several extras. The IMAX version has a 1.66:1 aspect ratio.
In 2006, Apollo 13 was released on HD DVD and on April 13, 2010, it was released on Blu-ray as the 15th-anniversary edition on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 accident. The film was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on October 17, 2017.

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== Box office ==
Apollo 13 earned $25,353,380 from 2,347 theaters during its opening weekend, which made up 14.7% of the total US gross. Upon its opening, it was ranked number one at the box office, beating Pocahontas. Additionally, it surpassed Forrest Gump for having the largest opening weekend for a Tom Hanks film. Within five days, Apollo 13 generated $38.5 million, becoming the second-highest five-day opening of all time, behind Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The weekend of the film's opening earned $154 million from ticket sales, surpassing the previous record held by the combined Thanksgiving 1992 openings of Aladdin, The Bodyguard and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It would continue to stay in the number one spot for four weeks until it was dethroned by Waterworld. Earning $355,237,933, Apollo 13 was the third-highest-grossing film of 1995, behind Die Hard with a Vengeance and Toy Story (which also starred Hanks).
On September 19, 2025, Apollo 13 began a 30th anniversary re-release in IMAX screenings. As of September 21, 2025, the 2025 re-release has made $627,155 from screenings in 200 IMAX theaters.
== Reception ==
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 150 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "In recreating the troubled space mission, Apollo 13 pulls no punches: it's a masterfully told drama from director Ron Howard, bolstered by an ensemble of solid performances." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
=== Critical response ===
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film in his review, saying: "This is a powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics." Richard Corliss of Time highly praised the film, saying: "From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride." Edward Guthmann of San Francisco Chronicle gave a mixed review and wrote: "I just wish that Apollo 13 worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the film and wrote: "Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film."
Janet Maslin made the film an NYT Critics' Pick, calling it an "absolutely thrilling" film that "unfolds with perfect immediacy, drawing viewers into the nail-biting suspense of a spellbinding true story." According to Maslin, "like Quiz Show, Apollo 13 beautifully evokes recent history in ways that resonate strongly today. Cleverly nostalgic in its visual style (Rita Ryack's costumes are especially right), it harks back to movie making without phony heroics and to the strong spirit of community that enveloped the astronauts and their families. Amazingly, this film manages to seem refreshingly honest while still conforming to the three-act dramatic format of a standard Hollywood hit. It is far and away the best thing Mr. Howard has done (and Far and Away was one of the other kind)."
The academic critic Raymond Malewitz focuses on the DIY aspects of the "mailbox" filtration system to illustrate the emergence of an unlikely hero in late 20th-century American culture—"the creative, improvisational, but restrained thinker—who replaces the older prodigal cowboy heroes of American mythology and provides the country a better, more frugal example of an appropriate 'husband'."
Marilyn Lovell praised Quinlan's portrayal of her, stating she felt she could feel what Quinlan's character was going through, and remembered how she felt in her mind.
== Accolades ==
== Technical and historical accuracy ==

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In the film, Lovell tells his wife he was given command of Apollo 13 instead of 14 because original commander Alan Shepard's "ear infection is flaring up again"; in fact, Shepard had no "ear infection"; he had been grounded since 1963 by Ménière's disease. This was surgically corrected four years later and he was returned to flight duty in May 1969; Manned Spacecraft Center management felt he needed more training time for a lunar mission.
The film portrays the Saturn V launch vehicle being rolled out to the launch pad two days before launch. In reality, the launch vehicle was rolled out on the Mobile Launcher using the crawler-transporter two months before the launch date.
The film depicts the crew hearing a bang shortly after Swigert followed directions from mission control to stir the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. In reality, the crew heard the bang 95 seconds later.
The film depicts Sy Liebergot suggesting that the oxygen leak was in one or two of Odyssey's fuel cells, and the order to shut them down was passed up to the crew, forcing abort of the lunar landing mission. In reality, Mission Control did not order the shutdown; Haise found the cells were already dead, because of starvation due to the damage to the oxygen system.
The film depicts Swigert and Haise arguing about who was at fault. The show The Real Story: Apollo 13 broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel includes Haise stating that no such argument took place and that there was no way anyone could have foreseen that stirring the tank would cause problems. Similarly on the BBC 13 Minutes to the Moon program, backup lunar module pilot on the mission Charles Duke says the film portrayed Swigert as unprepared for the flight, but it was untrue and that Swigert was very familiar with the Command Module as he had been involved with the development of it during his time as an engineering test pilot at North American Aviation, prior to becoming an astronaut.
The dialogue between ground control and the astronauts was taken nearly verbatim from transcripts and recordings, with the exception of one of the taglines of the film, "Houston, we have a problem." (This quote was voted #50 on the list "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes".) According to audio of the air-to-ground communications, the actual words uttered by Swigert were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here". Ground control responded by saying, "This is Houston. Say again, please." Jim Lovell then repeated, "Houston, we've had a problem."
One other incorrect dialogue is after the re-entry blackout. In the film, Tom Hanks (as Lovell) says "Hello Houston... this is Odyssey... it's good to see you again." In the actual re-entry, the Command Module's transmission was finally acquired by a Sikorsky SH-3D Sea King recovery helicopter which then relayed communications to Mission Control. CAPCOM astronaut Joe Kerwin (not Mattingly, who serves as CAPCOM in this scene in the film) then made a call to the spacecraft "Odyssey, Houston standing by. Over." Swigert, not Lovell, replied "Okay, Joe," and unlike the film, this was well before the parachutes deployed; the celebrations depicted at Mission Control were triggered by visual confirmation of their deployment.
The tagline "Failure is not an option", stated in the film by Gene Kranz, also became very popular, but was not taken from the historical transcripts. The following story relates the origin of the phrase, from an e-mail by Apollo 13 Flight Dynamics Officer Jerry Bostick:
As far as the expression "Failure is not an option," you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on "What are the people in Mission Control really like?" One of their questions was "Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?" My answer was "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, "That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it." Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history.
In the film, Flight Director Gene Kranz and his White Team are portrayed as managing all of the essential parts of the flight, from liftoff to landing. Consequently, the actual role of the other flight directors and teams, especially Glynn Lunney and his Black Team, were neglected. In fact, it was Flight Director Lunney and his Black Team who got Apollo 13 through its most critical period in the hours immediately after the explosion, including the mid-course correction that sent Apollo 13 on a "free return" trajectory around the Moon and back to the Earth. Astronaut Ken Mattingly, who was replaced as Apollo 13 Command Module Pilot at the last minute by Swigert, later said:

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If there was a hero, Glynn Lunney was, by himself, a hero, because when he walked in the room, I guarantee you, nobody knew what the hell was going on. Glynn walked in, took over this mess, and he just brought calm to the situation. I've never seen such an extraordinary example of leadership in my entire career. Absolutely magnificent. No general or admiral in wartime could ever be more magnificent than Glynn was that night. He and he alone brought all of the scared people together. And you've got to remember that the flight controllers in those days were—they were kids in their thirties. They were good, but very few of them had ever run into these kinds of choices in life, and they weren't used to that. All of a sudden, their confidence had been shaken. They were faced with things that they didn't understand, and Glynn walked in there, and he just kind of took charge.
A DVD commentary track, recorded by Jim and Marilyn Lovell and included with the Signature Laserdisc and later included on both DVD versions, mentions several inaccuracies included in the film, all done for reasons of artistic license:
In the film, Mattingly plays a key role in solving a power consumption problem that Apollo 13 faced as it approached re-entry. Lovell points out in his commentary that this was actually a composite of several astronauts and engineers—including Charles Duke (whose rubella led to Mattingly's grounding)—all of whom worked to solve that problem.
When Swigert is getting ready to dock with the LM, a concerned NASA technician says: "If Swigert can't dock this thing, we don't have a mission." Lovell and Haise also seem worried. In his DVD commentary, the real Jim Lovell says that if Swigert had been unable to dock with the LM, he or Haise could have done it. He also says that Swigert was a well-trained Command Module Pilot, and no one was really worried about whether he was up to the job, but he admitted that it made a nice subplot for the film. What the astronauts were really worried about, Lovell says, was the expected rendezvous between the Lunar Module and the Command Module after Lovell and Haise left the surface of the Moon.
A scene set the night before the launch, showing the astronauts' family members saying their goodbyes while separated by a road, to reduce the possibility of any last-minute transmission of disease, depicted a tradition that did not begin until the Space Shuttle program.
The film depicts Marilyn Lovell accidentally dropping her wedding ring down a shower drain. According to Jim Lovell, this did occur, but the drain trap caught the ring and his wife was able to retrieve it. Lovell has also confirmed that the scene in which his wife had a nightmare about him being "sucked through an open door of a spacecraft into outer space" also occurred, though he believes the nightmare was prompted by her seeing a scene in Marooned, a 1969 film they saw three months before Apollo 13 launched.
When the three astronauts are putting on their spacesuits, the NASA "worm" logo can be clearly seen on the glass behind Kevin Bacon, but that logo did not start to be used until 1975.
== See also ==
From the Earth to the Moon, a 1998 docudrama mini-series based around the Apollo missions
Gravity, a 2013 film about astronauts stranded in Earth orbit
Survival film
1970s nostalgia
== References ==
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
== External links ==
Apollo 13 at IMDb
Apollo 13 at the TCM Movie Database (archived)
Apollo 13 at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Apollo 13 at Rotten Tomatoes
Apollo 13 at Box Office Mojo

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Bloggingheads.tv, sometimes abbreviated "bhtv", is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in a back and forth conversation via webcam broadcast online to viewers. The site operated as a project of the Nonzero Foundation since 2012, but the site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest.
Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals. Unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site, while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions, or participate in the forums. In April 2022, Wright announced that Bloggingheads will be ending, stating that "the era in which Bloggingheads makes sense is kinda over," however the site currently continues to operate.
== Format ==
Bloggingheads discussions are conducted via webcam between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in Flash format, or downloaded as WMV video files, MP4 video files, or MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are generally posted daily, and are all archived for future viewing. The diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length, links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion.
Most of the discussions posted to Bloggingheads.tv involve well known (or semi-well known) journalists, bloggers, science writers, scientists, philosophers, book authors, or other specialists in segments of current world events. Many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment. Those with differing points of view are often matched against one another. Diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview, more often than that of a discussion, with a longtime Bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer.
=== Regular segments ===
Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place.
"Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists – Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers – all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology of creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted."
"The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others.

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== History ==
On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions. The site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers. On October 18, 2006, a site redesign was launched, with a revised home page and improved functionality: ability to comment on diavlogs was added, and to participate in forum discussions.
In January 2007, it was announced that cable TV pioneer and C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, with a loose network of others, would become an angel investor of Bloggingheads.tv. The infusion of cash kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site's content, and a corresponding growth in viewers. On March 24, 2007, in a diavlog between Garance Franke-Ruta and Ann Althouse, Althouse became quite animated and angry (to the point of yelling) over a comment Franke-Ruta made (in reference to an earlier controversy involving Jessica Valenti and former US president Bill Clinton) referred to as an on-air "meltdown" by some. This led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and Althouse's on air behavior.
On October 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with The New York Times, whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection. In 2008, several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular, including "Free Will", "This Week in Blog", and "UN Plaza". Other updates and tweaks to the site, such as the addition of the MP4 video format were also gradually phased in. In April 27, 2022, during an appearance on "the DMZ," Wright announced that Bloggingheads will be ending, with the remaining segments moving to their own independent platforms.
=== Media recognition ===
Traditional media outlets, such at The New York Times and others, have written mostly favorable reviews of Bloggingheads.tv. Stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions, as they are often well known individuals in the scientific, academic, journalism, or blogosphere community. Some events and personality appearances on Bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage, such as the March 24, 2007 Ann Althouse controversy described above, and the appearance of Andrew Sullivan on December 26, 2006 and January 1, 2007, when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the Iraq War, and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place.
== Contributors to Bloggingheads.tv ==
Apart from the regular contributors, a host of well known occasional guests have appeared, usually in the form of being interviewed. Among others, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama talked about his book America at the Crossroads; the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg discussed his book The Accidental Empire (about the history of the settlements); The Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach on an article of his about global warming deniers (among other topics); Andrew Sullivan on his book The Conservative Soul; biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey on how to defeat the "disease" of aging; philosopher David Chalmers; Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com); and Craig Venter, director of the Human Genome Project, who spoke of future scientific innovations he is currently pursuing.
== See also ==
Digital television
Interactive television
Podcast
Political podcast
MSN TV
Streaming television
Video on demand
Webcast
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tv
Associated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup Archived August 11, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
Business Week article on Bloggingheads.tv

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Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, Or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do is a bestselling book by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols about the effects bodies of water have on human health and well-being.
== Contents ==
The book covers "therapeutic landscapes" as they are referred to in medical literature, specifically ones that are near, in, or on the water. The book analyzes studies that suggest living or simply being near bodies of water can have powerful psychological and even physiological effects.
=== Human condition ===
Blue Mind considers the impact of water on the human condition and mental health. Author Wallace Nichols told Quartz:
People can experience the benefits of the water whether they're near the ocean, a lake, river, swimming pool or even listening to the soothing sound of a fountain. Most communities are built near bodies of water not just for practical reasons, but because as humans, we're naturally drawn to blue space...but even if you aren't in an area where there is easy access to water, you can still experience [its] emotional benefits. Many scribes, poets, painters, and sailors have attested to the feeling of wellness and peace that comes over them when they're in, or near, bodies of water.
=== Research ===
Blue Mind compiles and analyzes recent scientific research that has shown water's favorable cognitive and physical impacts being quantified by experts. The book shows proof that living near the shore, for example, has been shown to boost physical health and well-being. It also provides evidence that water generates a meditative state, which makes us happier, healthier, calmer, and more creative.
== Reception ==
The book was received well by critics, and made The New York Times Best Seller list. A review from The Guardian labeled Blue Mind "popular psychology", calling it "a study in water and why it makes us happy". A review from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography said "Blue Mind is an interesting read and presents a different perspective on water than we typically think about during the course of our hectic days."
== References ==

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Blueprint for Disaster is a Canadian documentary television series that premiered in 2004 on Discovery Channel Canada. Produced by Temple Street Productions, the program investigates why and how various disasters have happened. Toronto-based Voice Artist Adrian Bell provided the narration for the first series. As of 2008, two seasons have been produced.
== Episodes ==
=== Season 1 ===
=== Season 2 ===
== See also ==
Seconds from Disaster
Seismic Seconds
Mayday
Trapped
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived September 30, 2005) by the Discovery Channel
Temple Street Productions
Blueprint for Disaster at IMDb

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Brain Blogger is a Scientific American partner biomedical blog sponsored by the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation (GNIF) and edited by Shaheen Lakhan. Its byline is "a brain-themed community." It reviews the latest news and stories related to neuroscience/neurology, psychology/psychiatry, and health/healthcare.
According to its website, the blog is written by over 100 biomedical professionals—from neurosurgeons to psychologists—and follows the Health On the Net Foundation honor code of medical blogging ethics. It is syndicated by Google News and major media outlets, including Time Warner, San Antonio Express-News, and Sun-Times News Group.
Brain Blogger is a finalist for two Seed Media Group's Research Blogging Awards 2010 in the categories "Best Blog — Neuroscience" and "Best Blog — Psychology". Moreover, it ranks first in Blogs.com's "10 Best Brain Blogs".
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website

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Challenger is a 1990 American disaster drama television film based on the events surrounding the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. Its production was somewhat controversial as the families of the astronauts generally objected to it. A prologue states that the film was "researched with the consultation of the National Aeronauts and Space Administration" and partly filmed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
== Plot ==
The film concentrates on the safety inspections and arguments surrounding the O-rings that ultimately were blamed for the explosion of Challenger. While doing this, it also aims to show the personal humanity of the seven crew members. Generally, the film supports the Space Shuttle program and the dedication of NASA personnel in general while criticizing NASA management.
After beginning on the eve of the launch, the rest of the film is told through flashback, beginning on July 19, 1985, when Christa McAuliffe was officially selected to be the first teacher to travel into space. The film ends just as the shuttle takes off on January 28, 1986, following a symbolic scene of each of the seven crew members and passengers reciting in their thoughts John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem "High Flight". U.S. President Ronald Reagan used part of "High Flight" in a speech written by Peggy Noonan on the night after the Challenger disaster while eulogizing the fallen members of the crew.
== Cast ==
Karen Allen portrayed Christa McAuliffe, Kristin Bond portrayed McAuliffe's daughter, Caroline, and Kale Browne portrayed McAuliffe's husband, Steven. Allen and Browne were married in real life.
Peter Boyle portrayed Roger Boisjoly, the Thiokol engineer most vocal about the danger of launching at extremely low temperatures because of the risk that the O-ring seals in the shuttle's rocket boosters would fail at those temperatures.
The film also examines the personal lives of the other members of the crew - Barry Bostwick as Commander Dick Scobee, Brian Kerwin as Pilot Michael Smith, Joe Morton as Dr. Ronald McNair, Keone Young as Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, Richard Jenkins as Gregory B. Jarvis, Julie Fulton as Dr. Judith Resnik - and their families - Angela Bassett as Cheryl McNair, Elizabeth Kemp as Jane Smith, Jeanne Mori as Lorna Onizuka, Debbie Boily as Marcia Jarvis, Melinda Ann Austin as June Scobee, Melissa Chan as Janelle Onizuka, Gavin Luckett as Reggie McNair, Naoka Nakagawa as Darien Onizuka, Thomas Allen Jr. as Scott Smith - before they boarded Challenger.
== Emmy award ==
At the 42nd Primetime Emmy Awards in September 1990, Challenger won Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries or a Special.
== See also ==
The Challenger Disaster, 2013 film
Challenger: The Final Flight, 2020 documentary miniseries
== References ==
== External links ==
Challenger at IMDb

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Climate Audit is a blog founded in 2005 by Steve McIntyre.
In November 2009 journalist Andrew Revkin described it in The New York Times as "a popular skeptics’ blog" run by McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining consultant. In 2010, a Nature article described the site as part of the "climate change skeptic community" alongside the Air Vent and the Blackboard.
== Founding ==
In 2004 Stephen McIntyre blogged on his website climate2003.com about his efforts with Ross McKitrick to get an extended analysis of the hockey stick graph into the journal Nature.
On 25 October 2004 McIntyre posted comments on climate2003.com about a piece by William Connolley circulated on various blogs, and on 26 October wrote, "Maybe I’ll start blogging some odds and ends that I’m working on. I’m going to post up some more observations on some of the blog criticisms." On 1 December Michael E. Mann and nine other scientists launched the RealClimate website as "a resource where the public can go to see what actual scientists working in the field have to say about the latest issues." On climate2003.com McIntyre noted this development in a blog post on 10 December, where he wrote "Mann and some of his colleagues have set up a blog at the above address. A couple of Mann's first postings have been arguments against our papers. I'll post up a two quick comments below." On 2 February 2005 McIntyre set up his Climate Audit blog, having found difficulties with posting comments on the climate2003.com layout.
Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology has said "McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog Realclimate with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there". She has also referred to this site as one of several "Climate Auditor" websites.
== Climatic Research Unit information requests and email controversy ==
After the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) came into effect in 2005, Climate Audit readers were asked to make FOI requests to the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) for the raw data from weather stations used in developing instrumental temperature record datasets, for copies of agreements under which the raw data was obtained from meteorology institutions, and also for email correspondence relating to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.
On 12 August 2009, Olive Heffernan wrote in naturenews that "Since 2002, Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science, has repeatedly asked Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, for access to monthly global surface temperature data held by the institute. But in recent weeks, Jones has been swamped by a sudden surge in demands for data". She described how CRU had received 58 FOIA requests between 24 and 29 July 2009 from McIntyre or others associated with the blog. The raw data was restricted to academics, and the unit's director Phil Jones said that the data was subject to confidentiality agreements with various governments, but he was seeking agreement to get the raw data available online. He said that “Data release needs to be done in a systematic way.”
The site was one of the first to receive word of the e-mails which had been leaked from the University of East Anglia with Jonathan Leake of The Times writing, "The storm began with just four cryptic words. 'A miracle has happened,' announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change." Louise Gray wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "Climate Audit was one of the first to post up the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia that led to the 'climategate' scandal".
Bloomberg said of the controversy, "Web sites and blogs including the Climate Audit Mirror Site have carried copies of e-mails, correspondence between climatologists and commentary. In one e-mail cited widely on blogs including Climate Audit, Phil Jones writes about completing “Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps” in order to hide the decline." According to Antonio Regalado writing in Science Insider, Jones wrote e-mails stating that he convinced the university's FOI managers to not release data to "greenhouse skeptics" because Jones believed that they planned to harm the UEA or setback climate science by drawing scientists into disputes, wasting research time. "Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit," Jones wrote in 2007. The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee largely vindicated the scientists involved in the scandal, but left consideration of the quality of the science and the conduct of the research to committees chaired by Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell. Fox News said that McIntyre "who also worked at the IPCC and submitted notes to the Science and Technology Committee for its investigation, wrote a lengthy rebuttal of the decision on his blog", and disputed the committee's conclusion that the word trick "appears to be a colloquialism for a 'neat' method of handling data". Further investigations by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Commerce and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the National Science Foundation reaffirmed that the accusations against the scientists were unfounded.
== Reception ==
James Hansen, the former director of NASA's Goddard Institute, has dismissed McIntyre as a "court jester".
"If a single person can be credited with setting the stage for Climategate, it's Stephen McIntyre, the retired mining consultant behind the popular skeptic blog Climate Audit," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones in 2011. "Emails from this period show the scientists lashing out against McIntyre. He is referred to as a "bozo" and "a playground bully." McIntyre clearly gets a rise out of irking scientists, whom he frequently refers to as 'the Team'—another play on the hockey-stick metaphor. He likes to 'tease these guys and kind of make fun of them,' he says, and their evident aggravation at his inquiries only egged him on. 'I think it was a mistake for them to in effect adopt a fatwa against Climate Audit,' says McIntyre."
Patrick J. Michaels, a former contributor to the IPCC and a former fellow at the denialist Cato Institute, named Climate Audit as part of 'a new “parallel universe” of emerging online publications, manned by serious scientists critical of world governments approach to climate change'. “A parallel universe is assembling itself parallel to the IPCC. This universe has become very technical -- very proficient at taking apart the U.N.’s findings."
Internet voting by the public organized by the Weblog Awards, a right-wing blog sponsored by conservative media group Wizbang LLC, won the website the 2007 Weblog "Best Science Blog" award and it was a runner up in the same category in 2008.
== See also ==
Global warming controversy
The Hockey Stick Illusion
Tree ring
== References ==
== External links ==
ClimateAudit
Climate Audit on LittleSis, a website that publishes data on who-knows-who between government, donors and business

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Code of a Killer is a three-part British police drama television series which tells the true story of Alec Jeffreys' discovery of DNA fingerprinting and its introductory use by Detective David Baker in catching the double murderer Colin Pitchfork. Filming commenced in late September 2014, and the program aired on the ITV network, on 6 and 13 April 2015. Endemol Shine handled international distribution of the series.
== Plot ==
Set over a nearly four-year period from 1983 to 1987, DCS David Baker leads an investigation into the vicious murders of the two Leicestershire teenage schoolgirls, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. Meanwhile, Alec Jeffreys is an ambitious scientist who has recently discovered a remarkable method to read a person's DNA and, from it, generate a unique DNA fingerprint. Convinced one local person committed both crimes, Baker approaches Jeffreys to utilise his scientific technique to solve the murders. The first-ever DNA manhunt follows, involving the blood testing of many men — all in the aid of catching the killer.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
=== Development ===
Code of a Killer was commissioned by ITV's Director of Drama Steve November and Controller of Drama Victoria Fea on 16 May 2014. The series was developed with the participation of retired Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys and former Detective Chief Superintendent David Baker. It was written by Michael Crompton, directed by James Strong, produced by Priscilla Parish, and executive produced by Simon Heath for World Productions. Filming began in late September 2014, and the episodes were shown on 6 and 13 April 2015 at 9:00 p.m. on the ITV network.
== Broadcast ==
The series premiered in Australia on BBC First on 19 September 2015.
== Episodes ==
Originally aired in 2015 in the UK and Australia as two 65-minute episodes; currently streams online as three 45-minute episodes plus one 28-minute ‘Behind the Scenes’ special. The episode descriptions below are for the (current) thee-episode format, while air dates and viewership data apply to the (original) two-episode format.
== Reception ==
=== Critical reception ===
The drama received a mixed reception. The first part was criticised for dramatic sluggishness and a reliance on crime-show clichés in the portrayal of the two main characters. The depiction of Alec Jeffreys as the stereotypical absent-minded "boffin" was cited by several reviewers. Gerard O'Donovan in The Daily Telegraph called the show's version of him a "stock obsessive boffin so wedded to his lab instruments that his marriage was permanently on the brink of collapse". Julia Raeside in The Guardian wrote, "There are obligatory scenes in which Jeffreys misses a school play and receives a phone call from his wife pronouncing, 'Your dinner’s in the dog.' There are only so many times co-workers can remark, 'Don’t work too late' or 'Aren’t you going home?' before the hammering repetition starts to cause a dent in your enjoyment." Chris Bennion in The Independent concluded that "Sadly this drama had the fingerprints of countless other by-numbers crime thrillers all over it."
Alex Hardy in The Times was less critical, giving the show four stars out of five and saying that "this fact-based drama managed to balance tragedy with optimism", but added that it "inevitably contained elements of soap".
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Code of a Killer at IMDb
Code of a Killer at British TV Detectives

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Compound Interest is a website launched in 2013 by Andy Brunning with infographics on everyday chemistry. The infographics describe, for example, how chemicals found in food and nature give them smell, taste, and color. The website has a monthly collaboration with the American Chemical Society. Content of the website is used as information source by various newspapers and media, including the Washington Post, Time, The Conversation, and Forbes.
== References ==

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Cosmic Variance was a collaborative weblog discussing physics, astrophysics, and other topics, written by JoAnne Hewett, Mark Trodden, Sean Carroll, Risa Wechsler, Julianne Dalcanton, Clifford Johnson, John Conway, and Daniel Holz. It was the successor to Carroll's earlier blog Preposterous Universe, which began in early 2004 and ran through much of 2005. The blog's name came from th concept of cosmic variance in cosmology.
Cosmic Variance rapidly become "undoubtedly the most popular blog written by physicists." In 2006, Nature reported that it was the fourth most popular science blog and one of only five blogs by scientists in the 3500 most popular blogs. As of July 26, 2007, Cosmic Variance had a Technorati authority of 1001 and rank of 2277. In 2008, the blog became part of the Discover magazine website.
Most writing on Cosmic Variance focused on modern physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, at a level accessible to the interested non-scientist. However, topics of discussion ranged widely, including science and religion, science journalism, higher education, and politics. Several discussions on Cosmic Variance gained attention in the print media, including a discussion on women in science that compared physicist Lisa Randall to Jodie Foster and a post by John Conway about his discovery of a "bump" in particle accelerator data that turned out not to be caused by the Higgs boson. When the engagement of Carroll to science writer Jennifer Ouellette was first announced on his blog, the story was picked up by both the New York Times and the prominent scientific journal Nature.
Cosmic Variance hosted a number of guest bloggers, including string theorist Joseph Polchinski reviewing Lee Smolin's book The Trouble With Physics.
== References ==
== External links ==
Cosmic Variance

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Creation is a 2009 British biographical drama film about Charles Darwin's relationship with his wife Emma and his memory of their eldest daughter Annie, as he struggles to write On the Origin of Species. The film, directed by Jon Amiel and starring real life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin, is a somewhat fictionalised account based on Randal Keynes's Darwin biography Annie's Box.
== Plot ==
British naturalist Charles Darwin is a young father who lives a quiet life in an idyllic village. He is a brilliant and deeply emotional man, devoted to his wife and children. Darwin is especially fond of his eldest daughter Annie, a precocious and inquisitive ten-year-old. He teaches her much about nature and science, including his theory of evolution, and tells her stories of his travels. Her favourite story, despite the sad ending, is about the young orangutan Jenny, who is brought from Borneo to the London Zoo, where she finally died of pneumonia in the arms of her keeper. Darwin is furious when he learns that the family clergyman has made Annie kneel on rock salt as punishment for contradicting him about dinosaurs, which she takes as having become extinct long ago. This contradicts their church's position that life is unchanging and that the Earth is very young -- Young Earth Creationism being a then-recent heresy taken as dogma by Seventh-day Adventists.
Having returned from his expedition in the Galapagos Islands 15 years earlier, Darwin is still trying to finish a manuscript about his findings, which will articulate his theory of evolution. The delay is caused by anxiety about his relationship with his devoutly religious wife, Emma, who fundamentally opposes his ideas, which pose a threat to established Anglican theology. Emma worries that she may go to heaven and he may not, separating them for eternity.
The film shows Annie, through flashbacks and Darwin's hallucinations, as a vibrant apparition who goads her father to address his fears and finish his big work. It is apparent that Annie has died, and that her death is a taboo subject between Darwin and Emma, as both feel intense blame for her death. As a result of the strained relations between Charles and Emma, they entirely stop having sex. Anguished, Darwin begins to suffer from a mysterious, fatiguing illness.
It is revealed that after Annie becomes ill in 1851, Darwin takes her to the Worcestershire town of Malvern for James Manby Gully's water cure therapy, against Emma's will. Annie's condition worsens, and she ultimately dies after her father, at her request, tells her Jenny's story once more. Darwin is devastated, and her death sharpens his conviction that natural laws operate without divine intervention. To his contemporaries, this is an idea so dangerous it seems to threaten the existence of God (in reality, many of Darwin's biggest supporters were believers). In a box in Darwin's study, we discover the notes and observations that will become On the Origin of Species.
Having read his 230 page synopsis, Darwin's friends in the scientific community, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley, also encourage him. Huxley admiringly tells Darwin that with his theory he has "killed God", which fills Darwin with dread. In his hallucinations, he also feels that Annie disapproves of his procrastination.
Darwin receives a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858, which details the same findings as Darwin in 20 pages. He has mixed feelings about this; all his work may have been in vain, but on the other hand, as he will not have to write his book, the discord with Emma will heal. However, Darwin's friends urge him to continue, as his book is much more comprehensive.
After receiving treatment at Malvern himself, Darwin makes a pilgrimage to the hotel where Annie died. The journey marks a change in him; upon his return home, he is able to reconnect with his wife, and they speak to each other for the first time of their fears and grief over Annie's death. They specifically speak about the possibility that Annie died because she was genetically weak, as Darwin and Emma are first cousins. Their renewed devotion restores Darwin's health, and he is able to resume his work. Emma's faith in their marriage is also restored, and she regains strength to support his controversial work. Darwin decides that Emma must make the decision about publishing his work. After reading the manuscript, she quietly returns it to him, having addressed the package to John Murray publishers in London. Emma accepts that she is an "accomplice" now, but hopes that God will forgive them both.
Darwin walks down the lane, holding the package. When the postman arrives, Darwin falters, almost letting him go empty-handed. The postman rides away, unaware of the powerful idea about to be released onto the world. As Darwin walks home, the little figure of Annie walks alongside him.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
Creation is an adaptation by screenwriter John Collee of Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution, a bestselling biography of Charles Darwin by Darwin's great-great grandson Randal Keynes.
The film was produced by Jeremy Thomas's Recorded Picture Company as a co-development with BBC Films, and with financial assistance from the UK Film Council's development fund. Much of the filming, which was completed in December 2008, took place in the Wiltshire town of Bradford on Avon, which was standing in for Malvern, and at Darwin's home, Down House in Kent.

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== Releases ==
The film had its world premiere on 10 September 2009 at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival as the opening night gala presentation, the first non-Canadian film since 1996 to be so honoured.
On 24 September 2009, Variety reported that Newmarket Films had acquired the rights to the film, which Newmarket released on 22 January in the U.S.
The film was released in the U.K. on 25 September 2009, in Greece on 15 October 2009, in Japan on 20 October 2009 (Tokyo International Film Festival), in New Zealand on 24 December 2009, in the Netherlands on 7 January 2010, in Belgium on 20 January 2010, and in the U.S. and Canada on 22 January 2010.
According to producer Jeremy Thomas, the United States was one of the last countries to find a distributor, due to the prominence of controversy about evolution and creation. Thomas said, in the beginning of September 2009:
It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He [God] made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for us in the U.K. to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the U.S., outside of New York and Los Angeles, religion rules.
His comments in the mainstream press, and the publicity surrounding the Toronto premiere, provoked Internet flame wars across religious, atheist, science, and film communities. Posts on related blogs such as that of film critic Roger Ebert (a noted admirer of Darwin) stretched into the hundreds.
== Reception ==
The film has received mixed reviews by critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 47% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 115 reviews, with an average score of 5.5/10:
This Charles Darwin biopic is curiously dispassionate, but Creation contains some of director Jon Amiel's best work, and Paul Bettany's performance is not to be missed. Based on 28 reviews, Metacritic assigned a score of 51/100, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
In The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote "the film traffics in the pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo that is the standard folk religion of the film biography, and undermines its interest in reason by dabbling in emotive pop occultism."
Film critic Philip French, writing in The Observer, called the film "A complex, truthful work that does justice to Darwin's theories and their implications", while his colleague, film critic Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, wrote "This gentle, heartfelt and well-acted film about Charles Darwin and his personal agony preceding the 1859 publication of 'On the Origin of Species' does not shy away from the issues. But it personalises them, and places them in a new context."
In The Daily Telegraph, film critic Tim Robey opined: "Bettany has a genius for distraction and reverie, guiding the film intelligently in and out of its soul-searching flashbacks. Only the closing shot of father and daughter walking hand in hand feels like a sentimental misstep—the one touch too much, in a sad, searching piece of work about the reluctant labour of a great idea." In Screen International, senior film critic Fionnuala Halligan wrote: "Bettany is undoubtedly the film's main asset: physically and emotionally convincing as Darwin in a very tricky role. Amiel's core challenge here is to make audiences believe their story: parents to 10 children, eminent Victorians with an unusual devotion to their brood; the author of a book which changed the world."
Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, film critic Ray Bennett said "Amiel's greatest achievement is that Creation is a deeply human film with moments of genuine lightness and high spirits to go with all the deep thinking."
== References ==
== External links ==

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Daedalus; or, Science and the Future is a book by the British scientist J. B. S. Haldane, published in England in 1924. It was the text of a lecture read to the Heretics Society (an intellectual club at the University of Cambridge) on 4 February 1923.
Haldane uses the Greek myth of Daedalus as a symbol for the revolutionary nature of science with particular regard to his own discipline of biology.
The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural.
He also expressed skepticism over the human benefits of some scientific advances, arguing that scientific advance would bring grief, rather than progress to mankind, unless it was accompanied by a similar advance in ethics.
The book is an early vision of transhumanism and his vision of a future in which humans controlled their own evolution through directed mutation and use of in vitro fertilisation ("ectogenesis") was a major influence on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The book ends with the image of a biologist, much like Haldane himself, in a laboratory: "just a poor little scrubby underpaid man groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultramicroscope... conscious of his ghastly mission and proud of it."
The book has been discussed at length by other writers, including Freeman Dyson in his book Imagined Worlds and Sal Restivo in Science, Society, and Values, and the concept has been used in contemporary science lectures.
== References ==
== External links ==
Daedalus; or, Science and the Future at Project Gutenberg
book at HathiTrust

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Day One is a made-for-TV docudrama film about the Manhattan Project, the research and development of the atomic bomb during World War II. It is based on the book by Peter H. Wyden. The film was written by David W. Rintels and directed by Joseph Sargent. It starred Brian Dennehy as General Leslie Groves, David Strathairn as Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Michael Tucker as Dr. Leo Szilard. It premiered in the United States on March 5, 1989 on the CBS network. It won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama/ or Comedy Special at the 41st Primetime Emmy Awards in 1989. The movie received critical acclaim for its historical accuracy despite being a dramatization.
== Plot ==
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard flees Germany on the last train out and leaves Europe during World War II. He attempts to convince the military in England that a nuclear bomb can be built and that the Germans are already working on it. His idea is filed and ignored. He eventually arrives in the United States where, with the help of Albert Einstein, he persuades the Federal government after a year to build an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project is started and General Leslie Groves selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard (whose idea was responsible for the progress made) has second thoughts about atomic weapons and debates how and when to use the bom
As Germany is being defeated and its scientists interrogated, it is found out that they have not even come close to constructing a nuclear bomb (partly due to bad cooperation by scientists). Despite the fact that no one has the technology now, and the original reason for the Manhattan Project is gone, work continues. Szilard, who first used Einstein to get his ideas about building a bomb across to the US leaders, now convinces him to join him in writing a letter to President Harry S. Truman to do the opposite, namely not to build the bomb, in order to avoid an arms race. 68 scientists sign a petition, but that is held back by the military.
U.S. President Truman is faced with four options: peace talks (which would require the Japanese to keep their emperor, as eventually happened), a blockade (which was thought to be cowardly), an invasion (estimated by some to cost up to a million lives, though such numbers have been widely disputed), or dropping the bomb. Another consideration is that the USSR had said they would enter the war against Japan three months after the surrender of Germany and there is a fear that they might not leave. So Truman decides that the best course of action is to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, against the advice of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
== Cast ==
== Production ==
In order to depict a desert setting, certain scenes of the film were filmed in a town named Notre Dame de Lourdes, located in the province of Quebec. The town offered a wide expanse of sand quarry that was used for filming.
== See also ==
The Beginning or the End, 1947 docudrama film about the Manhattan Project.
Oppenheimer, 1980 biographical television series about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Sam Waterston) and the project to build the atomic bomb.
Fat Man and Little Boy, 1989 film about the Manhattan Project, starring Paul Newman as General Leslie Groves and Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer
Nuclear Secrets, 2007 TV mini-series with two episodes dedicated to the Manhattan Project
Manhattan, 2014-15 television series set at the Manhattan Project
Oppenheimer, 2023 film about Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and the Manhattan Project
== References ==
== External links ==
Day One at IMDb

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The Day of Archaeology is an annual, 24-hour, international online event in which archaeologists and those in related fields write blog posts about their work. It was inspired by the Day of Digital Humanities and, similarly, allows practitioners of many kinds, to document their work informally and 'provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world'. Though it encourages diversity rather than thematic posts, the project has some similarities to Blog Action Day.
== Overview ==
The first event took place on 27 July 2011. The event is organised by a voluntary committee of archaeologists based in the United Kingdom, United States of America and Spain. The main site runs a customised WordPress content management system and the event is promoted through Twitter and Facebook pages (see External links).
The project is supported by several British archaeological and academic organisations: server space is provided on the Portable Antiquities Scheme servers and long-term digital preservation is provided by the Archaeology Data Service. L-P Archaeology and the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities provide technical and management advice. In 2011 and 2013 the event was timed to coincide with the Festival of British Archaeology.
The project covers any form of work that could be considered archaeology and encourages contributions from any level of professionalism.
== External coverage ==
Several archaeologists have blogged about the project in official and personal capacities and the project committee wrote posts on various other sites, notably the Society for Historical Archaeology and the British Museum.
After the 2011 event a preliminary data mining analysis was conducted. Similarly, after the 2014 event a topic modelling and keyword analysis was published.
The Day of Archaeology project was nominated for a British Archaeology Award in July 2011 in the 'Best Representation of Archaeology in the Media' category and was highly commended.
== Event summaries ==
Data sources:
== References ==
== External links ==
Day of Archaeology on Twitter
Day of Archaeology on Facebook
Day of Archaeology on Flickr

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Durma Melhor ("Sleep Better", translated into English) is a Brazilian blog featuring relevant information on issues related to sleep. Published in Portuguese, the blog content includes articles on nutrition, beauty, exercise, relaxation, environment, technology, scientific studies and frequently asked questions regarding sleep.
It also features a selection of videos, podcasts, books, websites, soothing songs available for free download, as well as online tests to assess one's sleep quality and a comprehensive list of sleep labs in Brazil.
Durma Melhor contributors include Dr. Flávio Alóe, neurologist and neurophysiologist of the Brazilian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology and a certified physician in Sleep Medicine by the Brazilian Society of Sleep, who's been widely interviewed by Brazilian magazines, newspapers and TV shows, such as Programa do Jô.
In April 2010, Durma Melhor launched a channel that allows the general public to send questions and have them answered by experts in sleep medicine.
The blog was launched in January 2010 by Marcos Miguel, a Brazilian journalist who's graduated at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, in Minas Gerais state.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official site

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End Day is a 2005 docu-drama produced by the BBC. It aired on the National Geographic Channel, on the TV series National Geographic Channel Presents, and BBC Three. It depicts a set of five doomsday scenarios. The documentary follows the fictional scientist Dr. Howell, played by Glenn Conroy, as he travels from his London hotel room to his laboratory in New York City, and shows how each scenario affects his journey as well as those around him, with various experts providing commentary on that specific disaster as it unfolds. After each 'End Day' runs its course, the day repeats, this time with the next scenario panning out.
The following descriptions of the program were released by the BBC:
"Imagine waking up to the last day on Earth..."
"Inspired by the predictions of scientists, End Day creates apocalyptic scenarios that go beyond reality. In a single hour, explore five different fictional disasters, from a giant tsunami hitting New York to a deadly meteorite strike on Berlin."
== Scenarios ==
=== Mega-Tsunami ===
A volcanic eruption of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands triggers a massive landslide. A sizable portion of the island collapses into the sea, causing a massive tsunami, 500 feet (150 m) tall, to race across the Atlantic Ocean. The United States Navy searches for the wave and locates it, predicting that the mega-tsunami will strike the East Coast of the United States. An evacuation of New York City is ordered but not completed by the time the wave arrives and inundates the city, killing thousands of people but leaving many sturdier buildings intact, which proved to be crucial in providing a means of escape. A briefing by the US government after the flood waters started receding reveals that the wave travelled over two miles inland. Despite the vast amount of casualties, a substantial number of New York citizens survive the disaster by climbing to the upper floors of tall buildings, which were able to withstand the force of the tsunami.
=== Killer Meteorite ===
This scenario begins with a suspected missile attack in a remote area of the Middle East. The missiles are soon revealed to be a meteor shower of meteoroids, the advance guard of a much larger asteroid that is predicted to impact Berlin, Germany. After determining the asteroid's size and orbital characteristics, the militaries of Germany, Britain, and the United States attempt to alter its course using ICBMs. The asteroid is shattered into hundreds of fragments, but the effort fails to alter its course. An evacuation of Berlin is achieved with public transport; citizens unable to escape seek shelter in the city's U-Bahn stations. As fragments rain down across Berlin, one train manages to escape just in time to avoid the largest fragment striking and destroying a large portion of the city's centre, leaving an impact crater where the Reichstag building once stood.
=== Global Pandemic ===
In this scenario, a variant of influenza named the "Far East Virus" with similarities to SARS spreads to the UK after its patient zero travels from Hong Kong to London, then infects people on a London Underground train. The virus rapidly spreads across Europe and beyond without any containment, developing into a pandemic. Areas of the UK are placed under quarantine. Countries around the world enact martial law and close their borders in an effort to slow the spread of the disease. These efforts fail, and the outbreak reaches the scale of the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic, killing millions of people.
=== Supervolcano ===
The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park begins to become active, showing the initial signs of activity through volcanic earthquakes in Wyoming. Volcanic activity increases in the area at an exponential rate, indicating that an eruption is imminent. A geyser and then Yellowstone itself explodes, incinerating everything within 100 kilometres of the caldera. The volcanic ash launched into the atmosphere grounds civil aviation across Europe and North America and is expected to bring about a volcanic winter. Survivors emerge from the wreckage of Denver, the city scorched by pyroclastic and lava flows.
==== Note ====
This segment has only aired in the UK. The BBC docudrama Supervolcano explored this scenario more in-depth.
=== Strange Matter ===
Dr. Howell reaches the laboratory unimpeded, and is tasked with carrying out an experiment using the world's largest particle accelerator. The experiment goes wrong, resulting in the creation of a strangelet, a hypothetical particle containing strange quarks that is capable of converting ordinary matter into strange matter. The strangelet causes the particle accelerator to explode, then rises to the surface, converting the entirety of New York City and wreaking havoc on Earth's atmosphere, triggering vast storm systems to form. Paris is devoured by one such storm system, and the strange matter continues to spread exponentially. Off-screen, the strangelet finishes consuming and converting the planet into a sphere of pure strange matter. Ironically, by preventing Dr. Howell from reaching the particle accelerator, each of the other potential disasters inadvertently saved the Earth from total destruction.
== Alternative versions ==
All original official sources cite five different scenarios including a giant volcanic explosion, but the volcanic explosion segment has never been aired in the United States, having been edited out by the National Geographic Channel, possibly for time problems or the inaccurate depiction of the Western United States and Yellowstone park. All references to it on the National Geographic website have been removed. Only the other four scenarios have been aired. However, the BBC website had the super volcano segment until it was removed some time after 28 May 2006. UKTV History aired the version including the supervolcano segment on 23 January 2007. However, in the original BBC airing, each of the scenarios showed the attempts of a family or person to escape the depicted disaster, as well as following Dr. Howell; these segments were mostly cut from the UKTV History version aired in 2007. The volcano sequence can however be found on the popular video website YouTube.
A French-dubbed version of End Day was aired in France on W9) and in Belgium (on RTBF), under the title Fin du monde : les quatre scénarios (End day: the four scenarios). The "super volcano" scenario was not included.
== References in the film ==
When Dr. Howell drives off in a taxi at the beginning of the second segment, a cinema showing "Groundhog Day appears. In Groundhog Day, the protagonist is stuck in a single day of his life, repeating it time after time with minor variations.
== See also ==
Extinction event
Near-Earth object
== References ==
== External links ==
End Day at BBC Online
"National Geographic Channel: End Day official website". Archived from the original on 11 December 2005. Retrieved 7 July 2006.
"BBC: End Day official website". Archived from the original on 28 May 2006. Retrieved 17 July 2006.
End Day at IMDb
Banks-Smith, Nancy (17 March 2005). "The inedible journey". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 July 2025. Retrieved 28 July 2025.

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FESOM (Finite-Element/volumE Sea ice-Ocean Model) is a
multi-resolution ocean general circulation model that solves the equations
of motion describing the ocean and sea ice using finite-element and
finite-volume methods on unstructured computational grids. The model
is developed and supported by researchers at the Alfred Wegener
Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), in Bremerhaven,
Germany.
== Overview ==
FESOM implements the idea of using meshes with variable resolution
to simulate the circulation of the global ocean with regional focus. Because
of the broad range of scales characterizing the ocean circulation, downscaling
is commonly needed to describe processes on regional scales. FESOM allows global
multi-resolution cross-scale simulations without traditional nesting.
The dynamical core of the new version (FESOM2) switches from the finite-element
method used in the original version of FESOM to the finite-volume method for the sake of better computational efficiency. Both versions include the Finite-Element Sea Ice Model (FESIM). FESOM is also used as the ocean component of the AWI-CM, the coupled atmosphere-ocean climate model developed at AWI.
== History ==
The prototype version of FESOM appeared in 2004 due to work of Sergey Danilov,
Gennady Kivman and Jens Schröter. Ralph Timmermann extended it to a full global ocean – sea ice configuration in 2009. Qiang Wang rewrote its numerical algorithm and parameterizations from 2008 through 2014, which led to essentially improved numerical and physical performance. The last release of FESOM with the finite-element dynamical core is FESOM1.4 (Wang et al., 2014).
The release of AWI-CM using FESOM is by Sidorenko et al. in 2015.
== References ==
== External links ==
FESOM1.4 source code Archived 2018-11-03 at the Wayback Machine
FESOM2 source code
FESOM website

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Fallout is a RTÉ two-part fictional, doom laden docudrama. It deals with the nuclear fallout following a hypothetical disaster in the Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Cumbria on the British coast of the Irish Sea. The docu-drama suggests that, due to a changing wind direction, Ireland would bear the brunt of the British accident. The docu-drama was based on the false premise, that such an accident as depicted in the drama could happen and that parts of Ireland would need to be evacuated following a serious accident at Sellafield. Dr Ann McGarry, chief executive of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, said: "The scenario envisaged in the programme is not realistic and grossly exaggerates the amount of radioactivity that could reach Ireland. The RPII cannot envisage any realistic scenario that would cause the radiation levels in Ireland to reach the concentrations as what was depicted in the drama". Following the dramatized accident, the docu-drama depicts Irish evacuation riots, societal collapse and widespread health impacts.
== Episodes ==
=== Part one ===
Part One aired on 23 April 2006, and focuses on the immediate aftermath of the incident and the implications which may arise for the Irish population. The plot is released in the style of "breaking news" (from both RTÉ News and BBC News 24) and as footage captured by a documentary crew and various camera phone video clips from eyewitnesses.
=== Part two ===
Part Two aired 24 April 2006 and is set a year later, dealing with more long-term repercussions such as the social and economic climate. The main characters are revisited and interviewed.
== Criticism ==
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Dick Roche criticised the show for "portraying Irish people as barbaric". The accident scenario is considered outlandish. In addition, the Irish government are currently attempting through a court action to close the Sellafield nuclear plant; the topic of the programme may be regarded as being sub judice.
When attempting to stem leaks found in the Sellafield facility, an explosion occurs. This sets off a further chain of explosions in the HASTs (Highly Active Storage Tank), resulting in the release of a highly radioactive plume. A north-easterly wind carries this radioactive material over the Irish Sea, which hits Ireland's eastern coast, particularly County Louth and the Dublin area (Ireland's main population centre) causing widespread chaos.
The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland also voiced criticisms at the time of airing, Dr Ann McGarry, chief executive of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, said: "The scenario envisaged in the programme is not realistic and grossly exaggerates the amount of radioactivity that could reach Ireland. The RPII cannot envisage any realistic scenario that would cause the radiation levels in Ireland to reach the concentrations as what was depicted in the drama". The RPII was also concerned that the programme appeared to suggest that evacuation would be the appropriate response to an accident at Sellafield. With Dr. McGarry explaining that International best practice indicates that evacuation would not be required as Ireland is at sufficient distance from the British nuclear facilities, that radiation levels arising from an accident would never be sufficiently high to give rise to the effects displayed in the programme.
== References ==

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Formularium Slovenicum is Slovenian addendum to the European Pharmacopoeia. It promotes Slovenian pharmaceutical terminology and the regulations affecting the field of pharmacy in Slovenia. It has been regularly published by the Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of the Republic of Slovenia.
Slovenia does not have its own pharmacopoeia, i.e. a collection of monographs and other provisions containing legally binding regulations regarding the development, manufacture, and quality assessment of medicinal products and their ingredients as well as other information on medicinal products and their use. Since 1997, European Pharmacopoeia has been in force in the Republic of Slovenia. The alignment of provisions of the national law in the field of medicinal products and regulations at the level of the European Pharmacopoeia brought forward the need for Slovenian addendum to the European Pharmacopoeia. The committee for drafting the national addendum at the Office for Medicinal Products of the Slovenian Ministry of Health issued in June 1998 the first edition of Formularium Slovenicum. Several amendments and updated editions have followed, though the work of the committee preparing Formularium Slovenicum was interrupted between 2013 and 2018.
Formularium Slovenicum supplements European Pharmacopoeia standards and provides translations of titles, complete translations of the main monographs or their individual parts, and translations of general chapters. The chapter National monographs comprises interesting and useful monographs for Slovenian pharmacy practice that the European Pharmacopoeia does not include. It also includes the chapter Standard Terms for Pharrmaceutical Forms, Methods of Administration, and Containers. Formularium Slovenicum has an important role in the drafting, development, and promotion of Slovenian pharmaceutical terms.
== Editions ==
The first edition has been followed by numerous amendments and updated editions:
1st edition – June 1998, six amendments
2nd edition – 2005, five amendments
3rd edition – 2011, two amendments
4th edition – August 2018, one amendment (solely online)
5th edition – August 2020 (solely online)
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website

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A formulary is a list of pharmaceutical drugs, often decided upon by a group of people, for various reasons such as insurance coverage or use at a medical facility. Traditionally, a formulary contained a collection of formulas for the compounding and testing of medication (a resource closer to what would be referred to as a pharmacopoeia today). Today, when most prescription drugs are fully prepared by their manufacturers, the main function of a prescription formulary is to specify particular medications that are approved to be prescribed at a particular hospital, in a particular health system, or under a particular health insurance policy. The development of prescription formularies is based on evaluations of efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness of drugs.
Depending on the individual formulary, it may also contain additional clinical information, such as side effects, contraindications, and doses.
By the turn of the millennium, 156 countries had national or provincial essential medicines lists and 135 countries had national treatment.
== Australia ==
In Australia, where there is a public health care system, medications are subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and medications that are available under the PBS and the indications for which they can be obtained under said scheme can be found in at least two places, the PBS webpage and the Australian Medicines Handbook.
== Canada ==
The Prescription Drug List is the national formulary that lists all medical ingredients for human and animal use available with a prescription with the exception of those under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) is the advisory body that evaluates new medical technologies and prescription medication. Based on recommendations the provincial and territorial governments decide whether or not to implement changes to their healthcare system and public drug formularies. Provincial and territorial government provide partial prescription drug coverage and the overall drug payment is a mix of public taxation, private insurance and out-of-pocket expenses. Insurance coverage differs regionally, although each public drug coverage plan must meet standards set by the federal government. Regional health authorities are in charge of regulating and providing its residents insurance while the federal government provides insurance for specifically eligible veterans, First Nations, Inuit, Canadian Forces, federal inmates and some refugees.
== India ==
The National Formulary of India (NFI) published by Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is essentially meant for the guidance of the members of the medical and pharmaceutical profession; medical students, nurses and pharmacists etc. working in hospitals, dispensaries and in sales establishments. In the preparation of this Formulary, the expert opinion of medical practitioners, teachers in medicine, nurses, pharmacists etc. has been obtained. The selection of drugs for inclusion in the National Formulary has been made taking into consideration the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various drugs used in current medical practice and their availability in the country. Thus, the National Formulary of India represents a broad consensus of expert opinion in respect of drugs and their formulations and provides the physicians with carefully selected therapeutic agents of proved effectiveness which form the basis of rational drug therapy.
The National Formulary of India is an authoritative guide to prescribing, dispensing and administering medicines for healthcare professionals. It will be useful for framing national drug policies in the country. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India vide its notification F. No. X. 11035/2/06-DFQC, dated 8th May 2008 assigned this mandatory responsibility to the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission, Ghaziabad to publish NFI on regular basis. The First Edition of NFI – National Formulary of India was published in year 1960. The IPC has published three consecutive editions of National Formulary of India since its formation. The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission has published the 4th edition, 5th edition and 6th edition of NFI. Stakeholders may order the copy of NFI-2021 from https://www.ipc.gov.in/shop/index.php?route=product/category&path=60 . The 7th Edition of National Formulary of India (NFI-2026) is expected to release by early 2026 along with its digital version.
=== Contents of the 6th Edition of the NFI (NFI-2021) ===
34 therapeutic categories chapters including 591 drug monographs and 23 Appendices based on contemporary knowledge.
33 rational fixed-dose combinations.
The NFI is aligned with the National Health Programmes and the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) of India.
Important weblinks related to NLEM, drugs banned in India, NHP, drugs banned in sports, immunization schedule, wherever necessary are provided for information to readers.
Special notes on "How to use NFI?" and Salient Features of NFI are added in this edition.
Indications approved by the Indian drug regulator, clinically relevant ones, and as per standard care are included.
The term 'availability' is replaced with 'dosage forms and usual strength'
The clinically relevant precautions and contraindications are included.
The common or the serious and clinically relevant adverse effects are included.
Storage conditions for medicines are included for special cases only.
The chapter on Medicines banned in sports in the previous edition has been considered under appendices in this edition.
Considering the prevalence of diabetes in the country a separate Chapter on Management of Diabetes is included after revising completely.
A new appendix on Good Distribution Practices is incorporated.
Appendix on National Immunization Schedule and IAP Immunization Schedule is revised as per current requirement.
== United States ==

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In the US, where a system of quasi-private healthcare is in place, a formulary is a list of prescription drugs available to enrollees, and a tiered formulary provides financial incentives for patients to select lower-cost drugs. For example, under a 3-tier formulary, the first tier typically includes generic drugs with the lowest cost sharing (e.g., 10% coinsurance), the second includes preferred brand-name drugs with higher cost sharing (e.g., 25%), and the third includes non-preferred brand-name drugs with the highest cost-sharing (e.g., 40%).
When used appropriately, formularies can help manage drug costs imposed on the insurance policy. However, for drugs that are not on formulary, patients must pay a larger percentage of the cost of the drug, sometimes 100%. Formularies vary between drug plans and differ in the breadth of drugs covered and costs of co-pay and premiums. Most formularies cover at least one drug in each drug class, and encourage generic substitution (also known as a preferred drug list). Formularies have shown to cause issues in hospitals when patients are discharged when not aligned with outpatient drug insurance plans.
== United Kingdom ==
In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) provides publicly funded universal health care, financed by national health insurance. Here, formularies exist to specify which drugs are available on the NHS. The two main reference sources providing this information are the British National Formulary (BNF) and the Drug Tariff. There is a section in the Drug Tariff, known unofficially as the "Blacklist", detailing medicines which are not to be prescribed under the NHS and must be paid for privately by the patient. Recommendations for additions to the NHS formulary are provided by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
In addition to this, local NHS hospital trusts and Primary Care (General Practitioners) Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), produce their own lists of medicines deemed preferable for prescribing within their locality or organisation; such lists are usually a subset of the more comprehensive BNF. These formularies are not absolutely binding, and physicians may prescribe a non-formulary medicine if they consider it necessary and justifiable. Often, these local formularies are shared between a Primary Care Organisation (PCO) and hospitals within that PCO's jurisdiction, in order to facilitate the procedure of transferring a patient from primary care to secondary care, thus causing fewer "interfacing" issues in the process.
As in the United States, the NHS actively encourages prescribing of generic drugs, in order to save more of the budget allocated to them by the Department of Health.
== National formulary ==
A national formulary contains a list of medicines that are approved for prescription throughout the country, indicating which products are interchangeable. It includes key information on the composition, description, selection, prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines. Those drugs considered less suitable for prescribing are clearly identified.
Examples of national formularies are:
Australian Pharmaceutical Formulary (APF)
Österreichisches Arzneibuch (ÖAB), the Austrian national formulary
British National Formulary (BNF) and British National Formulary for Children (BNFC)
Farmacotherapeutisch Kompas (FK), the Dutch national formulary
Formularium Nasional (Fornas), the Indonesian national formulary
Hrvatska Farmakopeja, the Croatian national formulary
National Formulary of India, India
Japan National Health Insurance Drug Price List
Pharmaceutical Schedule, New Zealand's publicly funded national formulary
United States National Formulary, later bought out and merged with the United States Pharmacopeia (USP-NF)
Farmaceutiska Specialiteter i Sverige (FASS), the Swedish national formulary. Usage of the database is free of charge and it has no promotional texts or advertising. FASS has been developed by the Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (LIF) in close cooperation with Sweden's pharmaceutical industry, with additional assistance from the Medical Products Agency, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Board and the National Corporation of Pharmacies. Information on interactions is derived from a joint development between the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at Uppsala University and the Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (LIF).
== See also ==
Pharmacopoeia – Standard reference work on pharmaceutial drugs and compound medicines
Pharmaceutical policy – Branch of health policy
== References ==
== External links ==
A National Formulary for Canada, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, 2005 (archived 6 July 2011)
The Kazakhstan National Formulary (archived 27 March 2022)

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From the Earth to the Moon is a 1998 American twelve-part television miniseries co-produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tom Hanks and Michael Bostick. The series aired on HBO from April 5 to May 10, 1998. In docudrama format, it tells the story of the Apollo program during the 1960s and early 1970s. Largely based on Andrew Chaikin's 1994 book, A Man on the Moon, the series is known for its accurate telling of the story of Apollo and the special effects under visual director Ernest D. Farino. The series takes its title from, but is not based upon, Jules Verne's 1865 science fiction novel From the Earth to the Moon.
Hanks appears in every episode, introducing each of the first eleven. The twelfth and final episode, represented in pseudo-documentary format, is narrated by Blythe Danner, interspersed with a reenactment of the production of Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune, also in part inspired by Verne's novel. Hanks narrates and appears in these scenes as Méliès' assistant, with Tchéky Karyo as Méliès.
== Cast ==
The miniseries has a fairly large cast. It portrays 30 of the 32 astronauts who flew, or were preparing to fly, the 12 missions of the Apollo program. (The only two Apollo astronauts not portrayed by credited actors are Apollo 13 Command Module pilot Jack Swigert, who is heard but not seen in Episode 8, and Apollo 17 Command Module pilot Ronald Evans, who has a brief appearance in the liftoff scene of Apollo 17 in the final episode.) Members of many of the astronauts' families, and other NASA and non-NASA personnel, are also portrayed.
Several fictional (or fictionalized) characters are also included, notably television newscaster Emmett Seaborn (Lane Smith) who appears in nine of the 12 episodes.
Astronaut David Scott, from Apollo 15, was the chief technological consultant.
== Episodes ==
The 12 episodes, each directed by a different person, use a variety of viewpoints and themes, while sequentially covering the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Lane Smith portrays Emmett Seaborn, a seasoned reporter for a fictional television network who covers the U.S. space program from its earliest days, providing continuity for most of the episodes.
== Integration with existing films ==
The miniseries, concentrating on the Apollo space program, was produced with an intent not to repeat other dramatic portrayals of events of the space race.
Project Mercury, which was portrayed in the 1983 film The Right Stuff, was briefly summarized in the first episode. Miniseries producers Hanks, Howard and Grazer, who had previously produced the 1995 film Apollo 13, shot the episode "We Interrupt This Program" from the perspective of the media covering that flight, as the film had already covered the story from the point of view of the crew and the mission control team.
== Production ==
Many of the actors had opportunity to interact and form friendships with the real life astronauts they were portraying. Brett Cullen, who played Apollo 9 Command Module pilot and Apollo 15 commander David Scott, was invited to the Scott family home each time an episode he appeared in was first televised. Two short clips from the final scenes of Apollo 13 were used in "That's All There Is"; a splashdown sequence, and a view of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima (portrayed by USS New Orleans).
The original series was shot in Super 35, intended to be viewed on standard television sets of the time in 1.33:1 aspect ratio. With the proliferation of widescreen flat-panel TV sets the series was remastered in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio and re-released in 2005 as a 5-disc DVD box set. As is the case with most material shot in this format, the widescreen framing causes the loss (in some shots) of the top and bottom parts of the frames from the original broadcast, but reveals additional information on the left and right. This is not always noticeable because of careful transfer process, but in some scenes important details are lost. For example, in the first episode, when the Gemini 8 / Agena assembly is tumbling around in space with a stuck thruster, the thruster is not visible in the new widescreen version, as it is cut off by the top of the frame. Some captions have also been compromised.
Parts of the miniseries were filmed at the Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) in Orlando, Florida. Scenes of the moonwalks were shot inside the blimp hangars on a former Marine base in Tustin, California. Approximately half the area inside was converted to the Moon's surface, with the remainder used to hold production trailers. To simulate lunar surface gravity, weather balloons filled with helium were attached to the backs of the actors playing the astronauts in the lunar extravehicular activity scenes, effectively reducing their weights to one-sixth.
The score of "Spider" prominently features an imitation of the main title theme from the 1963 World War II movie The Great Escape, and Tom Kelly jokes about having a crew digging a tunnel out of the Grumman plant. The episode also featured a real Apollo Lunar Module (LM-13), which had been built for the Apollo 18 mission but was never used due to budget cuts.
== Awards and nominations ==
== See also ==
Apollo 11 in popular culture
== References ==
== External links ==
From the Earth to the Moon at IMDb

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Geekadelphia was a Philadelphia-based weblog focused on entertainment, science, technology and other related areas pertaining to the city of Philadelphia. Founded in 2007, the blog also co-hosted the Philadelphia Geek Awards with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. The site ceased operation in November 2017, and it is no longer online.
== History ==
Geekadelphia was founded by Tim Quirino and Eric Smith in 2007, who, according to Smith, "wanted a place to ramble about things that interested us and have a site to host whatever silly videos we'd make." Its first post was published on November 29th, 2007. In its early days, revenue earned from Geekadelphia was only enough to pay for hosting. Events on behalf of the site were created, along with a podcast with Benjamin Gilbert and a webcomic. In 2013, Geekadelphia was rebranded and incorporated in the company Analog Boys. Quirino left for San Francisco in 2014 to work as a designer for Facebook. On November 30, 2017, the site posted a blog titled 'You're Still Here? Go Home' explaining how the site has come to an end.
== Events ==
In 2008, Geekadelphia hosted a Battlestar Galactica-themed party in Old City with The Hacktory, a Philadelphia-based organization promoting the application of technology in the arts, and Indy Hall. The site's staff decorated the Trocadero Theatre for the screenings of Jennifer's Body in 2009 and Zombieland in 2010.
=== Philadelphia Geek Awards ===
In 2011, Geekadelphia launched the Philadelphia Geek Awards, in conjunction with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, to honor and celebrate achievements within the Philadelphia community. Its second annual ceremony, hosted at the university, was reported to have sold over 400 in a few minutes. During its third-annual ceremony, Smith stated his criteria for geek as "more about having a hobby or a side project that you feel really passionate about, that you care so much about that you pour yourself into it." The organizers "retired" the Awards as of August 2018, citing "it was a struggle to keep the event funded well enough to operate".
== References ==
== links ==
Geekadelphia Blog (archived link by WebArchive, January 2019)

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Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science is a 2021 non-fiction book by American science journalist Erika Engelhaupt. It examines the more unsavory aspects of science, such as insects and death. The book was published by National Geographic Partners.
== Synopsis ==
Covering a large swath of scientific fields, such as anatomy, psychology, forensics, and entomology, Erika Engelhaupt examines “the gross, the bizarre, the taboo and morbidly fascinating elements of science.”
The book is divided into six parts, titled:
Morbid Curiosity
That's Disgusting
Breaking Taboos
Creepy Crawlies
Gross Anatomy
Mysterious Minds
Each part contains 6-8 chapters. Each individual chapter can be enjoyed as a stand-alone selection. Complex topics are made more easily accessible through black-and-white illustrations and a glow-in-the-dark cover (hardcover only).
== Background ==
Gory Details began as a blog hosted initially by Science News and later moved to National Geographic. Engelhaupt was inspired to create the blog based on books that she had read and reviewed for Science News. She wanted to write about “weird and morbid science” and “address the things that people are afraid to talk about.” She first presented the idea as a column for the magazine and was rejected, but was then offered the opportunity to write it as a blog on the Science News website.
The book contains “updated and expanded versions of some blog posts, as well as plenty of new material.” It maintains the same concept of the blog, in that it does not merely identifies “things that are gross or scary” but it teaches “something fascinating about nature and how the world works.”
== Reception ==
Library Journal called Gory Details, "a must-read for curious minds, trivia fans, and crime drama enthusiasts."
Chris Scott of the Chattanooga Times Free Press describes Gory Details as “the sort of book that leads not only to greater understanding of the world, but to a desire to know more - the unifying trait of scientists and those who are merely curious about their surroundings.” He appreciates that each “chapter is full of facts and profiles of the scientists who have discovered them or used them to benefit humanity.”
In an interview with Erika Engelhaupt, Carter Wilson of Making It Up podcast praised the author for how she “breaks it all down with humor” and how that approach “softens the whole thing”, so that “the more you learn about it, the less it comes off as gross anymore.”
Rebecca Bennett, writing for the Austin American-Statesman, finds Gory Details to be a combination of “fascinating fact, compelling descriptions and humor.” She describes Engelhaupt’s tone as casual and relatable, and the topics covered as “interesting and readable.”
Book Riot's Rachel Brittain included Gory Details on the list of "25 Must-Read Nonfiction Books" and associate editor Danika Ellis found Engelhaupt's work to be "filled to the brim with far out facts."
== Author biography ==
Erika Engelhaupt was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She got her curiosity for science from her father who was an electrochemist. She received a Master of Science degree in biology from Tulane University and an M.S. degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado Boulder. While pursuing a PhD in Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, she determined that she “didn't really want to finish a whole PhD” but instead “really wanted to go straight into science writing and science journalism.”
Her work as a freelance science writer has appeared in “National Geographic, NPR, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, Science News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Boulder Daily Camera.” Between 2009 and 2014, Engelhaupt was an editor at Science News and later worked as an online science editor at National Geographic. At CSICon 2023, she gave a talk titled "Disgust: How an Overlooked Emotion Meddles With Our Minds" based on content covered in Gory Details. She splits her time between Knoxville, Tennessee and Washington, DC.
== References ==

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Grandma Got STEM is a blog by Rachel Levy, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College, about earlier generations of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Levy founded the blog in March 2013, and by June 2013 had already accumulated 100 posts to it.
The blog is aimed at a general audience.
Its entries include pictures and stories about women who worked in STEM fields, and are intended to counter stereotypes of older women as being technologically inept, as well as to inspire future generations of women in STEM.
As the name of the blog suggests, the women featured on the blog are generally old enough to be grandmothers, although not all of them had children. Although many famous researchers are included, the blog posts also feature women who worked at lower-level teaching and laboratory assistant positions in STEM.
== References ==
== External links ==
Grandma Got STEM

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Hawking is a 2004 biographical drama television film directed by Philip Martin and written by Peter Moffat. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, it chronicles Stephen Hawking's early years as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, following his search for the beginning of time, and his struggle against motor neurons disease. It premiered in the UK in April 2004.
The film received positive reviews, with critics particularly lauding Cumberbatch's performance as Hawking. It received two British Academy Television Awards nominations: Best Single Drama and Best Actor (Cumberbatch). Cumberbatch won the Golden Nymph for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Film or Miniseries.
Cumberbatch's portrayal of Hawking was the first portrayal of the physicist on screen not by himself.
== Plot ==
At Stephen Hawking's 21st birthday party he meets a new friend, Jane Wilde. There is a strong attraction between the two and Jane is intrigued by Stephen's talk of stars and the universe, but realises that there is something very wrong with Stephen when he suddenly finds that he is unable to stand up. A stay in hospital results in a distressing diagnosis. Stephen has motor neurone disease and doctors don't expect him to survive for more than two years. Stephen returns to Cambridge where the new term has started without him. But he cannot hide from the reality of his condition through work because he can't find a subject for his PhD. While his colleagues throw themselves into academic and college life, Stephen's life seems to have been put on hold. He rejects the help of his supervisor Dennis Sciama and sinks into a depression. It is only Stephen's occasional meetings with Jane and her faith in him that seem to keep him afloat. The prevailing theory in cosmology at the time is Steady State, which argues that the universe had no beginning – it has always existed, and always will – and Steady State is dominated by Professor Fred Hoyle, a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, and one of the first science TV pundits.
Stephen gets an early glimpse of a paper by Hoyle that is to be presented at a Royal Society lecture. He works through the calculations, identifies a mistake, and publicly confronts Hoyle after he has finished speaking. The row causes a stir in the department but, more importantly, it seems to give Stephen the confidence to get started on his own work. At almost the same time Stephen is introduced to a new way of thinking about his subject by another physicist, Roger Penrose. Topology is an approach that uses concepts of shape rather than equations to think about the nature of the universe, and this proves to be the perfect tool for Stephen, who is starting to find it very difficult to write. Penrose's great passion is the fate of dying stars. When a star comes to the end of its life, it begins to collapse in on itself. His calculations suggest something extraordinary. The collapse of the dying star appears to continue indefinitely, until the star is infinitely dense, forming a black hole in space. And at the heart of this black hole, Penrose shows, is something scientists call a singularity. It is this which leads Stephen to his PhD subject. He has always had a niggling scepticism about Steady State Theory, and now he can begin to see a way of explaining the revolutionary and highly controversial idea that the universe might have had a beginning. Sciama is sceptical but supportive – glad to see his student fired up and ready to work. Meanwhile, Stephen's condition continues to decline, he writes and walks with difficulty and his speech is starting to slur. But he now has a focus for his energies and, with the support of Jane, enters a new phase. He also commits to his relationship with her, asking her to marry him and in doing so exhibiting a defiant determination to survive.
With his mind fired up, Stephen begins to work away at the implications of Penrose's discovery and starts to home in on the idea of a singularity. With remarkable insight – a real Eureka moment – he asks himself: what would happen if you ran Penrose's maths backwards? Instead of something collapsing into nothingness, what if nothingness exploded into something? And what if you applied this not to a star but to the whole universe? Answer: the universe really could have originated in a big bang. At last, Stephen enters a period of feverish academic work. He applies Penrose's theorems for collapsing stars to the universe itself. Justifying Sciama's faith in him, he produces a PhD of real brilliance and profound implications. In theory, at least, the big bang could have happened. Two years after his initial diagnosis, Stephen is not only still very much alive, but has played a part in a great scientific breakthrough which revolutionises the way people think about the universe. Today, the scientific consensus is that the universe started with a big bang: billions of years ago, a cosmic explosion brought space and time into existence.
A secondary, interwoven storyline follows a different but connected scientific quest. Unbeknownst to Hawking, just as he was being diagnosed in 1963, two American scientists were embarking on their own scientific mission. Their research was to produce hard evidence to support Hawking's theoretical work. Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson are encountered in a hotel room in Stockholm in 1978. They are being interviewed about their discovery on the eve of receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics. They describe how, in the hills above New Jersey, they scanned the skies with a radio-telescope, and began to pick up a strange radio signal from space. In time, the two scientists came to realise that they had detected the left-over heat of the first, ancient explosion that had created the universe. They had found the physical proof of the big bang.
== Cast ==
== Reception ==
=== Accolades ===
Hawking received two nominations at the 2005 British Academy Television Awards: Best Single Drama and Best Actor (Cumberbatch). At the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Benedict Cumberbatch won the Golden Nymph for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV film or miniseries.
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Hawking at IMDb

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Hiroshima is a 1995 Japanese-Canadian war drama film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and Roger Spottiswoode about the decision-making processes that led to the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. The three-hour film was made for television (Showtime Network) and had no theatrical release.
A combination of dramatization, historical footage, and eyewitness interviews, the film alternates between documentary footage and dramatic recreations. The dramatizations and most of the original footage are presented as sepia-toned images, serving to blur the distinction between them. The languages are English and Japanese, with subtitles, and the actors are largely Canadian and Japanese.
== Synopsis ==
The film opens on 12 April 1945 with the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the succession of Harry Truman to the presidency. In Europe, the Germans are close to surrender, but in the Pacific the bloody battle for Okinawa is still under way. American casualties have almost reached 900,000, with Japanese casualties at 1.1 million; 8 million Asian civilians have died in the war that began with Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria.
The new president knows nothing about the nuclear weapons being developed at Los Alamos, and he must decide on whether to use them and how. When nuclear physicist Leo Szilard delivers a petition signed by 73 scientists urging the president not to deploy the bomb, U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes tells him: "You do not spend two billion dollars and then show them [American voters] nothing." Also urging deployment is Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project. The Interim Committee appointed by Truman recommends unanimously that he use the bomb on "war plants surrounded by worker housing", without warning. General George Marshall lays out plans for the invasion of Kyūshū in November and Honshū in March 1946.
In Japan, Minister of War General Anami Korechika argues that the homeland must be defended. The voice of reason is the new civilian prime minister, Kantarō Suzuki. In Tokyo, Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa assures the cabinet of victory.
On July 16, the Trinity test shows that a plutonium bomb (Fat Man) is feasible and that a nuclear blast is even more powerful than scientists predicted. The uranium bomb (Little Boy, which is untested but is expected to work) leaves Los Alamos for Tinian island in the Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, Joseph Stalin promises to join the war against Japan. Winston Churchill urges Truman to use the bomb to constrain Russian expansion. The Allied leaders deliver an ultimatum to Japan "to give them one last chance."
Truman strikes Kyoto off the target list, leaving Hiroshima as the primary target. The Enola Gay makes the drop on the morning of August 6, 1945. On August 9, the Soviet Union invades Manchuria and the Fat Man plutonium bomb devastates Nagasaki. Hirohito finally intervenes, telling the cabinet that Japan "must endure the unendurable" and surrender. Young army officers urge General Anami to join them in a military coup, but he tells them: "The emperor has spoken; we must obey him." On August 15, the emperor's surrender message is broadcast to Japan, and Anami commits ritual suicide.
== Reception ==
Though not widely reviewed, Hiroshima was praised online: "Fascinating, and surprisingly ambivalent, docudrama rehashes familiar terrain with remarkable freshness precisely because of the emphasis on the politicians (rather than on the scientists), the bi-national approach, and an odd mixing of dramatization, newsreel footage, and even a few talking-head interviews with people who were there."
== Awards ==
12th Gemini Awards, Toronto: Best Dramatic TV Movie or Mini-Series, 1998
12th Gemini Awards, Toronto: Best Direction in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series, Roger Spottiswoode, 1998
12th Gemini Awards, Toronto: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series, Kenneth Welsh, 1998
Humanitas Prize, USA: Writing Award, PBS/Cable Television, to John Hopkins & Toshiro Ishido 1997
48th Primetime Emmy Awards, Los Angeles: Nominee: Outstanding Miniseries, 1996
== Cast ==
== See also ==
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Surrender of Japan
List of historical drama films
List of historical drama films of Asia
== References ==
== External links ==
Hiroshima at IMDb
Hiroshima review, Variety, 4 August 1995 at Internet Archive.

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Hostile Waters is a British 1997 television film about the loss of the Soviet Navy's K-219, a Yankee I class nuclear ballistic missile sub. The film stars Rutger Hauer as the commander of K-219 and claims to be based on the true story, also described in the 1997 book of the same name. The film was produced by World Productions for the BBC and HBO, in association with Invision Productions and UFA Filmproduktions. It was written by Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by David Drury, and was first transmitted on BBC One on 26 July 1997.
== Plot ==
In 1986, the Soviet Navy submarine K-219 performs a Crazy Ivan, and USS Aurora collides with her, causing a rupture of the seal on one of its ballistic missile tubes. The leaking seawater causes a corrosive reaction which floods the sub with toxic gas. The corrosive reaction starts a fire that floods the sub with more toxic gas and smoke.
The captain surfaces the boat, moves the crew out to the deck, and attempts to vent the sub. The chief engineer informs the captain that the fire may cook off the nukes and cause a nuclear explosion. The launch doors are opened on the sub to vent smoke.
Aurora ascertains that a fire is aboard K-219, and informs the Pentagon. The Pentagon, fearing radiological contamination of the Eastern Seaboard, orders Aurora to prepare to sink K-219. The fact that the launch doors are open on the SLBMs causes consternation in Washington D.C., with calls for the immediate sinking of the sub, should it appear to be preparing to launch.
The captain of K-219 prepares a bold plan to dive with the launch doors open, to flood the missile bay and quench the fires. As the captain dives the sub, Aurora prepares to fire, assuming K-219 is setting about to launch its missiles. After a brief but heated argument the U.S. commander is convinced to wait before launching and realises that the Soviet sub is diving, rather than launching its SLBMs.
K-219's tactic works, and the sub resurfaces with the fires out. A new crisis develops: Both nuclear reactors are overheating, and the cooling rods must be lowered manually by two crew members who have only limited oxygen left. The rods are lowered, and both reactors are shut down, averting disaster, but one crew member remains locked inside the reactor room, running out of oxygen. With seawater flooding the submarine, the captain of K-219 decides to abandon ship. Throughout the crisis, Washington insists that no information on the possibility of nuclear fallout along the eastern American coastline be leaked to the Governors and no evacuation plans be activated to protect the population, in order not to derail the forthcoming Reykjavik Summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Capt. Britanov and his surviving crew members return safely to Moscow with some crew decorated and he being dismissed from the navy. The Reykjavik Summit takes place as planned.
The film's postscript details that as a legacy almost a decade after the end of the Cold War, fifty one nuclear warheads and seven nuclear reactors from nuclear submarines litter the North Atlantic ocean floor.
== Cast ==
Rutger Hauer as Captain Igor Britanov
Martin Sheen as Aurora Skipper
Max von Sydow as Admiral Chernavin
Colm Feore as Pshenishny
Rob Campbell as Sergei Preminin
Harris Yulin as Admiral Quinn
Regina Taylor as Lieutenant Curtis
John Rothman as Aurora Executive Officer
Michael Attwell as Kuzmenko
Dominic Monaghan as Sasha
Peter Guinness as Vladimirov
James E. Kerr as Aznabaev
Alexis Denisof as John Baker
Seamus McQuade as Helmsman
Paul Birchard as Torpedo Chief
Oliver Marlo as Doctor
Mark Drewry as Petrachkov
Denzil Kilvington as Volnigbirov
Garry Cooper as Gennady
Frank Baker as Pumps
Richard Graham as Belikov
Joachim Paul Assböck as Tigran Gasparian
Alexander Wachholz as Martinov
David King as Admiral 2nd Class
Todd Boyce as Larry Brock
Michael Shannon as Admiral
Sanja Spengler as Britanov's Wife
Philip Martin Brown as Cook
J.J. Gordon as Officer 4
Lawrence Elman as Officer
Erik Hansen as Naval Marshall
William Marsh as Acoustics Officer
Rainer Sellien as Technician
Norbert Tefelski as Admiral / Engineer
Felix zu Knyphausen as Sonar Operator
Frank Witter as Russian Submarine Soldier (uncredited)
== Development ==
The film was Troy Kennedy Martin's first work for British television in 12 years, since Edge of Darkness. HBO's involvement made the project financially possible, but the US network required American characters to be at the centre of the film, though without any named after real Americans, for fear of potential legal action: Kennedy Martin's script went through ten versions. The American submarine involved (in the film's version of events), the Augusta, is called the Aurora in the film.
== Reception ==
The film screened at 9pm on BBC One on 26 July 1997. Ahead of broadcast, the United States Navy's chief of information denied the story of a collision with K-219: "The US Navy normally does not comment on submarine operations, but in this case, because the scenario is so outrageous, the US Navy is compelled to respond."
John Preston wrote a highly positive review for The Sunday Telegraph: "it had a terrific cast, must have cost a fortune to make and proved to be the most gripping thing I've seen since – since Edge of Darkness". He called Hauer "better than he's been in decades". In a tongue-in-cheek review, Jim Shelley in The Guardian also praised Hauer's performance: "Rutger saunters through it all with considerable aplomb, bestowing upon even his most staccato speeches a kind of suave grandeur, like Clark Gable in The Misfits." The Sunday Times was dismissive: "Given the scale of the crisis and the nautical setting, the language is incredibly mild. However, a few days spent studying nuclear physics and post-war submarine design prior to viewing may increase enjoyment."
HBO screened the film a few hours later, at 9pm. Variety wrote that "the characters are simplistically drawn, which, for this genre, is not necessarily a bad thing" but praised Hauer's acting and the technical aspects. The New York Times wrote that it delivered "first-rate dramatic tension. Mr. Hauer is quietly powerful as Captain Britanov... Nothing much happens on the American sub, so Martin Sheen's role as its captain consists mainly of looking worried. But he does it with thrilling understatement".
== Lawsuit ==
Igor Britanov himself took out a lawsuit against HBO's parent company Warner Bros., alleging that the film-makers had not sought his permission to portray him and that the film made him look incompetent. After three years of hearings, in 2004 an American court found in his favour and awarded him damages: Britanov declined to say how much, but Russian media reported this as tens of thousands of dollars. In a statement, Britanov said: "A submarine with open hatches would sink to the bottom like a stone and I'm already sick of explaining to my submariner colleagues that I did nothing of the sort".
== References ==
== External links ==
Hostile Waters at IMDb

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The intertidal zone or foreshore is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide; in other words, it is the part of the littoral zone within the tidal range. This area can include several types of habitats with various species of life, such as sea stars, sea urchins, and many species of coral with regional differences in biodiversity. Sometimes it is referred to as the littoral zone or seashore, although those can be defined as a wider region.
The intertidal zone also includes steep rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, bogs or wetlands (e.g., vast mudflats). This area can be a narrow strip, such as in Pacific islands that have only a narrow tidal range, or can include many meters of shoreline where shallow beach slopes interact with high tidal excursion. The peritidal zone is similar but somewhat wider, extending from above the highest tide level to below the lowest. Organisms in the intertidal zone are well-adapted to their environment, facing high levels of interspecific competition and the rapidly changing conditions that come with the tides. The intertidal zone is also home to several species from many different phyla (Porifera, Annelida, Coelenterata, Mollusca, Arthropoda, etc.).
The water that comes with the tides can vary from brackish waters, fresh with rain, to highly saline and dry salt, with drying between tidal inundations. Wave splash can dislodge residents from the littoral zone. With the intertidal zone's high exposure to sunlight, the temperature can range from very hot with full sunshine to near freezing in colder climates. Some microclimates in the littoral zone are moderated by local features and larger plants such as mangroves. Adaptations in the littoral zone allow the utilization of nutrients supplied in high volume on a regular basis from the sea, which is actively moved to the zone by tides. The edges of habitats, in this case the land and sea, are themselves often significant ecosystems, and the littoral zone is a prime example.
A typical rocky shore can be divided into a spray zone or splash zone (also known as the supratidal zone), which is above the spring high-tide line and is covered by water only during storms, and an intertidal zone, which lies between the high and low tidal extremes. Along most shores, the intertidal zone can be clearly separated into the following subzones: high tide zone, middle tide zone, and low tide zone. The intertidal zone is one of a number of marine biomes or habitats, including estuaries, the neritic zone, the photic zone, and deep zones.
== Zonation ==
Marine biologists divide the intertidal region into three zones (low, middle, and high), based on the overall average exposure of the zone. The low intertidal zone, which borders on the shallow subtidal zone, is only exposed to air at the lowest of low tides and is primarily marine in character. The mid intertidal zone is regularly exposed and submerged by average tides. The high intertidal zone is only covered by the highest of the high tides, and spends much of its time as terrestrial habitat. The high intertidal zone borders on the splash zone (the region above the highest still-tide level, but which receives wave splash). On shores exposed to heavy wave action, the intertidal zone will be influenced by waves, as the spray from breaking waves will extend the intertidal zone.
Depending on the substratum and topography of the shore, additional features may be noticed. On rocky shores, tide pools form in depressions that fill with water as the tide rises. Under certain conditions, such as those at Morecambe Bay, quicksand may form.
== Low tide zone (lower littoral) ==
This subregion is mostly submerged – it is only exposed at the point of low tide and for a longer period of time during extremely low tides. This area is teeming with life; the most notable difference between this subregion and the other three is that there is much more marine vegetation, especially seaweeds. There is also a great biodiversity. Organisms in this zone generally are not well adapted to periods of dryness and temperature extremes. Some of the organisms in this area are abalone, sea anemones, brown seaweed, chitons, crabs, green algae, hydroids, isopods, limpets, mussels, nudibranchs, sculpin, sea cucumber, sea lettuce, sea palms, starfish, sea urchins, shrimp, snails, sponges, surf grass, tube worms, and whelks. Creatures in this area can grow to larger sizes because there is more available energy in the localized ecosystem. Also, marine vegetation can grow to much greater sizes than in the other three intertidal subregions due to the better water coverage. The water is shallow enough to allow plenty of sunlight to reach the vegetation to allow substantial photosynthetic activity, and the salinity is at almost normal levels. This area is also protected from large predators such as fish because of the wave action and the relatively shallow water.
== Ecology ==

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The intertidal region is an important model system for the study of ecology, especially on wave-swept rocky shores. The region contains a high diversity of species, and the zonation created by the tides causes species ranges to be compressed into very narrow bands. This makes it relatively simple to study species across their entire cross-shore range, something that can be extremely difficult in, for instance, terrestrial habitats that can stretch thousands of kilometres. Communities on wave-swept shores also have high turnover due to disturbance, so it is possible to watch ecological succession over years rather than decades.
The burrowing invertebrates that make up large portions of sandy beach ecosystems are known to travel relatively great distances in cross-shore directions as beaches change on the order of days, semilunar cycles, seasons, or years. The distribution of some species has been found to correlate strongly with geomorphic datums such as the high tide strand and the water table outcrop.
Since the foreshore is alternately covered by the sea and exposed to the air, organisms living in this environment must be adapted to both wet and dry conditions. Intertidal zone biomass reduces the risk of shoreline erosion from high intensity waves. Typical inhabitants of the intertidal rocky shore include sea urchins, sea anemones, barnacles, chitons, crabs, isopods, mussels, starfish, and many marine gastropod molluscs such as limpets and whelks. Sexual and asexual reproduction varies by inhabitants of the intertidal zones.
Humans have historically used intertidal zones as foraged food sources during low tide. Migratory birds also rely on intertidal species for feeding areas because of low water habitats consisting of an abundance of mollusks and other marine species.
== Legal issues ==
As with the dry sand part of a beach, legal and political disputes can arise over the ownership and use of the foreshore. One recent example is the New Zealand foreshore and seabed controversy. In legal discussions, the foreshore is often referred to as the wet-sand area.
For privately owned beaches in the United States, some states such as Massachusetts use the low-water mark as the dividing line between the property of the State and that of the beach owner; however the public still has fishing, fowling, and navigation rights to the zone between low and high water. Other states such as California use the high-water mark.
In the United Kingdom, the foreshore is generally deemed to be owned by the Crown, with exceptions for what are termed several fisheries, which can be historic deeds to title, dating back to King John's time or earlier, and the Udal Law, which applies generally in Orkney and Shetland.
In Greece, according to the L. 2971/01, the foreshore zone is defined as the area of the coast that might be reached by the maximum climbing of the waves on the coast (maximum wave run-up on the coast) in their maximum capacity (maximum referring to the "usually maximum winter waves" and of course not to exceptional cases, such as tsunamis). The foreshore zone, a part of the exceptions of the law, is public, and permanent constructions are not allowed on it. In Italy, about half the shoreline is owned by the government but leased to private beach clubs called lidos.
In the East African and West Indian Ocean, intertidal zone management is often neglected of being a priority due to there being no intent for collective economic productivity. According to workshops performing questionaries, it is stated that eighty-six percent of respondents believe mismanagement of mangrove and coastal ecosystems are due to lack of knowledge to steward the ecosystems, yet forty-four percent of respondents state that there is a fair amount of knowledge used in those regions for fisheries.
== Threats ==
Intertidal zones are sensitive habitats with an abundance of marine species that can experience ecological hazards associated with tourism and human-induced environmental impacts. A variety of other threats that have been summarized by scientists include nutrient pollution, overharvesting, habitat destruction, and climate change. Habitat destruction is advanced through activities including harvesting fisheries with drag nets and a neglect of the sensitivity of intertidal zones.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
Ballantine Scale
Ecological forecasting
Littoral series
NaGISA
Shorezone
Tidelands
== References ==
== External links ==
Watch the online documentary The Intertidal Zone

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An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been part of a continent. Oceanic islands can be formed from volcanic activity, grow into atolls from coral reefs, and form from sediment along shorelines, creating barrier islands. River islands can also form from sediment and debris in rivers. Artificial islands are those made by humans, including small rocky outcroppings built out of lagoons and large-scale land reclamation projects used for development.
Islands are host to diverse plant and animal life. Oceanic islands have the sea as a natural barrier to the introduction of new species, causing the species that do reach the island to evolve in isolation. Continental islands share animal and plant life with the continent they split from. Depending on how long ago the continental island formed, the life on that island may have diverged greatly from the mainland due to natural selection.
Humans have lived on and traveled between islands for thousands of years at a minimum. Some islands became host to humans due to a land bridge or a continental island splitting from the mainland, or by boat travel. In the far north or south some islands are joined by seasonal or glacial ice. Today, up to 10% of the world's population lives on islands. Islands are popular targets for tourism due to their perceived natural beauty, isolation, and unique cultures.
Islands became the target of colonization by Europeans, resulting in the majority of islands in the Pacific being put under European control. Decolonization has resulted in some but not all island nations becoming self-governing, with lasting effects related to industrialisation, invasive species, nuclear weapons testing, and tourism. Islands and island countries are threatened by climate change. Sea level rise threatens to submerge nations such as Maldives, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu completely. Increases in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones can cause widespread destruction of infrastructure and animal habitats. Species that live exclusively on islands are some of those most threatened by extinction. Some islands can be a disputed territory like Taiwan which China claims.
== Definition ==
An island is an area of land surrounded by water on all sides that is distinct from a continent. There is no standard of size that distinguishes islands and continents. Continents have an accepted geological definition – they are the largest landmass of a particular tectonic plate. Islands can occur in any body of water, including lakes, rivers, seas. Low-tide elevations, areas of land that are not above the surface during a high tide, are generally not considered islands. Islands that have been bridged or otherwise joined to a mainland with land reclamation are sometimes considered "de-islanded", but not in every case.
== Etymology ==
The word island derives from Middle English iland, from Old English igland, itself from ig or ieg, similarly meaning 'island' when used independently, and with the suffix -land carrying its contemporary meaning. Old English ieg is actually a cognate of Swedish ö and German Aue, and more distantly related to Latin aqua (water).
The spelling of the word with ⟨s⟩ was modified in the 15th century because of a false etymology caused by an association with the Old French loanword isle, which itself comes from the Latin word insula.
== Geology ==
=== Formation in oceans ===
Islands often are found in archipelagos or island chains, which are collections of islands. These chains are thought to form from volcanic hotspots, areas of the lithosphere where the mantle is hotter than the surrounding area. These hotspots would give rise to volcanoes whose lava would form the rock the islands are made of. For some islands, the movement of tectonic plates above stationary hotspots would form islands in a linear chain, with the islands further away from the hotspot being progressively older and more eroded, before disappearing under the sea entirely. An example is the Hawaiian Islands, with the oldest island being 25 million years old, and the youngest, Hawaii, still being an active volcano. However, not all island chains are formed this way. Some may be formed all at once by fractures in the tectonic plates themselves, simultaneously creating multiple islands. One supporting piece of evidence is that of the Line Islands, which are all estimated to be 8 million years old, rather than being different ages.
Other island chains form due to being separated from existing continents. The Japanese archipelago may have been separated from Eurasia due to seafloor spreading, a phenomenon where new oceanic crust is formed, pushing away older crust. Islands sitting on the continental shelf may be called continental islands. Other islands, like those that make up New Zealand, are what remains of continents that shrank and sunk beneath the sea. It was estimated that Zealandia, the continent-like area of crust that New Zealand sits on, has had 93% of its original surface area submerged.
Some islands are formed when coral reefs grow on volcanic islands that have submerged beneath the surface. When these coral islands encircle a central lagoon, the island is known as an atoll. The formation of reefs and islands related to those reefs is aided by the buildup of sediment in shallow patches of water. In some cases, tectonic movements lifting a reef out of the water by as little as 1 meter can cause sediment to accumulate and an island to form.
Barrier islands are long, sandy bars that form along shorelines due to the deposition of sediment by waves. These islands erode and grow as the wind and waves shift. Barrier islands have the effect of protecting coastal areas from severe weather because they absorb some of the energy of large waves before they can reach the shore.
Antarctic islands, are sometimes permanently connected to another land mass by sea or glacial ice. An example of this is Ross Island in Antarctica.

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=== Formation in freshwater ===
A fluvial island is an island that forms from the erosion and sedimentation of debris in rivers; almost all rivers have some form of fluvial islands. These islands may only be a few meters high, and are usually temporary. Changes in the flow speed, water level, and sediment content of the river may affect the rate of fluvial island formation and depletion. Permanent river islands also exist, the largest of which (that is completely inland) is Bananal Island in the Tocantins of Brazil, which has a maximum width of 55 kilometers.
Lakes form for a variety of reasons, including glaciers, plate tectonics, and volcanism. Lake islands can form as part of these processes.
== Life on islands ==
The field of insular biogeography studies the ecological processes that take place on islands, with a focus on what factors effect the evolution, extinction, and richness of species. Scientists often study islands as an isolated model of how the process of natural selection takes place. Island ecology studies organisms on islands and their environment. It has yielded important insights for its parent field of ecology since the time of Charles Darwin.
=== Endemism ===
In biology, endemism is defined as the phenomenon where species or genus is only found in a certain geographical area. Islands isolate land organisms from others with water, and isolate aquatic organisms living on them with land. Island ecosystems have the highest rates of endemism globally. This means that islands contribute heavily to global biodiversity. Areas with high lives of biodiversity are a priority target of conservation efforts, to prevent the extinction of these species. Despite high levels of endemism, the total species richness, the total number of unique species in a region, is lower on islands than on mainlands. The level of species richness on islands is proportional to the area of that island, a phenomenon known as the species-area relationship. This is because larger areas have more resources and thus can support more organisms. Populations with a higher carrying capacity also have more genetic diversity, which promotes speciation.
=== Dispersal ===
Oceanic islands, ones that have never been connected to shore, are only populated by life that can cross the sea. This means that any animals present on the island had to have flown there, in the case of birds or bats, were carried by such animals, or were carried in a sea current in what is known as a "rafting event". This phenomenon is known as oceanic dispersal. Tropical cyclones have the capacity to transport species over great distances. Animals like tortoises can live for weeks without food or water, and are able to survive floating on debris in the sea. One case study showed that in 1995, fifteen iguanas survived a 300 km journey to Anguilla in the Caribbean, an island which no iguana had lived on previously. They survived floating on a mass of uprooted trees from a storm. Plant species are thought to be able to travel great distances of ocean. New Zealand and Australia share 200 native plant species, despite being separated by 1500 km.
Continental islands, islands that were at one point connected to a continent, are expected to share a common history of plant and animal life up until the point that the island broke away from the continent. For example, the presence of freshwater fish on an island surrounded by ocean would indicate that it once was attached to a continent, since these fish cannot traverse the ocean on their own. Over the course of time, evolution and extinction changes the nature of animal life on a continental island, but only once it splits from the mainland. An example is that of the southern beech, a tree that is present in Australia, New Zealand, parts of South American, and New Guinea, places that today are geographically distant. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that these landmasses were once all part of the continent Gondwana and separated by tectonic drift. However, there are competing theories that suggest this species may have reached faraway places by way of oceanic dispersal.
=== Evolution on island groups ===
Species that colonize island archipelagos exhibit a specific property known as adaptive radiation. In this process, a species that arrives on a group of islands rapidly becomes more diverse over time, splitting off into new species or subspecies. A species that reaches an island ecosystem may face little competition for resources, or may find that the resources that they found in their previous habitat are not available. These factors together result in individual evolutionary branches with different means of survival.
The classical example of this is Darwin's finches, a group of up to fifteen tanager species that are endemic to the Galápagos Islands. These birds evolved different beaks in order to eat different kinds of food available on the islands. The large ground finch has a large bill used to crack seeds and eat fruit. The Genovesa cactus finch prefers cacti as a food source, and has a beak adapted for removing pulp and flowers from cacti. The green warbler-finch (in the habit of true warbler species) consumes spiders and insects that live on plants. Other examples of this phenomenon exist worldwide, including in Hawaii and Madagascar, and are not limited to island ecosystems.
==== The island rule ====

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Species endemic to islands show a common evolutionary trajectory. Foster's rule (also known as the island rule), states that small mammals such as rodents evolve to become larger, known as island gigantism. One such example is the giant tortoise of the Seychelles, though it is unknown if it grew in size before or after reaching the island. Larger animals such as the hippopotamus tend to become smaller, such as in the case of the pygmy hippopotamus. This is known as insular dwarfism. In the case of smaller animals, it has been hypothesized that animals on islands may have fewer predators and competitors, resulting in selection pressure towards larger animals. Larger animals may exhaust food resources quickly due to their size, causing malnutrition in their young, resulting in a selection pressure for smaller animals that require less food. Having fewer predators would mean these animals did not need not be large to survive.
=== Darwin, the Galápagos, and natural selection ===
Charles Darwin formulated the theory of natural selection through the study of island ecology. The species he observed on the Galápagos Islands, including tanager birds, contributed to his understanding of how evolution works. He first traveled to the islands as a naturalist on HMS Beagle in 1835, as part of a five-year circumnavigation of Earth. He wrote that "the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings". Through the study of the finches and other animals he realized that organisms survive by changing to adapt to their habitat. It would be over twenty years before he published his theories in On the Origin of Species.
== Humans and islands ==
=== History of exploration ===
The first evidence of humans colonizing islands probably occurred in the Paleolithic era, 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Reaching the Indonesian islands of Flores and Timor would have required crossing distances of water of at least 29 km (18 mi). Some islands, such as Honshu, were probably connected to the mainland with a land bridge that allowed humans to colonize it before it became an island.
The first people to colonize distant oceanic islands were the Polynesians. Many of the previous island settlements required traveling distances of less than 100 km (62 mi), whereas Polynesians may have traveled 2,000–3,200 km (1,200–2,000 mi) to settle islands such as Tahiti. They would send navigators to sail the ocean without the aid of navigational instruments to discover new islands for settlement. Between 1100 and 800 BC, Polynesians sailed East from New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and reached the islands that make up the modern-day Fiji and Samoa. The furthest extent of this migration would be Easter Island in the East, and New Zealand in the South, with New Zealand's first settlements between 1250 and 1300.
Historians have sought to understand why some remote islands have always been uninhabited, while others, especially in the Pacific Ocean, have long been populated by humans. Generally, larger islands are more likely to be able to sustain humans and thus are more likely to have been settled. Small islands that cannot sustain populations on their own can still be habitable if they are within a "commuting" distance to an island that has enough resources to be sustainable. The presence of an island is marked by seabirds, differences in cloud and weather patterns, as well as changes in the direction of waves. It is also possible for human populations to have gone extinct on islands, evidenced by explorers finding islands that show evidence of habitation but no life.
Not all islands were or are inhabited by maritime cultures. In the past, some societies were found to have lost their seafaring ability over time, such as the case of the Canary Islands, which were occupied by an indigenous people since the island's first discovery in the first century until being conquered by the Spanish Empire in 1496. It has been hypothesized that since the inhabitants had little incentive for trade and had little to any contact with the mainland, they had no need for boats.
The motivation for island exploration has been the subject of research and debate. Some early historians previously argued that early island colonization was unintentional, perhaps by a raft being swept out to sea. Others compare the motivations of Polynesian and similar explorers with those of Christopher Columbus, the explorer who sailed westward over the Atlantic Ocean in search of an alternate route to the East Indies. These historians theorize that successful explorers were rewarded with recognition and wealth, leading others to attempt possibly dangerous expeditions to discover more islands, usually with poor results.
=== Lifestyle ===
About 10% of the world's population lives on islands. The study of the culture of islands is known as island studies. The interest in the study of islands is due to their unique cultures and natural environments that differ from mainland cultures. This is for a few reasons: First, the obvious political and geographic isolation from mainland cultures. Second, unique restraints on resources and ecology creating marine-focused cultures with a focus on fishing and sailing. Third, a lasting historical and political significance of islands.

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==== Diet ====
The Polynesian diet got most of its protein from fishing. Polynesians were known to fish close to shore, as well as in deep water. It was reported that Rapa Nui people were known to fish as far as 500 km (310 mi) from shore at coral reefs. Spear, line, and net fishing were all used, to catch tuna as well as sharks and stingrays. Island cultures also cultivate native and non-native crops. Polynesians grew the native yam, taro, breadfruit, banana, coconut and other fruits and vegetables. Different island climates made different resources more important, such as the Hawaiian islands being home to irrigated fields of taro, whereas in some islands, like Tahiti, breadfruit was more widely cultivated and fermented in order to preserve it. There is archeological evidence that Canary Islanders would chew the roots of ferns for sustenance, a practice that wore heavily on their molars. These islanders would also grow barley and raised livestock such as goats.
=== Island nations and territories ===
Many island nations have little land and a restricted set of natural resources. However, these nations control some of the largest fisheries in the world, deposits of copper, gold, and nickel, as well as oil deposits. The natural beauty of island nations also makes them a magnet for tourism. Islands also have geopolitical value for naval bases, weapons testing, and general territorial control. One such example is French Polynesia, a territory that receives substantial military expenditure and aid from France. Three others, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, are island nations of the Pacific region that maintain a defense, aid, and immigration agreement with the United States called a Compact of Free Association.
==== Colonization ====
Since the first discoveries of Polynesian, Micronesian, and other islands by Westerners, these nations have been the subject of colonization. Islands were the target of Christian missionaries. These missionaries faced resistance, but found success when some local chiefs used European support to centralize power. Beginning in the 16th century, European states placed most of Oceania in under colonial administration. Pohnpei was colonized by Spain as early as 1526. It changed hands from Germany to Japan to the United States before joining the Federated States of Micronesia in 1982, maintaining a "free association" status with the U.S. Guam was a Spanish territory until 1898, and now is an unincorporated territory of the U.S.
The decolonization era saw many island states achieve independence or some form of self-governance. Nuclear weapons testing on the Marshall Islands left many atolls destroyed or uninhabitable, causing the forced displacement of people from their home islands as well as increases in cancer rates due to radiation. Colonization has resulted in a decline of observance of traditional cultural practices in places such as Hawaii, where Native Hawaiians are now a minority. Cultural attitudes related to communal ownership of land as well as a lack of individualistic decision-making may make some island cultures less compatible with the global capitalist economy, causing these nations to experience less economic growth.
=== Tourism ===
Islands have long been a popular target for tourism, thanks to their unique climates, cultures, and natural beauty. However, islands may suffer from poor transportation connectivity from airplanes and boats and strains on infrastructure from tourist activity. Islands in colder climates often rely on seasonal tourists seeking to enjoy nature or local cultures, and may only be one aspect of an island's economy. In contrast, tourism on tropical islands can often make up the majority of the local economy and built environment. These islands sometimes also require consistent foreign aid on top of tourism in order to ensure economic growth. This reliance can result in social inequality and environmental degradation. During tourism downturns, these economies struggle to make up the lost inflow of cash with other industries.
== Threats to islands ==
Climate change threatens human development on islands due to sea level rise, more dangerous tropical cyclones, coral bleaching, and an increase in invasive species. For example, in 2017 Hurricane Maria caused a loss of almost all the infrastructure in Dominica. Sea level rise and other climate changes can reduce freshwater reserves, resulting in droughts. These risks are expected to decrease the habitability of islands, especially small ones. Beyond risks to human life, plant and animal life are threatened. It has been estimated that almost 50 percent of land species threatened by extinction live on islands. In 2017, a detailed review of 1,288 islands found that they were home to 1,189 highly-threatened vertebrate species, which was 41 percent of the global figure. Coral bleaching is expected to occur with more frequency, threatening marine ecosystems, some of which island economies are dependent on.
Some islands that are low-lying may cease to exist given high enough amounts of sea level rise. Tuvalu received media attention for a press conference publicizing the ongoing submerging of the island country. Tuvalu signed a cooperation agreement with Australia agreeing to annually allow 280 of its citizens to become permanent residents of Australia. The Marshall Islands, a country of 1,156 islands, have also been identified as a country that may be existentially threatened by rising seas.
Increasing intensity of tropical storms also increases the distances and frequency with which invasive species may be transported to islands. Floodwaters from these storms may also wash plants further inland than they would travel on their own, introducing them to new habitats. Agriculture and trade also have introduced non-native life to islands. These processes result in an introduction of invasive species to ecosystems that are especially small and fragile. One example is the apple snail, initially introduced to the U.S. by aquarium owners. It has since been transported by hurricanes across the Gulf Coast and neighboring islands. These species compete for resources with native animals, and some may grow so densely that they displace other forms of existing life.
== Artificial islands ==

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For hundreds of years, islands have been created through land reclamation. One of the first recorded instances of this when people of the Solomon Islands created eighty such islands by piling coral and rock in the Lau Lagoon. However, the first permanent artificial island is Al-Sayah island, in Bahrain – created at least 1,200 years ago. One traditional way of constructing islands is with the use of a revetment. Sandbags or stones are dropped with a barge into the sea to bring the land level slightly out of the water. The island area is then filled with sand or gravel, followed by a construction of this revetment to hold it together. Islands have also been constructed with a permanent caisson, a steel or concrete structure built in a closed loop and then filled with sand.
Some modern islands have been constructed by pouring millions of tons of sand into the sea, such as with Pearl Island in Qatar or the Palm Islands in Dubai. These islands are usually created for real estate development, and are sold for private ownership or construction of housing. Offshore oil platforms have also been described as a type of island. Some atolls have been covered in concrete to create artificial islands for military purposes, such as those created by China in the South China Sea. These atolls were previously low-tide elevations, landmasses that are only above water during low tide. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea indicates that these islands may not have the same legal status as a naturally occurring island, and as such may not confer the same legal rights.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Island (category) at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Islands at Wikiquote

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In gravity and pressure driven fluid dynamical and geophysical mass flows such as ocean waves, avalanches, debris flows, mud flows, flash floods, etc., kinematic waves are important mathematical tools to understand the basic features of the associated wave phenomena.
These waves are also applied to model the motion of highway traffic flows.
In these flows, mass and momentum equations can be combined to yield a kinematic wave equation. Depending on the flow configurations, the kinematic wave can be linear or non-linear, which depends on whether the wave phase speed is a constant or a variable. A kinematic wave can be described by a simple partial differential equation with a single unknown field variable (e.g., the flow or wave height,
h
{\displaystyle h}
) in terms of the two independent variables, namely the time (
t
{\displaystyle t}
) and the space (
x
{\displaystyle x}
) with some parameters (coefficients) containing information about the physics and geometry of the flow. In general, the wave can be advecting and diffusing. However, in simple situations, the kinematic wave is mainly advecting.
== Kinematic wave for debris flow ==
Non-linear kinematic wave for debris flow can be written as follows with complex non-linear coefficients:
∂
h
∂
t
+
C
∂
h
∂
x
=
D
∂
2
h
∂
x
2
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {\partial h}{\partial t}}+C{\frac {\partial h}{\partial x}}=D{\frac {\partial ^{2}h}{\partial x^{2}}},}
where
h
{\displaystyle h}
is the debris flow height,
t
{\displaystyle t}
is the time,
x
{\displaystyle x}
is the downstream channel position,
C
{\displaystyle C}
is the pressure gradient and the depth dependent nonlinear variable wave speed, and
D
{\displaystyle D}
is a flow height and pressure gradient dependent variable diffusion term.
This equation can also be written in the conservative form:
∂
h
∂
t
+
∂
F
∂
x
=
0
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {\partial h}{\partial t}}+{\frac {\partial F}{\partial x}}=0,}
where
F
{\displaystyle F}
is the generalized flux that depends on several physical and geometrical parameters of the flow, flow height and the hydraulic pressure gradient. For
F
=
h
2
/
2
{\displaystyle F=h^{2}/2}
, this equation reduces to the Burgers' equation.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Singh, Vijay P. (1996). "Linearization of Hydraulic Equations". Kinematic Wave Modeling in Water Resources : Surface-Water Hydrology. New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 211–253. ISBN 0-471-10945-2.

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In marine geology, a knoll is defined as a rounded underwater hill, not exceeding 1000 meters in height. Any rounded underwater features exceeding that height are referred to as seamounts. They are believed to cover around 16.3% of the world's seafloor.
== Examples ==
Orphan Knoll
Graveyard Seamounts
== References ==

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A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as a reef, a barrier island or islands, a barrier peninsula, or an isthmus. Lagoons are commonly divided into coastal lagoons (or barrier lagoons) and atoll lagoons. They have also been identified as occurring on mixed-sand and gravel coastlines. There is an overlap between bodies of water classified as coastal lagoons and bodies of water classified as estuaries. Lagoons are common coastal features around many parts of the world.
== Definition and terminology ==
Lagoons are shallow, often elongated bodies of water separated from a larger body of water by a shallow or exposed shoal, coral reef, or similar feature. Some authorities include fresh water bodies in the definition of "lagoon", while others explicitly restrict "lagoon" to bodies of water with some degree of salinity. The distinction between "lagoon" and "estuary" also varies between authorities. Richard A. Davis Jr. restricts "lagoon" to bodies of water with little or no fresh water inflow, and little or no tidal flow, and calls any bay that receives a regular flow of fresh water an "estuary". Davis does state that the terms "lagoon" and "estuary" are "often loosely applied, even in scientific literature". Timothy M. Kusky characterizes lagoons as normally being elongated parallel to the coast, while estuaries are usually drowned river valleys, elongated perpendicular to the coast. Coastal lagoons are classified as inland bodies of water.
When used within the context of a distinctive portion of coral reef ecosystems, the term "lagoon" is synonymous with the term "back reef" or "backreef", which is more commonly used by coral reef scientists to refer to the same area.
Many lagoons do not include "lagoon" in their common names. Currituck, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds in North Carolina, Great South Bay between Long Island and the barrier beaches of Fire Island in New York, Isle of Wight Bay, which separates Ocean City, Maryland from the rest of Worcester County, Maryland, Banana River in Florida, US, Lake Illawarra in New South Wales, Australia, Montrose Basin in Scotland, and Broad Water in Wales have all been classified as lagoons, despite their names. In England, The Fleet at Chesil Beach has also been described as a lagoon.
In some languages the word for a lagoon is simply a type of lake: In Chinese a lake is hu (湖), and a lagoon is xihu (潟湖). In the French Mediterranean several lagoons are called étang ("lake"). Contrariwise, several other languages have specific words for such bodies of water. In Spanish, coastal lagoons generically are laguna costera, but those on the Mediterranean coast are specifically called albufera. In Russian and Ukrainian, those on the Black Sea are liman (лиман), while the generic word is laguna (Лагуна). Similarly, in the Baltic, Danish has the specific Nor, and German the specifics Bodden and Haff, as well as generic terms derived from laguna. In Poland these lagoons are called zalew ("bay"), and in Lithuania marios ("lagoon, reservoir"). In Jutland several lagoons are known as fjord. In New Zealand the Māori word hapua refers to a coastal lagoon formed at the mouth of a braided river where there are mixed sand and gravel beaches, while waituna, an ephemeral coastal waterbody, is neither a true lagoon, lake, nor estuary.
Some languages differentiate between coastal and atoll lagoons. In French, lagon refers specifically to an atoll lagoon, while coastal lagoons are described as étang, the generic word for a still lake or pond.
In Vietnamese, Đầm san hô refers to an atoll lagoon, whilst Đầm phá is coastal.
In Latin America, the term laguna in Spanish, which lagoon translates to, may be used for a small fresh water lake in a similar way a creek is considered a small river. However, sometimes it is popularly used to describe a full-sized lake, such as Laguna Catemaco in Mexico, which is actually the third-largest lake by area in the country. The brackish water lagoon may be thus explicitly identified as a "coastal lagoon" (laguna costera). In Portuguese, a similar usage is found: lagoa may be a body of shallow seawater, or a small freshwater lake not linked to the sea.
=== Etymology ===
Lagoon is derived from the Venetian łaguna, which refers to the waters around Venice, i.e. the Venetian Lagoon. Laguna is attested in English by at least 1612, and had been Anglicized to lagune by 1673. In 1697 William Dampier referred to a "Lagune or Lake of Salt water" on the coast of Mexico. Captain James Cook described an island "of Oval form with a Lagoon in the middle" in 1769.
== Atoll lagoons ==
Atoll lagoons form as coral reefs grow upwards while the islands that the reefs surround subside, until eventually only the reefs remain above sea level. Unlike the lagoons that form shoreward of fringing reefs, atoll lagoons often contain some deep (>20 m (66 ft)) portions.
== Coastal lagoons ==
Coastal lagoons form along gently sloping coasts where barrier islands or reefs can develop offshore, and the sea-level is rising relative to the land along the shore (either because of an intrinsic rise in sea-level, or subsidence of the land along the coast). Coastal lagoons do not form along steep or rocky coasts, or if the range of tides is more than 4 metres (13 ft). Due to the gentle slope of the coast, coastal lagoons are shallow. A relative drop in sea level may leave a lagoon largely dry, while a rise in sea level may let the sea breach or destroy barrier islands, and leave reefs too deep underwater to protect the lagoon. Coastal lagoons are young and dynamic, and may be short-lived in geological terms. Coastal lagoons are common, occurring along nearly 15 percent of the world's shorelines. In the United States, lagoons are found along more than 75 percent of the Eastern and Gulf Coasts.
Coastal lagoons can be classified as leaky, restricted, or choked.
Coastal lagoons are usually connected to the open ocean by inlets between barrier islands. The number and size of the inlets, precipitation, evaporation, and inflow of fresh water all affect the nature of the lagoon. Lagoons with little or no interchange with the open ocean, little or no inflow of fresh water, and high evaporation rates, such as Lake St. Lucia, in South Africa, may become highly saline. Lagoons with no connection to the open ocean and significant inflow of fresh water, such as the Lake Worth Lagoon in Florida in the middle of the 19th century, may be entirely fresh. On the other hand, lagoons with many wide inlets, such as the Wadden Sea, have strong tidal currents and mixing. Coastal lagoons tend to accumulate sediments from inflowing rivers, from runoff from the shores of the lagoon, and from sediment carried into the lagoon through inlets by the tide. Large quantities of sediment may be occasionally be deposited in a lagoon when storm waves overwash barrier islands. Mangroves and marsh plants can facilitate the accumulation of sediment in a lagoon. Benthic organisms may stabilize or destabilize sediments.
=== Largest coastal lagoons ===
== Images ==
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==

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This page contains a representative list of major databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, institutional repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and other articles. As the distinction between a database and a search engine is unclear for these complex document retrieval systems, see:
the general list of search engines for all-purpose search engines that can be used for academic purposes
the article about bibliographic databases for information about databases giving bibliographic information about finding books and journal articles.
Note that "free" or "subscription" can refer both to the availability of the database or of the journal articles included. This has been indicated as precisely as possible in the list:
== List ==
== See also ==
Academic publishing
Google Scholar
Lists of databases
List of digital library projects
List of educational video websites
List of neuroscience databases
List of online databases
List of online encyclopedias
List of open access journals
Lists of academic journals
== References ==

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This article contains a list of international databases on individual student achievement tests that can be used for psychometric research. In other words, this table only includes datasets containing items measuring ability and directly answered by students.
== See also ==
List of online databases
== References ==

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A peninsula (Latin: paeninsula from paene "almost" and insula "island") is a piece of land that is bordered mostly by water but connected to mainland. The surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as such. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point,
or spit. A point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulae. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also sometimes said to form a "peninsula" within the (almost closed) loop of water.
Presented below is a list of peninsulas.
== Africa ==
=== Macaronesia ===
Jandía, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain
Macizo de Anaga, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Ponta de São Lourenço, Madeira Island, Portugal
=== North Africa ===
=== Somali Peninsula ===
The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in Northeast Africa that juts into the Guardafui Channel, and is the easternmost projection of the African continent. It denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
Buri Peninsula, Eritrea
Ras Hafun, Somalia
Ras Kasar, Eritrea
Ras Siyyan, Djibouti
=== West Africa ===
Lekki Peninsula, Lagos, Nigeria
Cap-Vert, Senegal
Turner's Peninsula, Sierra Leone
=== Other peninsulas in Africa ===
Bakassi, Cameroon, but disputed with Nigeria
Cape Peninsula, South Africa
Le Morne Brabant, Mauritius
Uyoma, Kenya
== Antarctica ==
Antarctic Peninsula
Edward VII Peninsula
Fletcher Peninsula
Fowler Peninsula
Martin Peninsula
== Asia ==
=== Central Asia ===
Kazakhstan
Mangyshlak Peninsula
=== Eastern Asia ===
==== China ====
Source:
Liaodong Peninsula
Shandong Peninsula
Dapeng Peninsula
Leizhou Peninsula
==== Hong Kong ====
Hong Kong itself is a peninsula.
Kowloon Peninsula
Sai Kung Peninsula
Stanley Peninsula
Shek O
==== Japan ====
===== Hokkaido =====
Shiretoko Peninsula
Shakotan Peninsula
===== Honshū =====
Oshika-hanto
Noto-hanto
Oga-hanto
Miura-hanto
Bōsō-hanto
===== Kyūshū =====
Nishi-sonogi-hanto
Satsuma-hanto
Ōsumi-hanto
Shimabara-hanto
==== Korea ====
The whole landmass encompassing North and South Korea is a peninsula, surrounded by the East Sea to the east and south, and the Yellow Sea to the west and south, with the Korea Strait connecting them.
==== Macau ====
Macau Peninsula
==== Taiwan ====
Hengchun Peninsula
=== Northern Asia ===
=== South-eastern Asia ===
==== Indochina ====
Indochina Peninsula
Malay Peninsula
==== Indonesia ====
==== Malaysia ====
Northwestern Peninsula, Kudat
Pitas Peninsula, Pitas
Semporna Peninsula, Semporna and Tawau
Sandakan Peninsula, Sandakan
Peninsula Malaysia
==== Philippines ====
==== Thailand ====
Sathing Phra Peninsula
==== Singapore ====
Tuas
==== Vietnam ====
=== India ===
The Deccan Peninsula is a dominant geographical feature of the Indian subcontinent
Other peninsulas on the Indian Subcontinent include:
=== Western Asia ===
==== Arabia ====
Arabian Peninsula; Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Oman
Al-Faw Peninsula, Iraq
Musandam Peninsula; Oman, United Arab Emirates
Qatar Peninsula
==== Eastern Mediterranean ====
Beirut, Lebanon
El Mina, Lebanon
Haifa, Israel
Acre, Israel
Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
==== Turkey ====
== Europe ==
Europe is sometimes considered to be a large peninsula extending off Eurasia. As such, it is one of the largest peninsulas in the world and the only one to have the status as a full continent, largely as a matter of convention rather than science. It is composed of many smaller peninsulas, the four main and largest component peninsulas being the Scandinavian, Iberian, Balkan, and Apennine peninsulas.
=== Balkan Peninsula ===
The Balkans is a region which natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula. It would include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the European part of Turkey.
Chalkidiki, Greece
Kassandra, Greece
Mani Peninsula, Greece
Mount Athos, Greece
Peloponnese, Greece (now an island because of the Corinth Canal)
Sithonia, Greece
Pilio, Greece
Istria, Croatia
Piran Peninsula, Slovenia
Pelješac, Croatia
Prevlaka, Croatia
Split, Croatia
Zadar, Croatia
Karaburun Peninsula, Albania
Luštica, Montenegro
Gallipoli, Turkey
Klek (peninsula), Bosnia and Herzegovina
Istanbul, Turkey
=== France ===
Brittany
Cap Corse, Corsica
Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy
Crozon, Finistère
Landes du Médoc, Aquitaine
=== Iberian Peninsula ===
Encompassing continental Portugal and Spain, Andorra, Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory), and a small amount of Southern France, the Iberian Peninsula is a dominant geographical feature of Iberia.
Other peninsulas in Iberia include:
=== Ireland ===
=== Italy ===
The Apennine Peninsula is the dominant geographical feature of Italy.
Other peninsulas in Italy include:
Adriatic Sea
Promontorio del Gargano
Ionian Sea
Calabria
Salento
Ligurian Sea
Portofino
Portovenere
Promontorio di Piombino
Tyrrhenian Sea
Gaeta
Promontorio del Circeo
Promontorio dell'Argentario
Promontorio di Punta Ala
Sorrentine Peninsula
=== Malta ===
Valletta
Senglea
Birgu
Sliema
Ta' Xbiex
Marsaskala
Fort Ricasoli
=== Russia ===
=== Scandinavia ===
==== Norway ====
==== Sweden ====
==== Denmark ====
=== Finland ===
Hanko Peninsula, Hanko
Porkkala Peninsula, Kirkkonummi
Suensaari, Tornio
=== Estonia ===
=== Turkey ===
Gallipoli Peninsula
Thracian Peninsula
=== Ukraine ===
Crimean Peninsula, occupied by Russia
Chonhar Peninsula
Kinburn Peninsula
Rybalskyi Peninsula
=== United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies ===
==== England ====
==== Northern Ireland ====
Ards Peninsula
Islandmagee
Lecale peninsula
Ramore Head, Portrush
Oxford Island
Magilligan
==== Scotland ====
==== Wales ====
Creuddyn Peninsula juts out of the North Wales coast
Gower Peninsula, Swansea
Llŷn Peninsula
Marloes Peninsula, Pembrokeshire
South Pembrokeshire Peninsula
St Davids Head, Pembrokeshire
Wales, itself a peninsula
==== Channel Islands ====
Le Clos du Valle, Guernsey
Little Sark, Sark
==== Isle of Man ====
Langness Peninsula, Malew
=== Other peninsulas in Europe ===
== North America ==
=== Belize ===
Placencia Peninsula, Belize
=== Canada ===
Dunlas Peninsula, Melville Island, Northwest Territories/Nunavut
Labrador Peninsula, encompassing all of Labrador and most of Quebec
Natkusiak Peninsula, Victoria Island, Northwest Territories/Nunavut
Storkerson Peninsula, Victoria Island, Northwest Territories/Nunavut
Wollaston Peninsula, Victoria Island, Northwest Territories/Nunavut
==== British Columbia ====
==== New Brunswick ====
==== Newfoundland and Labrador ====
==== Northwest Territories ====
==== Nova Scotia ====
==== Nunavut ====
===== Baffin Island =====

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==== Ontario ====
==== Quebec ====
Gaspé Peninsula
Ungava Peninsula
=== Caribbean ===
==== Haiti ====
Peninsule de Tiburon, Haiti
Peninsule de Mole-St-Nicolas, Haiti
==== Dominican Republic ====
Peninsula de Samaná, Dominican Republic
==== Puerto Rico ====
Barrio Obrero, Puerto Rico
==== Cuba ====
Zapata Peninsula, Cuba
Guanahacabibes Peninsula, Cuba
Hicacos Peninsula, Cuba
==== Saint Lucia ====
Vigie Peninsula, St Lucia
=== Costa Rica ===
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
=== Greenland ===
Wegener Peninsula
Hayes Halvo
Ingnerit
Nuussuaq Peninsula
Sigguup Nunaa (Svartenhuk Halvø)
=== Mexico ===
Baja California Peninsula, Mexico, containing the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur
Yucatán Peninsula, partly separating the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean
=== Panama ===
=== United States ===
==== Alaska ====
Alaska Peninsula
Cleveland Peninsula
Kenai Peninsula
Seward Peninsula
Lisburne Peninsula
==== California ====
==== Florida ====
Florida is a well-known example of a large peninsula, with its land area divided between the larger Florida peninsula and the smaller Florida Panhandle on the north and west. It has several smaller peninsulas within it:
The St. Johns River creates a large peninsula over 75 miles (121 km) in length that stretches from eastern Jacksonville down to the border of Flagler and Volusia counties, where the river emanates from Lake George.
Fairpoint Peninsula
Pinellas peninsula, including St. Petersburg and Clearwater
Much of Tampa lies on a peninsula called Interbay Peninsula jutting out into Tampa Bay
Cape Sable
==== Maryland ====
Maryland shares the Delmarva Peninsula east of Chesapeake Bay with Delaware and Virginia.
St. Mary's Peninsula is defined by the Patuxent River, the Potomac River, and Chesapeake Bay.
Calvert Peninsula lies between Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River.
Numerous smaller tidal tributaries form smaller peninsulas on both the Eastern and Western shores of Chesapeake Bay. Named examples include the Broadneck Peninsula in Anne Arundel County and the Elk Neck Peninsula in Cecil County.
==== Massachusetts ====
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a cape that can be viewed as a peninsula
Cape Ann, includes the towns of Gloucester and Rockport
Nahant, a town in Essex County, is on a small peninsula.
Nantasket Peninsula, Hull
Shawmut Peninsula, Boston
==== Michigan ====
==== New Jersey ====
==== New York ====
Irondequoit, NY (geographical headland)
==== Oregon ====
==== Utah ====
Antelope Island, Utah, becomes a peninsula when waters are low, on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake
Promontory Peninsula, on the north eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake
Stansbury Peninsula becomes an island when waters are high, on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake
==== Vermont ====
Alburgh, Vermont, is on the Alburgh Tongue, a peninsula extending from Quebec, Canada into Lake Champlain
==== Virginia ====
Middle Peninsula, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay
Northern Neck, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay
Virginia Peninsula, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay
==== Washington ====
==== Wisconsin ====
Bark Point, Wisconsin in Lake Superior
Bayfield Peninsula, Wisconsin in Lake Superior
Chequamegon Point, Wisconsin in Lake Superior
Door Peninsula, Wisconsin, in Lake Michigan
Jones Island, Milwaukee, Wisconsin in Lake Michigan
Little Tail Point, Wisconsin in Green Bay (Lake Michigan)
Marshall's Point, Wisconsin on North Bay in Lake Michigan
MawBilly Joelwe Point, Wisconsin on MawBilly Joelwe Bay in Lake Superior
Roman Point on Siskiwit Bay, Wisconsin, in Lake Superior
Toft Point between Bailey's Harbor, Wisconsin and Moonlight Bay, Wisconsin in Lake Michigan
==== Other states ====
== Oceania ==
=== Australia ===
=== New Zealand ===
==== North Island ====
==== South Island ====
==== Outlying Islands ====
=== Papua New Guinea ===
Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain
Huon Peninsula
Papuan Peninsula
=== Hawaii ===
Mokapu, Hawaii
== South America ==
=== Southern Cone ===
The Southern Cone, like Europe, is sometimes considered to be a large peninsula. Geographically, the peninsula encompasses most of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil and the southernmost portion of Paraguay, which makes it one of the largest peninsulas in the world. Like the Indian Peninsula, the Southern Cone is sometimes considered to be a subcontinent.
=== Other peninsulas in South America ===
==== Argentina ====
Valdés Peninsula
Verde Peninsula
==== Brazil ====
Cabo de São Tomé
Itapagipe Peninsula
==== Chile ====
Brunswick Peninsula
Hardy Peninsula
Taitao Peninsula
==== Colombia ====
Guajira Peninsula
==== Peru ====
Illescas Peninsula
Paracas Peninsula
==== Uruguay ====
Punta del Este
==== Venezuela ====
Araya Peninsula
Guajira Peninsula
Paraguaná Peninsula
Paria Peninsula
== Fictional peninsulas ==
Brobdingnag in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Xanth in Xanth series by Piers Anthony
The Valyrian Peninsula in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin
== See also ==
Cape (geography)
Headland
Isthmus
List of islands
Promontory
Salient (geography)
Spit (landform)
Tombolo
== References ==
== External links ==
The dictionary definition of peninsula at Wiktionary
Media related to Peninsulas at Wikimedia Commons

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The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of an ocean, sea, lake, or river, that is close to the shore. It provides extensive and productive habitats around the world, adjacent to land-water interfaces.
In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the foreshore (intertidal zone) extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated) to the low water mark (where coastal areas become permanently submerged). However, the geographical meaning of littoral zone extends well beyond the intertidal zone to include all neritic waters within the bounds of continental shelves. Continental shelves cover an area of about 7% of the surface area of the oceans.
In lake ecosystems, the littoral zone covers about 78% of Earth's total lake area. These zones support abundant plant growth, making them not only structurally distinct from the pelagic (open water) zone but also highly productive. Productivity in both marine and lake littoral zones can reach levels comparable to tropical rainforests.
== Definitions and characteristics ==
The littoral zone has no single definition. What is regarded as the full extent of the littoral zone, and the way the littoral zone is divided into subregions, varies in different contexts. For lakes, the littoral zone is the nearshore habitat where photosynthetically active radiation penetrates to the lake bottom in sufficient quantities to support photosynthesis. Along marine coastlines, the littoral zone can extend to the edge of the continental shelf, where water can be sufficiently shallow to allow photosynthesis.
The use of the term varies from one part of the world to another, and between different disciplines. For example, military commanders speak of the littoral in ways that are quite different from the definition used by marine biologists. For the purposes of naval operations, the US Navy divides the littoral zone in the ways shown on the diagram at the top of this article. The US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Environmental Protection Agency have their own definitions, which have legal implications. The UK Ministry of Defence defines the littoral as those land areas (and their adjacent areas and associated air space) that are susceptible to engagement and influence from the sea.
The adjacency of water gives a number of distinctive characteristics to littoral regions. The erosive power of water results in particular types of landforms, such as sand dunes, and estuaries. The natural movement of the littoral along the coast is called the littoral drift. Biologically, the ready availability of water enables a greater variety of plant and animal life, and particularly the formation of extensive wetlands. In addition, the additional local humidity due to evaporation usually creates a microclimate supporting unique types of organisms.
The word littoral may be used both as a noun and as an adjective. It derives from the Latin noun litus, litoris, meaning "shore". (The doubled t is a late-medieval innovation, and the word is sometimes seen in the more classical-looking spelling litoral.)
== In oceanography and marine biology ==
In oceanography and marine biology, the idea of the littoral zone is extended roughly to the edge of the continental shelf. Starting from the shoreline, the littoral zone begins at the spray region just above the high tide mark. From here, it moves to the intertidal region between the high and low water marks, and then out as far as the edge of the continental shelf. These three subregions are called, in order, the supralittoral zone, the eulittoral zone, and the sublittoral zone.
=== Supralittoral zone ===
The supralittoral zone (also called the splash, spray or supratidal zone) is the area above the spring high tide line that is regularly splashed, but not submerged by ocean water. Seawater penetrates these elevated areas only during storms with high tides. Organisms that live here must cope with exposure to fresh water from rain, cold, heat, dryness and predation by land animals and seabirds. At the top of this area, patches of dark lichens can appear as crusts on rocks. Some types of periwinkles, Neritidae and detritus feeding Isopods commonly inhabit the lower supralittoral.
=== Eulittoral zone ===
The eulittoral zone (also called the midlittoral or mediolittoral zone) is the intertidal zone, known also as the foreshore. It extends from the spring high tide line, which is rarely inundated, to the spring low tide line, which is rarely not inundated. It is alternately exposed and submerged once or twice daily. Organisms living here must be able to withstand the varying conditions of temperature, light, and salinity. Despite this, productivity is high in this zone. The wave action and turbulence of recurring tides shape and reform cliffs, gaps and caves, offering a huge range of habitats for sedentary organisms. Protected rocky shorelines usually show a narrow, almost homogenous, eulittoral strip, often marked by the presence of barnacles. Exposed sites show a wider extension and are often divided into further zones. For more on this, see intertidal ecology.
=== Sublittoral zone ===

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The sublittoral zone starts immediately below the eulittoral zone. This zone is permanently covered with seawater and is approximately equivalent to the neritic zone.
In physical oceanography, the sublittoral zone refers to coastal regions with significant tidal flows and energy dissipation, including non-linear flows, internal waves, river outflows and oceanic fronts. In practice, this typically extends to the edge of the continental shelf, with depths around 200 meters.
In marine biology, the sublittoral zone refers to the areas where sunlight reaches the ocean floor, that is, where the water is never so deep as to take it out of the photic zone. This results in high primary production and makes the sublittoral zone the location of the majority of sea life. As in physical oceanography, this zone typically extends to the edge of the continental shelf. The benthic zone in the sublittoral is much more stable than in the intertidal zone; temperature, water pressure, and the amount of sunlight remain fairly constant. Sublittoral corals do not have to deal with as much change as intertidal corals. Corals can live in both zones, but they are more common in the sublittoral zone.
Within the sublittoral, marine biologists also identify the following:
The infralittoral zone is the algal dominated zone, which may extend to five metres below the low water mark.
The circalittoral zone is the region beyond the infralittoral, that is, below the algal zone and dominated by sessile animals such as mussels and oysters.
Shallower regions of the sublittoral zone, extending not far from the shore, are sometimes referred to as the subtidal zone.
== In freshwater ecosystems ==
In freshwater situations, the littoral zone is the nearshore habitat where photosynthetically active radiation penetrates to the lake bottom in sufficient quantities to support photosynthesis. Sometimes other definitions are used. For example, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources defines littoral as that portion of the lake that is less than 15 feet in depth. Such fixed-depth definitions often do not accurately represent the true ecological zonation, but are sometimes used because they are simple measurements to make bathymetric maps or when there are no measurements of light penetration. The littoral zone comprises an estimated 78% of Earth's total lake area.
The littoral zone may form a narrow or broad fringing wetland, with extensive areas of aquatic plants sorted by their tolerance to different water depths. Typically, four zones are recognized, from higher to lower on the shore: wooded wetland, wet meadow, marsh and aquatic vegetation. The relative areas of these four types depends not only on the profile of the shoreline, but upon past water levels. The area of wet meadow is particularly dependent upon past water levels; in general, the area of wet meadows along lakes and rivers increases with natural water level fluctuations. Many of the animals in lakes and rivers are dependent upon the wetlands of littoral zones, since the rooted plants provide habitat and food. Hence, a large and productive littoral zone is considered an important characteristic of a healthy lake or river.
The littoral zone of lakes is typically inhabited by macrophytes (freshwater aquatic plants). These macrophytes include: emergent macrophytes with stalks and leaves extending above the water surface, floating-leaved macrophytes rooted in the lakebed, free-floating macrophytes drifting on the surface, and submerged macrophytes growing entirely below the water surface. The distribution of macrophytes, especially submerged macrophytes, indicate of the extent of the littoral zone. However, some areas of the littoral zone may remain unvegetated when environmental conditions are unfavorable for plant growth, such as when the substrate is unsuitable, light penetration is insufficient, or wave action is too strong. The macrophytes that typically grow in the littoral zone contribute to making littoral zones among the world’s most productive habitats and can therefore play an important role in the global climate, for example by functioning as a carbon sink.
Littoral zones are at particular risk for two reasons. First, human settlement is often attracted to shorelines, and settlement often disrupts breeding habitats for littoral zone species. For example, many turtles are killed on roads when they leave the water to lay their eggs in upland sites. Fish can be negatively affected by docks and retaining walls which remove breeding habitat in shallow water. Some shoreline communities even deliberately try to remove wetlands since they may interfere with activities like swimming. Overall, the presence of human settlement has a demonstrated negative impact upon adjoining wetlands. An equally serious problem is the tendency to stabilize lake or river levels with dams. Dams removed the spring flood, which carries nutrients into littoral zones and reduces the natural fluctuation of water levels upon which many wetland plants and animals depend. Hence, over time, dams can reduce the area of wetland from a broad littoral zone to a narrow band of vegetation. Marshes and wet meadows are at particular risk.
== Habitats in littoral zones ==

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Many vertebrates (e.g., mammals, waterfowl, reptiles) and invertebrates (insects, etc.) use both the littoral zone as well as the terrestrial ecosystem for food and habitat. Biota that are commonly assumed to reside in the pelagic zone often rely heavily on resources from the littoral zone. Littoral areas of ponds and lakes are typically better oxygenated, structurally more complex, and afford more abundant and diverse food resources than do profundal sediments. All these factors lead to a high diversity of insects and very complex trophic interactions.
The great lakes of the world represent a global heritage of surface freshwater and aquatic biodiversity. Species lists for 14 of the world's largest lakes reveal that 15% of the global diversity (the total number of species) of freshwater fishes, 9% of non-insect freshwater invertebrate diversity, and 2% of aquatic insect diversity live in this handful of lakes. The vast majority (more than 93%) of species inhabit the shallow, nearshore littoral zone, and 72% are completely restricted to the littoral zone, even though littoral habitats are a small fraction of total lake areas.
Because the littoral zone is important for many recreational and industrial purposes, it is often severely affected by many human activities that increase nutrient loading, spread invasive species, cause acidification and climate change, and produce increased fluctuations in water level. Littoral zones are both more negatively affected by human activity and less intensively studied than offshore waters. Conservation of the remarkable biodiversity and biotic integrity of large lakes will require better integration of littoral zones into our understanding of lake ecosystem functioning and focused efforts to alleviate human impacts along the shoreline.
== See also ==
== References ==
=== Sources ===

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Longhurst code refers to a set of geospatial four-letter geocodes for referencing geographic regions in oceanography.
The set of 56 geocodes represent biogeochemical provinces that partition the pelagic environment. It is assumed that each province represents a unique set of environmental conditions.
They are named after Alan R. Longhurst, the author of "Ecological Geography of the Sea", the textbook in which these codes are defined.
These codes have also been used in bioinformatic databases such as IMGTooltip Integrated Microbial Genomes to represent sample origins for sequenced microbial genomes, as a supplement to latitude and longitude coordinate metrics.
== References ==

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Longshore drift from longshore current is a geological process that consists of the transportation of sediments (clay, silt, pebbles, sand, shingle, shells) along a coast parallel to the shoreline, which is dependent on the angle of incoming wave direction. Oblique incoming wind squeezes water along the coast, generating a water current that moves parallel to the coast. Longshore drift is simply the sediment moved by the longshore current. This current and sediment movement occurs within the surf zone. The process is also known as littoral drift.
Beach sand is also moved on such oblique wind days, due to the swash and backwash of water on the beach. Breaking surf sends water up the coast (swash) at an oblique angle and gravity then drains the water straight downslope (backwash) perpendicular to the shoreline. Thus beach sand can move downbeach in a sawtooth fashion many tens of meters (yards) per day. This process is called "beach drift", but some workers regard it as simply part of "longshore drift" because of the overall movement of sand parallel to the coast.
Longshore drift affects numerous sediment sizes as it works in slightly different ways depending on the sediment (e.g. the difference in long-shore drift of sediments from a sandy beach to that of sediments from a shingle beach). Sand is largely affected by the oscillatory force of breaking waves, the motion of sediment due to the impact of breaking waves and bed shear from long-shore current. Because shingle beaches are much steeper than sandy ones, plunging breakers are more likely to form, causing the majority of longshore transport to occur in the swash zone, due to a lack of an extended surf zone.
== Development of longshore drift theories ==
The concept of longshore drift or transportation of sediment parallel to the shore by wave action has evolved considerably with time. Early observations related to sediment displacement can be traced back to coastal communities, but the formal scientific understanding of this started crystallising in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While such early perceptions were imprecise, this evolution has encouraged a gradually more sophisticated understanding of the processes occurring at coastlines. Understanding of the coastline processes has continued to evolve through a succession of developments that began many years ago.
=== Early observations ===
Erosion of coasts and sediment transport was known in ancient times, mostly in those parts of the world where dramatic changes of shores take place. However, these early observations were largely anecdotal. Fishermen, sailors and locals would note that sand and gravel seemingly "moved" down the beaches; they didn't fully understand the mechanics, however. Because of the general scientific knowledge, this was an interesting but somewhat misunderstood phenomenon.
=== 19th century: first scientific studies ===
The systematic investigation into the coast processes, including those responsible for longshore drift, began in the mid-1800s when scientists tried to explain the processes of sediment movement along coasts. Among the first of such theories were those proposed by a French engineer, Jean-Baptiste Fourier, and an Irish geologist, Robert Mallet. They studied wave action and sediment transport; however, at that time, the term "longshore drift" was not yet coined. Instead, the principal focus was to understand the processes of waves and their impact on the resuspension and movement of sand and pebbles. The subject was of primary importance because it helped to explain the morphological features of any coast. However, while much is covered, the complete significance of such mechanisms was yet to be fully realised.
=== 20th century: longshore drift defined ===
In the early years of the 20th century, longshore drift became much more refined in its explanation through oceanographers and coastal engineers. They realised that the angle of wave approach to the coast is of paramount importance to sediment transport. This then led to the development in the concept of "longshore currents," which in turn transport sediment along the coast. These currents then became recognised as the main agent of longshore drift. An important concept which emerged during this generation was that of the "drift-aligned" beach. It explained how beaches get to form as a result of prevailing wind and wave directions and that on one side of the beach deposition takes place, while on the other side, erosion does. While the mechanics were becoming more apparent, the interrelationship of the forces in play still proved quite problematic for those trying to manage coasts.
== Overview ==
=== Longshore drift formulas ===
Numerous calculations take into consideration the factors that produce longshore drift.
These formulations are:
Bijker formula (1967, 1971)
The Engelund and Hansen formula (1967)
The Ackers and White formula (1973)
The Bailard and Inman formula (1981)
The Van Rijn formula (1984)
The Watanabe formula (1992)
These formulas provide a different view of the processes that generate longshore drift. The most common factors taken into consideration in these formulas are:
Suspended and bed load transport
Waves, e.g., breaking and non-breaking
The shear exerted by waves or the flow associated with waves.
=== Features of shoreline change ===
Longshore drift plays a large role in the evolution of a shoreline, as if there is a slight change of sediment supply, wind direction, or any other coastal influence longshore drift can change dramatically, affecting the formation and evolution of a beach system or profile. These changes do not occur due to one factor within the coastal system, in fact there are numerous alterations that can occur within the coastal system that may affect the distribution and impact of longshore drift.
Some of these are:
Geological changes, e.g. erosion, backshore changes and emergence of headlands.
Change in hydrodynamic forces, e.g. change in wave diffraction in headland and offshore bank environments.
Change to hydrodynamic influences, e.g. the influence of new tidal inlets and deltas on drift.
Alterations of the sediment budget, e.g. switch of shorelines from drift to swash alignment, exhaustion of sediment sources.
The intervention of humans, e.g. cliff protection, groynes, detached breakwaters.

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=== The sediment budget ===
The sediment budget takes into consideration sediment sources and sinks within a system. This sediment can come from any source with examples of sources and sinks consisting of:
Rivers
Lagoons
Eroding land sources
Artificial sources e.g. nourishment
Artificial sinks e.g. mining/extraction
Offshore transport
Deposition of sediment on shore
Gullies through the land
This sediment then enters the coastal system and is transported by longshore drift. A good example of the sediment budget and longshore drift working together in the coastal system is inlet ebb-tidal shoals, which store sand that has been transported by long-shore transport. As well as storing sand these systems may also transfer or by pass sand into other beach systems, therefore inlet ebb-tidal (shoal) systems provide good sources and sinks for the sediment budget.
Sediment deposition throughout a shoreline profile conforms to the null point hypothesis; where gravitational and hydraulic forces determine the settling velocity of grains in a seaward fining sediment distribution. Long shore occurs in a 90 to 80 degree backwash so it would be presented as a right angle with the wave line.
== Natural features ==
This section consists of features of longshore drift that occur on a coast where long-shore drift occurs uninterrupted by man-made structures.
=== Spits ===
Spits are formed when longshore drift travels past a point (e.g. river mouth or re-entrant) where the dominant drift direction and shoreline do not veer in the same direction. As well as dominant drift direction, spits are affected by the strength of wave-driven current, wave angle and the height of incoming waves.
Spits are landforms that have two important features, with the first feature being the region at the up-drift end or proximal end (Hart et al., 2008). The proximal end is constantly attached to land (unless breached) and may form a slight “barrier” between the sea and an estuary or lagoon (called peresyp in the Russian tradition of geomorphology). The second important spit feature is the down-drift end or distal end, which is detached from land and in some cases, may take a complex hook-shape or curve, due to the influence of varying wave directions.
As an example, the New Brighton spit in Canterbury, New Zealand, was created by longshore drift of sediment from the Waimakariri River to the north. This spit system is currently in equilibrium but undergoes alternate phases of deposition and erosion.
=== Barriers ===
Barrier systems are attached to the land at both the proximal and distal ends and are generally widest at the down-drift end. These barrier systems may enclose an estuary or lagoon system, like that of Lake Ellesmere / Te Waihora enclosed by the Kaitorete Spit or hapua which form at river-coast interface such as at the mouth of the Rakaia River.
The Kaitorete Spit in Canterbury, New Zealand, is a barrier/spit system (which generally falls under the definition of barrier, as both ends of the landform are attached to land, but has been named a spit) that has existed below Banks Peninsula for the last 8,000 years. This system has undergone numerous changes and fluctuations due to avulsion of the Waimakariri River (which now flows to the north of Banks Peninsula), erosion and phases of open marine conditions. The system underwent further changes c. 500 years Before Present, when longshore drift from the eastern end of the “spit” system created the barrier, which has been retained due to ongoing longshore transport.
=== Tidal inlets ===
The majority of tidal inlets on longshore drift shores accumulate sediment in flood and ebb shoals. Ebb-deltas may become stunted on highly exposed shores and in smaller spaces, whereas flood deltas are likely to increase in size when space is available in a bay or lagoon system. Tidal inlets can act as sinks and sources for large amounts of material, which therefore impacts on adjacent parts of the coastline.
The structuring of tidal inlets is also important for longshore drift: if an inlet is unstructured, sediment may by-pass the inlet and form bars at the down-drift part of the coast. This may also depend on the inlet size, delta morphology, sediment rate and by-passing mechanism. Channel location variance and amount may also influence the impact of longshore drift on a tidal inlet.
Arcachon lagoon in southwest France is an example of a tidal inlet system, which provides large sources and sinks for longshore drift sediments. The impact of longshore drift sediments on this inlet system is highly influenced by the variation in the number of lagoon entrances and the location of these entrances. Any change in these factors can cause severe down-drift erosion or down-drift accretion of large swash bars.
=== Sand Islands ===
Where longshore drift is interrupted by other natural features, sufficient sediment deposition can occur to form long-term land structures extending off the coast. The formation process is similar to that of a Barrier island.
K'gari is the largest sand island in the world, located on Australia's east coast, and was formed from interrupted northerly longshore drift.
Over extensive periods, drifting sediment can 'leak' into deeper water, where the wind and waves driving longshore drift are weaker. This allows extensive sediment deposits to be built up off-shore, which is gradually transferred back to the coast as the sea level falls in long-term glacial cycles.
== Human influences ==
This section consists of long-shore drift features that occur unnaturally and in some cases (e.g. groynes, detached breakwaters) have been constructed to enhance the effects of longshore drift on the coastline but in other cases have a negative impact on long-shore drift (ports and harbours).
=== Groynes ===

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Groynes are shore protection structures, placed at equal intervals along the coastline in order to stop coastal erosion and generally cross the intertidal zone. Due to this, groyne structures are usually used on shores with low net and high annual longshore drift in order to retain the sediments lost in storm surges and further down the coast.
There are numerous variations to groyne designs with the three most common designs consisting of:
zig-zag groynes, which dissipate the destructive flows that form in wave-induced currents or in breaking waves.
T-head groynes, which reduce wave height through wave diffraction.
‘Y’ head, a fish-tail groyne system.
=== Artificial headlands ===
Artificial headlands are also shore protection structures, which are created in order to provide a certain amount of protection to beaches or bays. Although the creation of headlands involves accretion of sediments on the up-drift side of the headland and moderate erosion of the down-drift end of the headland, this is undertaken in order to design a stabilised system that allows material to accumulate in beaches further along the shore.
Artificial headlands can occur due to natural accumulation or also through artificial nourishment.
=== Detached breakwaters ===
Detached breakwaters are shore protection structures, created to build up sandy material in order to accommodate drawdown in storm conditions. In order to accommodate drawdown in storm conditions detached breakwaters have no connection to the shoreline, which lets currents and sediment pass between the breakwater and the shore. This then forms a region of reduced wave energy, which encourages the deposition of sand on the lee side of the structure.
Detached breakwaters are generally used in the same way as groynes, to build up the volume of material between the coast and the breakwater structure in order to accommodate storm surges.
=== Ports and harbours ===
The creation of ports and harbours throughout the world can seriously impact on the natural course of longshore drift. Not only do ports and harbours pose a threat to longshore drift in the short term, they also pose a threat to shoreline evolution. The major influence, which the creation of a port or harbour can have on longshore drift, is the alteration of sedimentation patterns, which in turn may lead to accretion and/or erosion of a beach or coastal system.
As an example, the creation of a port in Timaru, New Zealand in the late 19th century led to a significant change in the longshore drift along the South Canterbury coastline. Instead of longshore drift transporting sediment north up the coast towards the Waimataitai lagoon, the creation of the port blocked the drift of these (coarse) sediments and instead caused them to accrete to the south of the port at South beach in Timaru. The accretion of this sediment to the south, therefore meant a lack of sediment being deposited on the coast near the Waimataitai lagoon (to the north of the port), which led to the loss of the barrier enclosing the lagoon in the 1930s and then shortly after, the loss of the lagoon itself. As with the Waimataitai lagoon, the Washdyke Lagoon, which currently lies to the north of the Timaru port, is undergoing erosion and may eventually breach, causing loss of another lagoon environment.
== See also ==
Beach evolution
Beach erosion and accretion
Coastal management, to prevent coastal erosion and creation of beach
Coastal erosion
Coastal geography
Sand dune stabilisation
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Books ===
Bruun, Per, ed. (2005). Port and coastal engineering developments in Science and technology. South Carolina: P. Bruun.
Hart, D.E; Marsden, I; Francis, M (2008). "Chapter 20: Coastal systems". In Winterbourne, M; Knox, G.A.; Marsden, I.D.; Burrows, C (eds.). Natural history of Canterbury (3rd ed.). Canterbury University Press. pp. 653–684.
Reeve, D; Chadwick, A; Fleming, C (2004). Coastal engineering-processes, theory and design practice. New York: Spon Press.
=== Journal articles ===
Kirk, R.M; Lauder, G.A (2000). "Significant coastal lagoon systems in the South Island, New Zealand". Science for Conservation. DOC 46p: 13–24.
Michel, D; Howa, H.L (1997). "Morphodynamic behaviour of a tidal inlet system in a mixed-energy environment". Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. 22 (3–4): 339–343. Bibcode:1997PCE....22..339M. doi:10.1016/s0079-1946(97)00155-9.
Peterson, D; Deigaard, R; Fredsoe, J (July 2008). "Modelling the morphology of sandy spits". Coastal Engineering. 55 (7–8): 671–684. Bibcode:2008CoasE..55..671P. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2007.11.009.
Soons, J.M; Schulmeister, J; Holt, S (April 1997). "The Holocene evolution of a well nourished gravelly barrier and lagoon complex, Kaitorete "Spit", Canterbury, New Zealand". Marine Geology. 26 (1–2): 69–90. Bibcode:1997MGeol.138...69S. doi:10.1016/S0025-3227(97)00003-0.
== External links ==
Photos, animation and explanation for schools, geography-site.co.uk
Intranet.lissjunior.hants.sch.uk has a brief animation on longshore drift.
USGS — Coastal Erosion on Cape Cod, woodshole.er.usgs.gov
Shore drift, ecy.wa.gov
Longshore drift in South Carolina, cofc.edu
British Geological Survey: portable streamer traps for longshore sediment transport measurement

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The lower oceanic crust is the lower part of the oceanic crust and represents the major part of it (the largest part by volume). It is generally located 4–8 km below the ocean floor and the major lithologies are mafic (ultramafic and gabbroic rocks) which derive from melts rising from the Earth's mantle. This part of the oceanic crust is an important zone for processes such as melt accumulation and melt modification (fractional crystallisation and crustal assimilation). The recycling of this part of the oceanic crust, together with the upper mantle has been suggested as a significant source component for tholeiitic magmas in Hawaiian volcanoes. Although the lower oceanic crust builds the link between the mantle and the MORB, and can't be neglected for the understanding of MORB evolution, the complex processes operating in this zone remain unclear and there is an ongoing debate in Earth Sciences about this. It is 6KM long.
== Processes ==
The lower oceanic crust connects the Earth's mantle with the MORB, where around 60% of the total magma production of the Earth happens. The three main processes happening in this region of the oceanic crust are partial melting of the Earth's mantle, melt accumulation at various depths and the chemical modification of this melts during ascent,. This three processes do not happen in a strict order but occur all simultaneously over a depth range of 4–18 km suggesting that these processes can occur already in the upper mantle. The mantle melts are most commonly modified by fractional crystallisation due to cooling and by assimilation of crustal rocks.
== Spreading rates ==
The most important parameter controlling the processes operating in the lower oceanic crust is the magma supply, this is further controlled by the spreading rate, and therefore, spreading rate is a critical variable in models for the formation of the lower oceanic crust. The rate at which plate divergence occurs at mid-ocean ridges is not the same for all ridge segments. Ridges with a spreading rate less than 3 cm/a are considered slow-spreading ridges, while those with a rate greater than 5 cm/a are considered fast-spreading ridges
=== Fast-spreading ridges ===
Intensive search spanning over three decades of seismic imaging have shown that the ridge axis is underlain by a crystal mush containing a small percentage of melt, capped by a thin melt lens containing a generally high, but variable melt fraction. The completely liquid body is a thin and narrow sill-like lens (10 to 150 m [33 to 492 ft] thick and < 2 km [1.2 mi] wide). The lens is maintained by reinjection of primitive magma. The lack of any detectable large magma chamber and the common detection of small lens/mush zone at fast-spreading ridges emphasize the small magma chamber model.
Modally and compositionally layered gabbroic rock is often found (or abundant) in the lower crustal sections of ophiolite. The layered lower crust is thus one of the key features of all models of fast-spreading lower crust. Nevertheless, distinct modal layering as observed in major ophiolites has rarely been observed or sampled on the ocean floor. The IODP expedition 345 was one of the first drilling project, which sampled a significant thickness of layered igneous rocks. A shallow melt can erupt through cool crust and produce sheeted dikes and volcanics, but the small chamber seems difficult to resolve with traditional ideas of fractional crystallization and crystal settling to form the thick sequence of layered gabbros and foliated gabbros and ultramafics. One proposed model is the so-called "gabbro glacier", where crystals settle in a shallow melt-dominated lens beneath the ridge axis. The weight of the accumulating crystals settling to the bottom of the magma lens induces a ductile flow and deformation within the gabbros, just like the ice in a glacier responds to accumulated snow. Nevertheless, the model fails to explain the layered variations in mineral types, the correlated layering in mineral compositional variations, and the apparently primary near-vertical fabrics in the upper gabbros that appear to represent subvertical melt conduits. Kelemen and co-workers concluded that most of the lower oceanic crust crystallized in place, and proposed "the sheeted sill" model. In the model the sills form when porous flow of rising basaltic liquids (or small melt-filled fractures) are stopped beneath permeability (earth sciences) barriers of earlier crystallized melts and pond to form the sills. Cooling rates are generally sufficiently slow that crystals and their interstitial liquids are in chemical equilibrium, as long as the liquid is immobile. However, buoyancy and/or compaction (geology) may induce liquid migration through the mush, resulting a significant compositional and microstructural modification.
=== Slow-spreading ridges ===
Slow- and intermediate-spreading ridges form typically valleys about 30 to 50 km (19 to 31 mi) wide and 1 to 5 km (0.62 to 3.11 mi) deep, with step-like inward-facing scarps, similar to rift valleys on land. Compared to fast spreading-ridges, the magma supply and therefore the heat flow is low and can't maintain a persistent liquid magma chamber. Sinton and Detrick (1992) modelled a schematic cross section of an axial magma chamber beneath a slow-spreading ridge such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Due to the reduced heat and magma supply, a steady-state eruptible magma lens is relinquished in favor of a sill-like mush zone and a smaller transition zone beneath the well-developed rift valley. Convection and mixing in the magma chamber is far less likely than at fast ridges.
Thermal constrains led to the development of different models to reconstruct the accretion history. The "infinite leek" model suggests small magma batches, forming small "nested" intrusions. Another model proposed that crystallization could occur at depth, where temperatures are higher, the formed cumulates are then "dragged" up by mantle flow to form the lower oceanic crust. Today, a model intermediate between these two has become popular. This model is referred to as a "plum pudding", where the lower oceanic crust is constructed from a number of nested plutons that crystallize within the mantle or crust. Schwartz et al. (2005) describes another variant. He postulates that the lower crust is constructed both from the nested shallow-level plutons and from the products of deeper-seated crystallization
== References ==

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Man and Matter - Essays Scientific & Christian is a 1951 book written by a British chemist, museum curator and historian of science Frank Sherwood Taylor. The work presents a critical mind's account of the clash between religion and science. It provides insights into a unique perspective of a person, who has been received into the Catholic Church after forty years of struggling to find his way in a conflicted world of scientific and religious explanations.
The book consists of a preface, personal introduction, and twelve essays, read to the followers of the Catholic Church. The essays reflect on various, more or less controversial issues dividing religion and science, such as materialism, pain, and morality. They have been written at different times and therefore represent the shifting views of the author, as he searches for decisive arguments. All essays have been intended to fall in line with "the Christian doctrine and common sense".
== Book contents ==
=== Preface ===
In the preface, the author informs the reader of the position he has assumed when writing the essays - one of a formerly confused, but now reassured, believer.
=== Personal introduction ===
First chapter, adequately titled Personal Introduction, gives insightful information on why a scientifically inclined and critical person would choose to return to Church, after having been exposed to various religious and scientific influences throughout life. This chapter provides rich insights into author's early experiences, such as growing up in an Anglican family, receiving Christian education, praying, learning the Bible, and partaking in various religious customs and traditions, all very typical of the times, place, and author's social class. However, despite these influences, Sherwood Taylor had great difficulties accepting faith and religion as they were presented to him. Realization that religion might lack rational foundation has severely swayed his views, and initiated an over 40-year long journey in quest of an ultimate verdict between religion and materialism. Along the way, the author has encountered themes such as mind and body, physical concepts of extension, mass, and motion, perception, superstitions, consciousness, spiritualism, qualia and many more, all having great influence on the author and contributing to his understanding of the world, but still not decisive. Sherwood Taylor's problem with materialism lied in its inability to account for mental experiences, and for the sense of "self" as a thinking entity. Additionally, scientific praise of determinism was hardly in line with Sherwood Taylor's belief in will and choice. Despite his great respect for science, the author started to find it increasingly difficult to believe that science could ever explain his life, thoughts, and experiences, his poetic, and mystic side, desperately searching for God.
A pivotal turn took place, when F. Sherwood Taylor accidentally received a letter meant for a member of the Rationalist Press Association, asking to give a lecture on Galileo. Despite a mistake, Sherwood Taylor offered his services, and soon found himself an expert on Galileo's case. While investigating the matter, he came to the conclusion, that Galileo's story was full of deliberate distortions implemented by anti-Catholic and "rational" writers. This made him realize that science is guilty of all the offences usually assigned to Church - it's ill-founded, wicked, deceitful, and superstitious. Following this and other events, including hearing a voice in his head say "Why are you wasting your life?", F. Sherwood Taylor started to see Christianity as the purest and most intelligible of religions, offering so long-sought solutions to many countless problems of life. Additionally, his career in chemistry begun to feel uncomfortable, as it was contributing to a materialist worldview. He joined the Roman Catholic Church, and, although not without doubts, has made up his mind.
The remaining of the book presents 12 essays, which are F. Sherwood Taylor's attempt at progressive, but not final, integration of the religious and scientific methodologies and ways of considering and understanding the world.
=== Essays ===
The Deficiencies of Materialism
Science, Philosophy and Religion
Biology and Man
Evolution and Religion
The Problem of Pain in Nature
On the Excellence of Things
The Vocation of Science
The Place of Science in Christian Education
Some Moral Problems Raised by Science
The Church and Science
Mysticism, Christian and Pagan
The Catholic Layman and His Responsibilities
== Reception ==
The book has been reviewed by Sister Francis Augustine Richey, who regards the author as "a distinguished scientist, a convert moreover from the fringes of scientism to catholicism, a writer with a singularly gifted mind, sensitive, imaginative, intuitive and logical". She states, that as a chemist and historian of science, Sherwood Taylor relies on experience, and writes from a position that emphasizes the appreciation of science. However, he does so in a thoughtful and critical manner, raising "an inspiring call into the battle against materialism". He engages in a careful analysis of scientific method and knowledge, and does so from an easily approachable objective perspective, which Sister Francis Augustine Richey calls "impersonally personal". She describes the book as valuable and illuminating for "teacher and pupil whether of science, philosophy, or religion".
== References ==

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A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen and remove salt, allowing them to tolerate conditions that kill most plants. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse due to convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in tropical and subtropical coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs and became widely distributed in part due to the movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago.
Mangroves are salt-tolerant (halophytic) and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low-oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud, but are most likely to thrive in the upper half of the intertidal zone.
The mangrove biome, often called the mangrove forest or mangal, is a distinct saline woodland or shrubland habitat characterized by depositional coastal environments, where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high-energy wave action. The saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (3 to 4% salinity), to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater (up to 9% salinity).
Beginning in 2010, remote sensing technologies and global data have been used to assess areas, conditions and deforestation rates of mangroves around the world. In 2018, the Global Mangrove Watch Initiative released a new global baseline which estimates the total mangrove forest area of the world as of 2010 at 137,600 km2 (53,100 sq mi), spanning 118 countries and territories. A 2022 study on losses and gains of tidal wetlands estimates a 3,700 km2 (1,400 sq mi) net decrease in global mangrove extent from 1999 to 2019. Mangrove loss continues due to human activity, with a global annual deforestation rate estimated at 0.16%, and per-country rates as high as 0.70%. Degradation in quality of remaining mangroves is also an important concern.
There is interest in mangrove restoration for several reasons. Mangroves support sustainable coastal and marine ecosystems. They protect nearby areas from tsunamis and extreme weather events. Mangrove forests are also effective at carbon sequestration and storage. The success of mangrove restoration may depend heavily on engagement with local stakeholders, and on careful assessment to ensure that growing conditions will be suitable for the species chosen.
In 2025, the area of mangroves globally is estimated at 15.9 million hectares. Asia has the largest area, at 6.10 million ha, and Europe reported no mangrove area. Among countries and areas, Indonesia has the world’s largest extent of mangroves, at 3.40 million ha, followed by Brazil (1.39 million ha), Australia (1.11 million ha), Nigeria (976 000 ha) and Mexico (947 000 ha). Collectively, these five countries host almost half (49%) of the global mangrove area.
The International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem is celebrated every year on 26 July.
== Etymology ==
Etymology of the English term mangrove is speculative and disputed.
The term may have come to English from the Portuguese mangue or the Spanish
mangle. Further back, it may be traced to South America and Cariban and Arawakan languages such as Taíno. Other possibilities include the Malay language manggi-manggi.
The English usage may reflect a corruption via folk etymology of the words mangrow and grove.
The word "mangrove" is used in at least three senses:
Most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome and mangrove swamp are also used;
To refer to all trees and large shrubs in a mangrove swamp; and
Narrowly to refer only to mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora of the family Rhizophoraceae.
== Biology ==
According to Hogarth (2015), among the recognized mangrove species there are about 70 species in 20 genera from 16 families that constitute the "true mangroves" – species that occur almost exclusively in mangrove habitats. Demonstrating convergent evolution, many of these species found similar solutions to the tropical conditions of variable salinity, tidal range (inundation), anaerobic soils, and intense sunlight. Plant biodiversity is generally low in a given mangrove. The greatest biodiversity of mangroves occurs in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Indonesian archipelago.
=== Adaptations to low oxygen ===
The red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) survives in the most inundated areas, props itself above the water level with stilt or prop roots and then absorbs air through lenticels in its bark.
The black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) lives on higher ground and develops many specialized root-like structures called pneumatophores, which stick up out of the soil like straws for breathing.
These "breathing tubes" typically reach heights of up to 30 cm (12 in), and in some species, over 3 m (9.8 ft). The roots also contain wide aerenchyma to facilitate transport within the plants.
=== Nutrient uptake ===
Because the soil is perpetually waterlogged, little free oxygen is available. Anaerobic bacteria liberate nitrogen gas, soluble ferrum (iron), inorganic phosphates, sulfides, and methane, which make the soil much less nutritious. Pneumatophores (aerial roots) allow mangroves to absorb gases directly from the atmosphere, and other nutrients such as iron, from the inhospitable soil. Mangroves store gases directly inside the roots, processing them even when the roots are submerged during high tide.

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=== Limiting salt intake ===
Red mangroves exclude salt by having significantly impermeable roots that are highly suberised (impregnated with suberin), acting as an ultrafiltration mechanism to exclude sodium salts from the rest of the plant. One study found that roots of the Indian mangrove Avicennia officinalis exclude 90% to 95% of the salt in water taken up by the plant, depositing the excluded salt in the cortex of the root. An increase in the production of suberin and in the activity of a gene regulating cytochrome P450 were observed in correlation with an increase in the salinity of the water to which the plant was exposed. In a frequently cited concept that has become known as the "sacrificial leaf", salt which does accumulate in the shoot (sprout) then concentrates in old leaves, which the plant then sheds. However, recent research on the Red mangrove Rhizophora mangle suggests that the older, yellowing leaves have no more measurable salt content than the other, greener leaves.
=== Limiting water loss ===
Because of the limited fresh water available in salty intertidal soils, mangroves limit the amount of water they lose through their leaves. They can restrict the opening of their stomata (pores on the leaf surfaces, which exchange carbon dioxide gas and water vapor during photosynthesis). They also vary the orientation of their leaves to avoid the harsh midday sun and so reduce evaporation from the leaves. A captive red mangrove grows only if its leaves are misted with fresh water several times a week, simulating frequent tropical rainstorms.
=== Filtration of seawater ===
A 2016 study by Kim et al. investigated the biophysical characteristics of sea water filtration in the roots of the mangrove Rhizophora stylosa from a plant hydrodynamic point of view. R. stylosa can grow even in saline water and the salt level in its roots is regulated within a certain threshold value through filtration. The root possesses a hierarchical, triple layered pore structure in the epidermis and most Na+ ions are filtered at the first sublayer of the outermost layer. The high blockage of Na+ ions is attributed to the high surface zeta potential of the first layer. The second layer, which is composed of macroporous structures, also facilitates Na+ ion filtration. The study provides insights into the mechanism underlying water filtration through halophyte roots and could serve as a basis for the development of a bio-inspired method of desalination.
Uptake of Na+ ions is desirable for halophytes to build up osmotic potential, absorb water and sustain turgor pressure. However, excess Na+ ions may work on toxic element. Therefore, halophytes try to adjust salinity delicately between growth and survival strategies. In this point of view, a novel sustainable desalination method can be derived from halophytes, which are in contact with saline water through their roots. Halophytes exclude salt through their roots, secrete the accumulated salt through their aerial parts and sequester salt in senescent leaves and/or the bark. Mangroves are facultative halophytes and Bruguiera is known for its special ultrafiltration system that can filter approximately 90% of Na+ions from the surrounding seawater through the roots. The species also exhibits a high rate of salt rejection. The water-filtering process in mangrove roots has received considerable attention for several decades. Morphological structures of plants and their functions have been evolved through a long history to survive against harsh environmental conditions.
=== Increasing survival of offspring ===
In this harsh environment, mangroves have evolved a special mechanism to help their offspring survive. Mangrove seeds are buoyant and are therefore suited to water dispersal. Unlike most plants, whose seeds germinate in soil, many mangroves (e.g. red mangrove) are viviparous, meaning their seeds germinate while still attached to the parent tree. Once germinated, the seedling grows either within the fruit (e.g. Aegialitis, Avicennia and Aegiceras), or out through the fruit (e.g. Rhizophora, Ceriops, Bruguiera and Nypa) to form a propagule (a ready-to-go seedling) which can produce its own food via photosynthesis.
The mature propagule then drops into the water, which can transport it great distances. The propagules of some species, such as red mangrove, can survive desiccation and remain buoyant and viable for up to a year before arriving in a suitable environment. Once in a suitable, low salinity environment, air-filled intercellular spaces flood with water so that the elongated shape now floats vertically rather than horizontally. In this position, it is more likely to lodge in the mud and root. If it does not root, it can regain buoyancy and drift again in search of more favorable conditions.
== Taxonomy and evolution ==
The following listings, based on Tomlinson, 2016, give the mangrove species in each listed plant genus and family. Mangrove environments in the Eastern Hemisphere harbor six times as many species of trees and shrubs as do mangroves in the New World. Genetic divergence of mangrove lineages from terrestrial relatives, in combination with fossil evidence, suggests mangrove diversity is limited by evolutionary transition into the stressful marine environment, and the number of mangrove lineages has increased steadily over the Tertiary with little global extinction. However, the first mangroves were composed of marine taxa that had become adapted to coastal, brackish environments, and these are documented as early as the Pennsylvanian, and other examples are known from the early Cisuralian. It is likely that mangroves are even older than that, given that life originated in the seas, and that many environments previously thought to be freshwater (and many of which had an abundant flora) display evidence of marine influence.
=== True mangroves ===
=== Other mangroves ===
== Species distribution ==
Mangroves are a type of tropical vegetation with some outliers established in subtropical latitudes, notably in South Florida and southern Japan, as well as South Africa, New Zealand and Victoria (Australia). These outliers result either from unbroken coastlines and island chains or from reliable supplies of propagules floating on warm ocean currents from rich mangrove regions.

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"At the limits of distribution, the formation is represented by scrubby, usually monotypic Avicennia-dominated vegetation, as at Westonport Bay and Corner Inlet, Victoria, Australia. The latter locality is the highest latitude (38° 45'S) at which mangroves occur naturally. The mangroves in New Zealand, which extend as far south as 37°, are of the same type; they start as low forest in the northern part of the North Island but become low scrub toward their southern limit. In both instances, the species is referred to as Avicennia marina var. australis, although genetic comparison is clearly needed. In Western Australia, A. marina extends as far south as Bunbury (33° 19'S). In the northern hemisphere, scrubby Avicennia gerrninans in Florida occurs as far north as St. Augustine on the east coast and Cedar Point on the west. There are records of A. germinans and Rhizophora mangle for Bermuda, presumably supplied by the Gulf Stream. In southern Japan, Kandelia obovata occurs to about 31 °N (Tagawa in Hosakawa et al., 1977, but initially referred to as K. candel)."
== Mangrove forests ==
Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps or mangals, are found in tropical and subtropical tidal areas. Areas where mangroves occur include estuaries and marine shorelines.
The intertidal existence to which these trees are adapted represents the major limitation to the number of species able to thrive in their habitat. High tide brings in salt water, and when the tide recedes, solar evaporation of the seawater in the soil leads to further increases in salinity. The return of tide can flush out these soils, bringing them back to salinity levels comparable to that of seawater.
At low tide, organisms are also exposed to increases in temperature and reduced moisture before being then cooled and flooded by the tide. Thus, for a plant to survive in this environment, it must tolerate broad ranges of salinity, temperature, and moisture, as well as several other key environmental factors—thus only a select few species make up the mangrove tree community.
About 110 species are considered mangroves, in the sense of being trees that grow in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus, Rhizophora. However, a given mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature only three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home (habitat) for a great variety of other species, including as many as 174 species of marine megafauna.
Mangrove plants require a number of physiological adaptations to overcome the problems of low environmental oxygen levels, high salinity, and frequent tidal flooding. Each species has its own solutions to these problems; this may be the primary reason why, on some shorelines, mangrove tree species show distinct zonation. Small environmental variations within a mangal may lead to greatly differing methods for coping with the environment. Therefore, the mix of species is partly determined by the tolerances of individual species to physical conditions, such as tidal flooding and salinity, but may also be influenced by other factors, such as crabs preying on plant seedlings.

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Once established, mangrove roots provide an oyster habitat and slow water flow, thereby enhancing sediment deposition in areas where it is already occurring. The fine, anoxic sediments under mangroves act as sinks for a variety of heavy (trace) metals which colloidal particles in the sediments have concentrated from the water. Mangrove removal disturbs these underlying sediments, often creating problems of trace metal contamination of seawater and organisms of the area.
Mangrove swamps protect coastal areas from erosion, storm surge (especially during tropical cyclones), and tsunamis. They limit high-energy wave erosion mainly during events such as storm surges and tsunamis.
The mangroves' massive root systems are efficient at dissipating wave energy. Likewise, they slow down tidal water so that its sediment is deposited as the tide comes in, leaving all except fine particles when the tide ebbs. In this way, mangroves build their environments. Because of the uniqueness of mangrove ecosystems and the protection against erosion they provide, they are often the object of conservation programs, including national biodiversity action plans.
The unique ecosystem found in the intricate mesh of mangrove roots offers a quiet marine habitat for young organisms. In areas where roots are permanently submerged, the organisms they host include algae, barnacles, oysters, sponges, and bryozoans, which all require a hard surface for anchoring while they filter-feed. Shrimps and mud lobsters use the muddy bottoms as their home. Mangrove crabs eat the mangrove leaves, adding nutrients to the mangal mud for other bottom feeders. In at least some cases, the export of carbon fixed in mangroves is important in coastal food webs.
Larger marine organisms benefit from the habitat as a nursery for their offspring. Lemon sharks depend on mangrove creeks to give birth to their pups. The ecosystem provides little competition and minimizes threats of predation to juvenile lemon sharks as they use the cover of mangroves to practice hunting before entering the food web of the ocean.
Mangrove plantations in Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and India host several commercially important species of fish and crustaceans.
Mangrove forests can decay into peat deposits because of fungal and bacterial processes as well as by the action of termites. It becomes peat in good geochemical, sedimentary, and tectonic conditions. The nature of these deposits depends on the environment and the types of mangroves involved. In Puerto Rico, the red, white, and black mangroves occupy different ecological niches and have slightly different chemical compositions, so the carbon content varies between the species, as well between the different tissues of the plant (e.g., leaf matter versus roots).
In Puerto Rico, there is a clear succession of these three trees from the lower elevations, which are dominated by red mangroves, to farther inland with a higher concentration of white mangroves. Mangrove forests are an important part of the cycling and storage of carbon in tropical coastal ecosystems. Knowing this, scientists seek to reconstruct the environment and investigate changes to the coastal ecosystem over thousands of years using sediment cores. However, an additional complication is the imported marine organic matter that also gets deposited in the sediment due to the tidal flushing of mangrove forests. Termites play an important role in the formation of peat from mangrove materials. They process fallen leaf litter, root systems and wood from mangroves into peat to build their nests, and stabilise the chemistry of this peat that represents approximately 2% of above ground carbon storage in mangroves. As the nests are buried over time this carbon is stored in the sediment and the carbon cycle continues.
Mangroves are an important source of blue carbon. Globally, mangroves stored 4.19 Gt (9.2×1012 lb) of carbon in 2012. Two percent of global mangrove carbon was lost between 2000 and 2012, equivalent to a maximum potential of 0.316996250 Gt (6.9885710×1011 lb) of emissions of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
Globally, mangroves have been shown to provide measurable economic protections to coastal communities affected by tropical storms.
== Mangrove microbiome ==
Plant microbiomes play crucial roles in the health and productivity of mangroves. Many researchers have successfully applied knowledge acquired about plant microbiomes to produce specific inocula for crop protection. Such inocula can stimulate plant growth by releasing phytohormones and enhancing uptake of some mineral nutrients (particularly phosphorus and nitrogen). However, most of the plant microbiome studies have focused on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and economically important crop plants, such as rice, barley, wheat, maize and soybean. There is less information on the microbiomes of tree species. Plant microbiomes are determined by plant-related factors (e.g., genotype, organ, species, and health status) and environmental factors (e.g., land use, climate, and nutrient availability). Two of the plant-related factors, plant species and genotypes, have been shown to play significant roles in shaping rhizosphere and plant microbiomes, as tree genotypes and species are associated with specific microbial communities. Different plant organs also have specific microbial communities depending on plant-associated factors (plant genotype, available nutrients, and organ-specific physicochemical conditions) and environmental conditions (associated with aboveground and underground surfaces and disturbances).
=== Root microbiome ===

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Mangrove roots harbour a repertoire of microbial taxa that contribute to important ecological functions in mangrove ecosystems. Like typical terrestrial plants, mangroves depend upon mutually beneficial interactions with microbial communities. In particular, microbes residing in developed roots could help mangroves transform nutrients into usable forms before plant assimilation. These microbes also provide mangroves phytohormones for suppressing phytopathogens or helping mangroves withstand heat and salinity. In turn, root-associated microbes receive carbon metabolites from the plant via root exudates, thus close associations between the plant and microbes are established for their mutual benefits.
The taxonomic class level shows that most Proteobacteria were reported to come from Gammaproteobacteria, followed by Deltaproteobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria. The diverse function and the phylogenic variation of Gammaproteobacteria, which consisted of orders such as Alteromonadales and Vibrionales, are found in marine and coastal regions and are high in abundance in mangrove sediments functioning as nutrient recyclers. Members of Deltaproteobacteria found in mangrove soil are mostly sulfur-related, consisting of Desulfobacterales, Desulfuromonadales, Desulfovibrionales, and Desulfarculales among others.
Highly diverse microbial communities (mainly bacteria and fungi) have been found to inhabit and function in mangrove roots. For example, diazotrophic bacteria in the vicinity of mangrove roots could perform biological nitrogen fixation, which provides 40–60% of the total nitrogen required by mangroves; the soil attached to mangrove roots lacks oxygen but is rich in organic matter, providing an optimal microenvironment for sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogens, ligninolytic, cellulolytic, and amylolytic fungi are prevalent in the mangrove root environment; rhizosphere fungi could help mangroves survive in waterlogged and nutrient-restricted environments. These studies have provided increasing evidence to support the importance of root-associated bacteria and fungi for mangrove growth and health.
Recent studies have investigated the detailed structure of root-associated microbial communities at a continuous fine-scale in other plants, where a microhabitat was divided into four root compartments: endosphere, episphere, rhizosphere, and nonrhizosphere or bulk soil. Moreover, the microbial communities in each compartment have been reported to have unique characteristics. Root exudates selectively enrich adapted microbial populations; however, these exudates were found to exert only marginal impacts on microbes in the bulk soil outside the rhizosphere. Furthermore, it was noted that the root episphere, rather than the rhizosphere, was primarily responsible for controlling the entry of specific microbial populations into the root, resulting in the selective enrichment of Proteobacteria in the endosphere. These findings provide new insights into the niche differentiation of root-associated microbial communities. Nevertheless, amplicon-based community profiling may not provide the functional characteristics of root-associated microbial communities in plant growth and biogeochemical cycling. Unraveling functional patterns across the four root compartments holds a great potential for understanding functional mechanisms responsible for mediating root–microbe interactions in support of enhancing mangrove ecosystem functioning.
The diversity of bacteria in disturbed mangroves is reported to be higher than in
well-preserved mangroves Studies comparing mangroves in different conservation states show that bacterial composition in disturbed mangrove sediment alters its structure, leading to a functional equilibrium, where the dynamics of chemicals in mangrove soils lead to the remodeling of its microbial structure.
=== Suggestions for future mangrove microbial diversity research ===
Despite many research advancements in mangrove sediment bacterial metagenomics
diversity in various conditions over the past few years, bridging the research gap and
expanding our knowledge towards the relationship between microbes mainly constituted of bacteria and its nutrient cycles in the mangrove sediment and direct and indirect impacts on mangrove growth and stand-structures as coastal barriers and other ecological service providers. Thus, based on studies by Lai et al.'s systematic review, here they suggest sampling improvements and a fundamental environmental index for future reference.
=== Mangrove virome ===

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Mangrove forests are one of the most carbon-rich biomes, accounting for 11% of the total input of terrestrial carbon into oceans. Viruses are thought to significantly influence local and global biogeochemical cycles, though as of 2019, little information was available about the community structure, genetic diversity, and ecological roles of viruses in mangrove ecosystems.
Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on earth, present in virtually all ecosystems. By lysing their hosts, that is, by rupturing their cell membranes, viruses control host abundance and affect the structure of host communities. Viruses also influence their host diversity and evolution through horizontal gene transfer, selection for resistance and manipulation of bacterial metabolisms. Importantly, marine viruses affect local and global biogeochemical cycles through the release of substantial amounts of organic carbon and nutrients from hosts and assist microbes in driving biogeochemical cycles with auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs).
It is presumed that AMGs augment viral-infected host metabolism and facilitate the production of new viruses. AMGs have been extensively explored in marine cyanophages and include genes involved in photosynthesis, carbon turnover, phosphate uptake and stress response. Cultivation-independent metagenomic analysis of viral communities has identified additional AMGs that are involved in motility, central carbon metabolism, photosystem I, energy metabolism, iron–sulphur clusters, anti-oxidation and sulphur and nitrogen cycling. Interestingly, a recent analysis of Pacific Ocean Virome data identified niche-specialised AMGs that contribute to depth-stratified host adaptations. Given that microbes drive global biogeochemical cycles, and viruses infect a large fraction of microbes at any given time, viral-encoded AMGs must play important roles in global biogeochemistry and microbial metabolic evolution.
Mangrove forests are the only woody halophytes that live in salt water along the world's subtropical and tropical coastlines. Mangroves are one of the most productive and ecologically important ecosystems on earth. The rates of primary production of mangroves equal those of tropical humid evergreen forests and coral reefs. As a globally relevant component of the carbon cycle, mangroves sequester approximately 24 million metric tons of carbon each year. Most mangrove carbon is stored in soil and sizable belowground pools of dead roots, aiding in the conservation and recycling of nutrients beneath forests. Although mangroves cover only 0.5% of the earth's coastal area, they account for 10–15% of the coastal sediment carbon storage and 10–11% of the total input of terrestrial carbon into oceans. The disproportionate contribution of mangroves to carbon sequestration is now perceived as an important means to counterbalance greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the ecological importance of the mangrove ecosystem, knowledge of mangrove biodiversity is notably limited. Previous reports mainly investigated the biodiversity of mangrove fauna, flora, and bacterial communities. Particularly, little information is available about viral communities and their roles in mangrove soil ecosystems. In view of the importance of viruses in structuring and regulating host communities and mediating element biogeochemical cycles, exploring viral communities in mangrove ecosystems is essential. Additionally, the intermittent flooding of sea water and resulting sharp transition of mangrove environments may result in substantially different genetic and functional diversity of bacterial and viral communities in mangrove soils compared with those of other systems.
=== Genome sequencing ===
Rhizophoreae as revealed by whole-genome sequencing
== See also ==
Coastal management
Mangrove swamp
Mangrove restoration
Salt marsh
Flooding
Longshore drift
Coastal erosion
Coastal geography
Ecological values of mangrove
Blue carbon
Nursery habitat
Foundation species
Keystone species
Adelaida K. Semesi
== Sources ==
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025​, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
== References ==

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== Further reading ==
Saenger, Peter (2002). Mangrove Ecology, Silviculture, and Conservation. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. ISBN 1-4020-0686-1.
Thanikaimoni, Ganapathi (1986). Mangrove Palynology UNDP/UNESCO and the French Institute of Pondicherry, ISSN 0073-8336 (E).
Tomlinson, Philip B. (1986). The Botany of Mangroves. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-25567-8.
Teas, H. J. (1983). Biology and Ecology of Mangroves. W. Junk Publishers, The Hague. ISBN 90-6193-948-8.
Plaziat, Jean-Claude; Cavagnetto, Carla; Koeniguer, Jean-Claude; Baltzer, Frédéric (2001). "History and biogeography of the mangrove ecosystem, based on a critical reassessment of the paleontological record". Wetlands Ecology and Management. 9 (3): 161–180. Bibcode:2001WetEM...9..161P. doi:10.1023/A:1011118204434. S2CID 24980831.
Jayatissa, L. P.; Dahdouh-Guebas, F.; Koedam, N. (2002). "A review of the floral composition and distribution of mangroves in Sri Lanka" (PDF). Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 138: 29–43. doi:10.1046/j.1095-8339.2002.00002.x.
Ellison, Aaron M. (2000). "Mangrove Restoration: Do We Know Enough?". Restoration Ecology. 8 (3): 219–229. Bibcode:2000ResEc...8..219E. doi:10.1046/j.1526-100x.2000.80033.x. S2CID 86352384.
Agrawala, Shardul; Hagestad; Marca; Koshy, Kayathu; Ota, Tomoko; Prasad, Biman; Risbey, James; Smith, Joel; Van Aalst, Maarten. 2003. Development and Climate Change in Fiji: Focus on Coastal Mangroves. Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, Cedex 16, France.
Barbier, E. B.; Sathirathai, S. (2001). "Valuing Mangrove Conservation in Southern Thailand". Contemporary Economic Policy. 19 (2): 109–122. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7287.2001.tb00054.x.
Bosire, J. O.; Dahdouh-Guebas, F.; Jayatissa, L. P.; Koedam, N.; Lo Seen, D.; Nitto, Di D. (2005). "How Effective were Mangroves as a Defense Against the Recent Tsunami?". Current Biology. 15 (12): R443–R447. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.06.008. hdl:2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/46641. PMID 15964259. S2CID 8772526.
Bowen, Jennifer L.; Valiela, Ivan; York, Joanna K. (2001). "Mangrove Forests: One of the World's Threatened Major Tropical Environments". BioScience. 51 (10): 807–815. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0807:mfootw]2.0.co;2.
Jin-Eong, Ong (2004). "The Ecology of Mangrove Conservation and Management". Hydrobiologia. 295 (1–3): 343–351. doi:10.1007/BF00029141. S2CID 26686381.
Glenn, C. R. 2006. "Earth's Endangered Creatures"
Lewis, Roy R. III (2004). "Ecological Engineering for Successful Management and Restoration of Mangrove Forest". Ecological Engineering. 24 (4): 403–418. doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2004.10.003.
Kuenzer, C.; Bluemel, A.; Gebhardt, S.; Vo Quoc, T. & Dech, S. (2011). "Remote Sensing of Mangrove Ecosystems: A Review". Remote Sensing. 3 (5): 878–928. Bibcode:2011RemS....3..878K. doi:10.3390/rs3050878.
Lucien-Brun, H (1997). "Evolution of world shrimp production: Fisheries and aquaculture". World Aquaculture. 28: 21–33.
Twilley, R. R., V. H. Rivera-Monroy, E. Medina, A. Nyman, J. Foret, T. Mallach, and L. Botero. 2000. Patterns of forest development in mangroves along the San Juan River estuary, Venezuela. Forest Ecology and Management
Murray, M. R.; Zisman, S. A.; Furley, P. A.; Munro, D. M.; Gibson, J.; Ratter, J.; Bridgewater, S.; Mity, C. D.; Place, C. J. (2003). "The Mangroves of Belize: Part 1. Distribution, Composition and Classification". Forest Ecology and Management. 174 (1–3): 265–279. Bibcode:2003ForEM.174..265M. doi:10.1016/s0378-1127(02)00036-1.
Vo Quoc, T.; Kuenzer, C.; Vo Quang, M.; Moder, F. & Oppelt, N. (December 2012). "Review of Valuation Methods for Mangrove Ecosystem Services". Ecological Indicators. 23: 431–446. Bibcode:2012EcInd..23..431V. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2012.04.022.
Spalding, Mark; Kainuma, Mami and Collins, Lorna (2010) World Atlas of Mangroves Earthscan, London, ISBN 978-1-84407-657-4; 60 maps showing worldwide mangrove distribution
Warne, Kennedy (2013) Let them eat shrimp: the tragic disappearance of the rainforests of the sea. Island Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1597263344
Mohammed-Geba, Khaled, Elamin, Ahmed Mohammed, Hassan, Arwa, Mohammed, Essmat, Salah-Eldin, Alaa El-Din, Schott, Eric J., & Galal-Khallaf, Asmaa (2025) Environmental DNA-based metabarcoding reveals a high animal biodiversity level within Red Sea mangrove beds. Frontiers in Marine Science Sec. Marine Molecular Biology and Ecology, Environmental DNA-based metabarcoding reveals a high animal biodiversity level within Red Sea mangrove beds.
Massó; Alemán, S.; Bourgeois, C.; Appeltans, W.; Vanhoorne, B.; De Hauwere, N.; Stoffelen, P.; Heaghebaert, A.; Dahdouh-Guebas, F. (2010). "The 'Mangrove Reference Database and Herbarium'" (PDF). Plant Ecology and Evolution. 143 (2): 225–232. Bibcode:2010PlEcE.143..225M. doi:10.5091/plecevo.2010.439.
Vo Quoc, T.; Oppelt, N.; Leinenkugel, P. & Kuenzer, C. (2013). "Remote Sensing in Mapping Mangrove Ecosystems – An Object-Based Approach". Remote Sensing. 5 (1): 183–201. Bibcode:2013RemS....5..183V. doi:10.3390/rs5010183.
== External links ==
"Mangrove Factsheet". Waitt Institute. Archived from the original on 4 September 2015. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
"Mangroves". Smithsonian Ocean Portal. 30 April 2018.
Top 10 Mangrove Forest In The World – Travel Mate
"Mangroves Fact Sheet" (PDF). Fisheries Western Australia. 2013. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 April 2013.* In May 2011, the VOA Special English service of the Voice of America broadcast a 15-minute program on mangrove forests. A transcript and MP3 of the program, intended for English learners, can be found at Mangrove Forests Could Be a Big Player in Carbon Trading
"Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean". Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 25 January 2014.
"Ocean Data Viewer – UNEP-WCMC". UNEP-WCMC's official website – Ocean Data Viewer. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
Queensland's coastal kidneys: mangroves. Stacey Larner, John Oxley Library Blog. State Library of Queensland.
"Take Shelter - Mangroves work together to protect the Earth and its waters. What can they teach us about community and sacrifice?". Atmos. 16 February 2024.

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Marine botany is the study of plant life in a marine environment. It includes the study of marine algae, seagrasses, and other aquatic plants of the ocean, and their distributions and natural environment.
It is a branch of marine biology and botany.
== Marine ecology ==
Marine ecology and marine botany's area of study includes:
Benthic zone
Coral reefs
Kelp forests
Mangroves
Phytoplankton
Salt marshes
Sea grass
Seaweed
== See also ==
Aquatic plants
Aquatic ecology
"Aquatic Botany"
Phycology
Index: Marine botany
Marine primary production
== References ==

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Marine chemistry, also known as ocean chemistry or chemical oceanography, is the study of the chemical composition and processes of the world’s oceans, including the interactions between seawater, the atmosphere, the seafloor, and marine organisms. This field encompasses a wide range of topics, such as the cycling of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, the behavior of trace metals, and the study of gases and nutrients in marine environments. Marine chemistry plays a crucial role in understanding global biogeochemical cycles, ocean circulation, and the effects of human activities, such as pollution and climate change, on oceanic systems. It is influenced by plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, turbidity, currents, sediments, pH levels, atmospheric constituents, metamorphic activity, and ecology.
The impact of human activity on the chemistry of the Earth's oceans has increased over time, with pollution from industry and various land-use practices significantly affecting the oceans. Moreover, increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere have led to ocean acidification, which has negative effects on marine ecosystems. The international community has agreed that restoring the chemistry of the oceans is a priority, and efforts toward this goal are tracked as part of Sustainable Development Goal 14.
Due to the interrelatedness of the ocean, chemical oceanographers frequently work on problems relevant to physical oceanography, geology and geochemistry, biology and biochemistry, and atmospheric science. Many of them are investigating biogeochemical cycles, and the marine carbon cycle in particular attracts significant interest due to its role in carbon sequestration and ocean acidification. Other major topics of interest include analytical chemistry of the oceans, marine pollution, and anthropogenic climate change.
== Organic compounds in the oceans ==
=== Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) ===
DOM is a critical component of the ocean's carbon pool and includes many molecules such as amino acids, sugars, and lipids. It represents about 90% of the total organic carbon in marine environments. Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is estimated to range from 20-70% of the carbon content of the oceans, being higher near river outlets and lower in the open ocean. DOM can be recycled and put back into the food web through a process called microbial loop which is essential for nutrient cycling and supporting primary productivity. It also plays a vital role in the global regulation of oceanic carbon storage, as some forms resist microbial degradation and may exist within the ocean for centuries. Marine life is similar mainly in biochemistry to terrestrial organisms, and is the most prolific source of halogenated organic compounds.
=== Particulate Organic Matter (POM) ===
POM includes of large organic particles, such as organisms, fecal pellets, and detritus, which settle through the water column. It is a major component of the biological pump, a process by which carbon is transferred from the surface ocean to the deep sea. As POM sinks, it decomposes by bacterial activity, releasing nutrients and carbon dioxide. The refractory POM fraction can settle on the ocean floor and make relevant contributions to carbon sequestration over a very long period of time
== Chemical ecology of extremophiles ==
The ocean is home to a variety of marine organisms known as extremophiles – organisms that thrive in extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, and light availability. Extremophiles inhabit many unique habitats in the ocean, such as hydrothermal vents, black smokers, cold seeps, hypersaline regions, and sea ice brine pockets. Some scientists have speculated that life may have evolved from hydrothermal vents in the ocean.In hydrothermal vents and similar environments, many extremophiles acquire energy through chemoautotrophy, using chemical compounds as energy sources, rather than light as in photoautotrophy. Hydrothermal vents enrich the nearby environment in chemicals such as elemental sulfur, H2, H2S, Fe2+, and methane. Chemoautotrophic organisms, primarily prokaryotes, derive energy from these chemicals through redox reactions. These organisms then serve as food sources for higher trophic levels, forming the basis of unique ecosystems.
Several different metabolisms are present in hydrothermal vent ecosystems. Many marine microorganisms, including Thiomicrospira, Halothiobacillus, and Beggiatoa, are capable of oxidizing sulfur compounds, including elemental sulfur and the often toxic compound H2S. H2S is abundant in hydrothermal vents, formed through interactions between seawater and rock at the high temperatures found within vents. This compound is a major energy source, forming the basis of the sulfur cycle in hydrothermal vent ecosystems. In the colder waters surrounding vents, sulfur-oxidation can occur using oxygen as an electron acceptor; closer to the vents, organisms must use alternate metabolic pathways or utilize another electron acceptor, such as nitrate. Some species of Thiomicrospira can utilize thiosulfate as an electron donor, producing elemental sulfur. Additionally, many marine microorganisms are capable of iron-oxidation, such as Mariprofundus ferrooxydans. Iron-oxidation can be oxic, occurring in oxygen-rich parts of the ocean, or anoxic, requiring either an electron acceptor such as nitrate or light energy. In iron-oxidation, Fe(II) is used as an electron donor; conversely, iron-reducers utilize Fe(III) as an electron acceptor. These two metabolisms form the basis of the iron-redox cycle and may have contributed to banded iron formations.
At another extreme, some marine extremophiles inhabit sea ice brine pockets where temperature is very low and salinity is very high. Organisms trapped within freezing sea ice must adapt to a rapid change in salinity up to 3 times higher than that of regular seawater, as well as the rapid change to regular seawater salinity when ice melts. Most brine-pocket dwelling organisms are photosynthetic, therefore, these microenvironments can become hyperoxic, which can be toxic to its inhabitants. Thus, these extremophiles often produce high levels of antioxidants.
== Plate tectonics ==

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Seafloor spreading on mid-ocean ridges is a global scale ion-exchange system. Hydrothermal vents at spreading centers introduce various amounts of iron, sulfur, manganese, silicon and other elements into the ocean, some of which are recycled into the ocean crust. Helium-3, an isotope that accompanies volcanism from the mantle, is emitted by hydrothermal vents and can be detected in plumes within the ocean.
Spreading rates on mid-ocean ridges vary between 10 and 200 mm/yr. Rapid spreading rates cause increased basalt reactions with seawater. The magnesium/calcium ratio will be lower because more magnesium ions are being removed from seawater and consumed by the rock, and more calcium ions are being removed from the rock and released to seawater. Hydrothermal activity at ridge crest is efficient in removing magnesium. A lower Mg/Ca ratio favors the precipitation of low-Mg calcite polymorphs of calcium carbonate (calcite seas).
Slow spreading at mid-ocean ridges has the opposite effect and will result in a higher Mg/Ca ratio favoring the precipitation of aragonite and high-Mg calcite polymorphs of calcium carbonate (aragonite seas).
Experiments show that most modern high-Mg calcite organisms would have been low-Mg calcite in past calcite seas, meaning that the Mg/Ca ratio in an organism's skeleton varies with the Mg/Ca ratio of the seawater in which it was grown.
The mineralogy of reef-building and sediment-producing organisms is thus regulated by chemical reactions occurring along the mid-ocean ridge, the rate of which is controlled by the rate of sea-floor spreading.
== Human impacts ==
=== Marine pollution ===
=== Climate change ===
Increased carbon dioxide levels, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are changing ocean chemistry. Global warming and changes in salinity have significant implications for the ecology of marine environments.
==== Acidification ====
==== Deoxygenation ====
== History ==
Early inquiries about marine chemistry usually concerned the origin of salinity in the ocean, including work by Robert Boyle. Modern chemical oceanography began as a field with the 1872–1876 Challenger expedition, led by the British Royal Navy which made the first systematic measurements of ocean chemistry. The chemical analysis of these samples providing the first systematic study of the composition of seawater was conducted by John Murray and George Forchhammer, leading to a better understanding of elements like chloride, sodium, and sulfate in ocean waters
The early 20th century saw significant advancements in marine chemistry, particularly with more accurate analytical techniques. Scientists like Martin Knudsen created the Knudsen Bottle, an instrument used to collect water samples from different ocean depths. Over the past three decades (1970s, 19802, and 1990s), a comprehensive evaluation of advancements in chemical oceanography was compiled through a National Science Foundation initiative known as Futures of Ocean Chemistry in the United States (FOCUS). This project brought together numerous prominent chemical oceanographers, marine chemists, and geochemists to contribute to the FOCUS report.
After World War II, advancements in geochemical techniques propelled marine chemistry into a new era. Researchers began using isotopic analysis to study ocean circulation and the carbon cycle. Roger Revelle and Hans Suess pioneered using radiocarbon dating to investigate oceanic carbon reservoirs and their exchange with the atmosphere.
Since the 1970s, the development of highly sophisticated instruments and computational models has revolutionized marine chemistry. Scientists can now measure trace metals, organic compounds, and isotopic ratios with unprecedented precision. Studies of marine biogeochemical cycles, including the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles, have become an area of interest to understand global climate change. The use of remote sensing technology and global ocean observation programs, such as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), has provided large-scale data on ocean chemistry, allowing scientists to monitor ocean acidification, deoxygenation, and other critical issues affecting the marine environment.
== Tools used for analysis ==
Chemical oceanographers collect and measure chemicals in seawater, using the standard toolset of analytical chemistry as well as instruments like pH meters, electrical conductivity meters, fluorometers, and dissolved CO2 meters. Most data are collected through shipboard measurements and from autonomous floats or buoys, but remote sensing is used as well. On an oceanographic research vessel, a CTD is used to measure electrical conductivity, temperature, and pressure, and is often mounted on a rosette of Nansen bottles to collect seawater for analysis. Sediments are commonly studied with a box corer or a sediment trap, and older sediments may be recovered by scientific drilling.
Advanced analytical equipment such as mass spectrometers and chromatographs are applied to detect trace elements, isotopes, and organic compounds. This allows for precisely measuring nutrients, gases, and pollutants in marine environments. In recent years, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remote sensing technology have enabled continuous, large-scale ocean chemistry monitoring, particularly for tracking changes in ocean acidification and nutrient cycles.
== Marine chemistry on other planets and their moons ==
The chemistry of the subsurface ocean of Europa may be Earthlike. The subsurface ocean of Enceladus vents hydrogen and carbon dioxide to space.
== See also ==
Global Ocean Data Analysis Project
Oceanography
Physical oceanography
World Ocean Atlas
Seawater
RISE project
== References ==

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Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created solid material that has deliberately or accidentally been released in seas or the ocean. Floating oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground, when it is known as beach litter or tidewrack. Deliberate disposal of wastes at sea is called ocean dumping. Naturally occurring debris, such as driftwood and drift seeds, are also present. With the increasing use of plastic, human influence has become an issue as many types of (petrochemical) plastics do not biodegrade quickly, as would natural or organic materials. The largest single type of plastic pollution (~10%) and majority of large plastic in the oceans is discarded and lost nets from the fishing industry. Waterborne plastic poses a serious threat to fish, seabirds, marine reptiles, and marine mammals, as well as to boats and coasts.
Dumping, container spillages, litter washed into storm drains and waterways and wind-blown landfill waste all contribute to this problem. This increased water pollution has caused serious negative effects such as discarded fishing nets capturing animals, concentration of plastic debris in massive marine garbage patches, and increasing concentrations of contaminants in the food chain.
In efforts to prevent and mediate marine debris and pollutants, laws and policies have been adopted internationally, with the UN including reduced marine pollution in Sustainable Development Goal 14 "Life Below Water". Depending on relevance to the issues and various levels of contribution, some countries have introduced more specified protection policies. Moreover, some non-profits, NGOs, and government organizations are developing programs to collect and remove plastics from the ocean. However, in 2017 the UN estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans if substantial measures are not taken.
== Types ==
Researchers classify debris as either land- or ocean-based; in 1991, the United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution estimated that up to 80% of the pollution was land-based, with the remaining 20% originating from catastrophic events or maritime sources. More recent studies have found that more than half of plastic debris found on Korean shores is ocean-based.
A wide variety of man-made objects can become marine debris; plastic bags, balloons, buoys, rope, medical waste, glass and plastic bottles, cigarette stubs, cigarette lighters, beverage cans, polystyrene, lost fishing line and nets, and various wastes from cruise ships and oil rigs are among the items commonly found to have washed ashore. Six-pack rings, in particular, are considered emblematic of the problem.
The U.S. military used ocean dumping for unused weapons and bombs, including ordinary bombs, Unexploded ordnance (UXO), landmines and chemical weapons from at least 1919 until 1970. Millions of pounds of ordnance were disposed of in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of at least 16 states, from New Jersey to Hawaii (although these, of course, do not wash up onshore, and the U.S. is not the only country who has practiced this).
Eighty percent of marine debris is plastic. Plastics accumulate because they typically do not biodegrade as many other substances do. They photodegrade on exposure to sunlight, although they do so only under dry conditions, as water inhibits photolysis. In a 2014 study using computer models, scientists from the group 5 Gyres, estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons were dispersed in oceans in similar amount in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
=== Persistent industrial marine debris ===
Some materials and activities used in industrial activities that do not readily degrade, that persist in the environment, and tend to accumulate over time. The activities can include fishing, boating, and aquaculture industries that harvest or use resources in the marine environment and may lose or discard gear, materials, machinery or solid wastes from industrial processes into the water or onto shorelines. This can include anything as large as a fishing boat or as small as particle from a Styrofoam lobster float. In 2003, a study was conducted to identify types, amounts, sources, and effects of persistent industrial marine debris in the coastal waters and along the shores of Charlotte County, New Brunswick, and examine any relationship between the amount and types of persistent industrial marine debris, and the types and numbers of industrial operations nearby. Materials like plastic or foam can break down into smaller particles and may look like small sea creatures to wildlife such as birds, cetaceans, and fish, and they may eat these particles. Indigestible material may accumulate in the gut creating blockages or a false sense of fullness and eventually death from lack of appropriate nutrient intake.
=== Ghost nets ===
=== Macroplastic ===
=== Microplastics ===

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=== Deep-sea debris ===
Marine debris is found on the floor of the Arctic ocean. Although an increasing number of studies have been focused on plastic debris accumulation on the coasts, in off-shore surface waters, and that ingested by marine organisms that live in the upper levels of the water column, there is limited information on debris in the mesopelagic and deeper layers. Studies that have been done have conducted research through bottom sampling, video observation via remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and submersibles. They are also mostly limited to one-off projects that do not extend long enough to show significant effects of deep-sea debris over time. Research thus far has shown that debris in the deep-ocean is in fact impacted by anthropogenic activities, and plastic has been frequently observed in the deep-sea, especially in areas off-shore of heavily populated regions, such as the Mediterranean.
Litter, made from diverse materials that are lighter than surface water (such as glasses, metals and some plastics), have been found to spread over the floor of seas and open oceans, where it can become entangled in corals and interfere with other sea-floor life, or even become buried under sediment, making clean-up extremely difficult, especially due to the wide area of its dispersal compared to shipwrecks. Plastics that are usually negatively buoyant can sink with the adherence of phytoplankton and the aggregation of other organic particles. Other oceanic processes that affect circulation, such as coastal storms and offshore convection, play a part in transferring large volumes of particles and debris. Submarine topographic features can also augment downwelling currents, leading to the retention of microplastics at certain locations.
A Deep-sea Debris database by the Global Oceanographic Data Center of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), showing thirty years of photos and samples of marine debris since 1983, was made public in 2017. From the 5,010 dives in the database, using both ROVs and deep-sea submersibles, 3,425 man-made debris items were counted. The two most significant types of debris were macro-plastic, making up 33% of the debris found – 89% of which was single-use – and metal, making up 26%. Plastic debris was found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 10,898m, and plastic bags were found entangled in hydrothermal vent and cold seep communities.
=== Garbage patches (gyres) ===
== Sources ==
The 10 largest emitters of oceanic plastic pollution worldwide are, from the most to the least, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Egypt, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, largely through the rivers Yangtze, Indus, Yellow, Hai, Nile, Ganges, Pearl, Amur, Niger, and the Mekong, and accounting for "90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans."
An estimated 10,000 containers at sea each year are lost by container ships, usually during storms. One spillage occurred in the Pacific Ocean in 1992, when thousands of rubber ducks and other toys (now known as the "Friendly Floatees") went overboard during a storm. The toys have since been found all over the world, providing a better understanding of ocean currents. Similar incidents have happened before, such as when Hansa Carrier dropped 21 containers (with one notably containing buoyant Nike shoes).
In 2007, MSC Napoli beached in the English Channel, dropping hundreds of containers, most of which washed up on the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site. A 2021 study following a 2014 loss of a container carrying printer cartridges calculated that some cartridges had dispersed at an average speed of between 6 cm and 13 cm per second. A 1997 accident of Tokio Express ship off the British coast resulted in loss of cargo container holding 5 million Lego pieces. Some of the pieces became valued among collectors who searched the beaches for Lego dragons. It also provided valuable insight in studying marine plastic degradation.
In Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, 52% of items were generated by recreational use of an urban park, 14% from sewage disposal and only 7% from shipping and fishing activities. Around four-fifths of oceanic debris is from rubbish blown onto the water from landfills, and urban runoff.
Some studies show that marine debris may be dominant in particular locations. For example, a 2016 study of Aruba found that debris found the windward side of the island was predominantly marine debris from distant sources. In 2013, debris from six beaches in Korea was collected and analyzed: 56% was found to be "ocean-based" and 44% "land-based".
In the 1987 Syringe Tide, medical waste washed ashore in New Jersey after having been blown from Fresh Kills Landfill. On the remote sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, fishing-related debris, approximately 80% plastics, are responsible for the entanglement of large numbers of Antarctic fur seals.
Thirteen companies have an individual contribution of 1% or more of the total branded plastic observed in the audit events: The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria, Bakhresa Group, Wings, Unilever, Mayora Indah, Mondelez International, Mars, Incorporated, Salim Group, and British American Tobacco. All 13 companies produce food, beverage, or tobacco products. The top company, The Coca-Cola Company, was responsible for 11% (CI95% = 10 to 12%), significantly greater than any other company. The top 5 companies were responsible for 24% of the branded plastic; 56 companies were responsible for greater than 50% of the branded plastic; and 19,586 companies were responsible for all of the branded plastic. The contributions of the top companies may be an underestimation because there were brands that were not attributed to a company, and there were many unbranded objects.
== Environmental impacts ==

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Not all anthropogenic artifacts placed in the oceans are harmful. Iron and concrete structures typically do little damage to the environment because they generally sink to the bottom and become immobile, and at shallow depths they can even provide scaffolding for artificial reefs. Ships and subway cars have been deliberately sunk for that purpose.
Additionally, hermit crabs have been known to use pieces of beach litter as a shell when they cannot find an actual seashell of the size they need.
=== Impacts from plastic pollution ===
Many animals that live on or in the sea consume flotsam by mistake, as it often looks similar to their natural prey. Overall, 1288 marine species are known to ingest plastic debris, with fish making up the largest fraction. Bulky plastic debris may become permanently lodged in the digestive tracts of these animals, blocking the passage of food and causing death through starvation or infection. Tiny floating plastic particles also resemble zooplankton, which can lead filter feeders to consume them and cause them to enter the ocean food chain. In addition, plastic in the marine environment that contaminates the food chain can have repercussions on the viability of fish and shellfish species.
=== COVID-19 pandemic impacts ===
In Kenya, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the amount of marine debris found on beaches with around 55% being a pandemic-related trash items. Although the pandemic-related trash has shown up along the beaches of Kenya, it has not made its way into the water. The reduction of litter in the ocean could be a result of the closing of beaches and lack of movement during the pandemic, so less trash was likely to end up in the ocean. Additional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been seen in Hong Kong, where disposable masks have ended up along the beaches of Soko's islands. This may be attributed to the increased production of medical products (masks and gloves) during the pandemic, leading to a rise in unconventional disposal of these products.
== Removal ==
=== Coastal and river clean ups ===
Techniques for collecting and removing marine (or riverine) debris include the use of debris skimmer boats (pictured). Devices such as these can be used where floating debris presents a danger to navigation. For example, the US Army Corps of Engineers removes 90 tons of "drifting material" from San Francisco Bay every month. The Corps has been doing this work since 1942, when a seaplane carrying Admiral Chester W. Nimitz collided with a piece of floating debris and sank, costing the life of its pilot. The Ocean cleanup has also created a vessel for cleaning up riverine debris, called Interceptor. Once debris becomes "beach litter", collection by hand and specialized beach-cleaning machines are used to gather the debris.
There are also projects that stimulate fishing boats to remove any litter they accidentally fish up while fishing for fish.
Elsewhere, "trash traps" are installed on small rivers to capture waterborne debris before it reaches the sea. For example, South Australia's Adelaide operates a number of such traps, known as "trash racks" or "gross pollutant traps" on the Torrens River, which flows (during the wet season) into Gulf St Vincent.
In lakes or near the coast, manual removal can also be used. Project AWARE for example promotes the idea of letting dive clubs clean up litter, for example as a diving exercise.
Once a year there is a diving marine debris removal operation in Scapa Flow in Orkney, run by Ghost Fishing UK, funded by World Animal Protection and Fat Face Foundation.
Cleanup of marine debris can be stymied by inadequate collaboration across levels of government, and a patchwork of regulatory authorities (responsibility often differs for the ocean surface, the seabed, and the shore). For example, there are an estimated 1600 abandoned and derelict boats in the waters of British Columbia. In 2019 Canada's federal government passed legislation to make it illegal to abandon a vessel but enforcement is hampered because it is often difficult to determine who owns an abandoned boat since owners are not required to have a license – licensing is a provincial government responsibility. The Victoria-based non-profit Dead Boats Disposal Society notes that lack of enforcement means abandoned boats are often left to sink, which increases the cleanup cost and compounds the environmental hazard (due to seepage of fuel, oil, plastics, and other pollutants).

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=== Mid-ocean clean ups ===
On the sea, the removal of artificial debris (i.e. plastics) is still in its infancy. However, some projects have been started which used ships with nets (Ocean Voyages Institute/Kaisei 2009 & 2010 and New Horizon 2009) to catch some plastics, primarily for research purposes. There is also Bluebird Marine System's SeaVax which was solar- and wind-powered and had an onboard shredder and cargo hold. The Sea Cleaners' Manta ship is similar in concept.
Another method to gather artificial litter has been proposed by The Ocean Cleanup's Boyan Slat. He suggested using platforms with arms to gather the debris, situated inside the current of gyres. The SAS Ocean Phoenix ship is somewhat similar in design.
In June 2019, Ocean Voyages Institute, conducted a cleanup utilizing GPS trackers and existing maritime equipment in the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone setting the record for the largest mid-ocean cleanup accomplished in the North Pacific Gyre and removed over 84,000 pounds of polymer nets and consumer plastic trash from the ocean.
In May/June 2020, Ocean Voyages Institute conducted a cleanup expedition in the Gyre and set a new record for the largest mid-ocean cleanup accomplished in the North Pacific Gyre which removed over 170 tons (340,000 pounds) of consumer plastics and ghostnets from the ocean. Utilizing custom designed GPS satellite trackers which are deployed by vessels of opportunity, Ocean Voyages Institute is able to accurately track and send cleanup vessels to remove ghostnets. The GPS Tracker technology is being combined with satellite imagery increasing the ability to locate plastic trash and ghostnets in real time via satellite imagery which will greatly increase cleanup capacity and efficiency.
Another issue is that removing marine debris from the ocean can potentially cause more harm than good. Cleaning up microplastics could also accidentally take out plankton, which are the main lower level food group for the marine food chain and over half of the photosynthesis on earth. One of the most efficient and cost effective ways to help reduce the amount of plastic entering our oceans is to not participate in using single-use plastics, avoid plastic bottled drinks such as water bottles, use reusable shopping bags, and to buy products with reusable packaging.
== Laws and treaties ==
The ocean is a global common, so negative externalities of marine debris are not usually experienced by the producer. In the 1950s, the importance of government intervention with marine pollution protocol was recognized at the First Conference on the Law of the Sea.
Ocean dumping is controlled by international law, including:
The London Convention (1972) – a United Nations agreement to control ocean dumping This Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter consisted of twenty two articles addressing expectations of contracting parties. The three annexes defined many compounds, substances, and materials that are unacceptable to deposit into the ocean. Examples of such matter include: mercury compounds, lead, cyanides, and radioactive wastes.
MARPOL 73/78 – a convention designed to minimize pollution of the seas, including dumping, oil and exhaust pollution The original MARPOL convention did not consider dumping from ships, but was revised in 1978 to include restrictions on marine vessels.
UNCLOS – signed in 1982, but effective in 1994, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea emphasized the importance of protecting the entire ocean and not only specified coastal regions. UNCLOS enforced restrictions on pollution, including a stress on land-based sources.
=== Australian law ===
One of the earliest anti-dumping laws was Australia's Beaches, Fishing Grounds and Sea Routes Protection Act 1932, which prohibited the discharge of "garbage, rubbish, ashes or organic refuse" from "any vessel in Australian waters" without prior written permission from the federal government. It also required permission for scuttling. The act was passed in response to large amounts of garbage washing up on the beaches of Sydney and Newcastle from vessels outside the reach of local governments and the New South Wales government. It was repealed and replaced by the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981, which gave effect to the London Convention.
=== European law ===
In 1972 and 1974, conventions were held in Oslo and Paris respectively, and resulted in the passing of the OSPAR Convention, an international treaty controlling marine pollution in the north-east Atlantic Ocean. The Barcelona Convention protects the Mediterranean Sea. The Water Framework Directive of 2000 is a European Union directive committing EU member states to free inland and coastal waters from human influence. In the United Kingdom, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 is designed to "ensure clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, by putting in place better systems for delivering sustainable development of marine and coastal environment".
In 2019, the EU parliament voted for an EU-wide ban on single-use plastic products such as plastic straws, cutlery, plates, and drink containers, polystyrene food and drink containers, plastic drink stirrers and plastic carrier bags and cotton buds. The law will take effect in 2021.
=== United States law ===
In the waters of the United States, there have been many observed consequences of pollution including: hypoxic zones, harmful agal blooms, and threatened species. In 1972, the United States Congress passed the Ocean Dumping Act, giving the Environmental Protection Agency power to monitor and regulate the dumping of sewage sludge, industrial waste, radioactive waste and biohazardous materials into the nation's territorial waters. The Act was amended sixteen years later to include medical wastes. It is illegal to dispose of any plastic in US waters.

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=== Ownership ===
Property law, admiralty law and the law of the sea may be of relevance when lost, mislaid, and abandoned property is found at sea. Salvage law rewards salvors for risking life and property to rescue the property of another from peril. On land the distinction between deliberate and accidental loss led to the concept of a "treasure trove". In the United Kingdom, shipwrecked goods should be reported to a Receiver of Wreck, and if identifiable, they should be returned to their rightful owner.
== Activism ==
A large number of groups and individuals are active in preventing or educating about marine debris. For example, 5 Gyres is an organization aimed at reducing plastics pollution in the oceans, and was one of two organizations that recently researched the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Heal the Bay is another organization, focusing on protecting California's Santa Monica Bay, by sponsoring beach cleanup programs along with other activities. Marina DeBris is an artist focusing most of her recent work on educating people about beach trash.
Interactive sites like Adrift demonstrate where marine plastic is carried, over time, on the worlds ocean currents.
On 11 April 2013 in order to create awareness, artist Maria Cristina Finucci founded the Garbage Patch State at UNESCO –Paris in front of Director General Irina Bokova. First of a series of events under the patronage of UNESCO and of Italian Ministry of the Environment.
Forty-eight plastics manufacturers from 25 countries, are members of the Global Plastic Associations for solutions on Marine Litter, have made the pledge to help prevent marine debris and to encourage recycling.
=== Mitigation ===
Marine debris is a widespread problem, not only the result of activities in coastal regions.
Plastic debris from inland states come from two main sources: ordinary litter and materials from open dumps and landfills that blow or wash away to inland waterways and wastewater outflows. The refuse finds its way from inland waterways, rivers, streams and lakes to the ocean. Though ocean and coastal area cleanups are important, it is crucial to address plastic waste that originates from inland and landlocked states.
At the systems level, there are various ways to reduce the amount of debris entering our waterways:
Improve waste transportation to and from sites by utilizing closed container storage and shipping
Restrict open waste facilities near waterways
Promote the use of refuse-derived fuels. Used plastic with low residual value often does not get recycled and is more likely to leak into the ocean. However, turning these unwanted plastics that would otherwise stay in landfills into refuse-derived fuels allows for further use; they can be used as supplement fuels at power plants
Improve recovery rates for plastic (in 2012, the United States generated 11.46 million tons of plastic waste, of which only 6.7% was recovered
Adapt Extended Producer Responsibility strategies to make producers responsible for product management when products and their packaging become waste; encourage reusable product design to minimize negative impacts on the environment.
Ban the use of cigarette filters and establish a deposit-system for e-cigarettes (similar to the one used for propane canisters)
Consumers can help to reduce the amount of plastic entering waterways by reducing usage of single-use plastics, avoiding microbeads, participate in a river or lake beach cleanup.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Marine debris at Wikimedia Commons
United Nations Environment Programme Marine Litter Publications
UNEP Year Book 2011: Emerging Issues in Our Global Environment Archived 13 February 2012 at the Library of Congress Web Archives Plastic debris, pp. 21–34. ISBN 978-9280731019.
NOAA Marine Debris Program – US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Marine Research, Education and Restoration – Algalita Marine Research Foundation
UK Marine Conservation Society
Harmful Marine Debris – Australian Government
High Seas GhostNet Survey – US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Social & Economic Costs of Marine Debris – NOAA Economics
Tiny Plastic Bits Too Small To See Are Destroying The Oceans, Business Insider
Ghost net remediation program – NASA, NOAA and ATI collaborating to detect ghost nets Archived 7 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
Dunning, Brian (16 December 2008). "Skeptoid #132: The Sargasso Sea and the Pacific Garbage Patch". Skeptoid.

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A marine ecoregion is an ecoregion, or ecological region, of the oceans and seas identified and defined based on biogeographic characteristics.
== Introduction ==
A more complete definition describes them as “Areas of relatively homogeneous species composition, clearly distinct from adjacent systems” dominated by “a small number of ecosystems and/or a distinct suite of oceanographic or topographic features”. Ecologically they “are strongly cohesive units, sufficiently large to encompass ecological or life history processes for most sedentary species.”
== Marine Ecoregions of the World—MEOW ==
The global classification system Marine Ecoregions of the World—MEOW was devised by an international team, including major conservation organizations, academic institutions and intergovernmental organizations. The system covers coastal and continental shelf waters of the world, and does not include deep ocean waters. The MEOW system integrated the biogeographic regionalization systems in use at national or continental scale, like Australia's Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia and the Nature Conservancy’s system in the Americas, although it often uses different names for the subdivisions.
This system has a strong biogeographic basis, but was designed to aid in conservation activities for marine ecosystems. Its subdivisions include both the seafloor (benthic) and shelf pelagic (neritic) biotas of each marine region.
The digital ecoregions layer is available for download as an ArcGIS Shapefile.
=== Subdivisions ===
==== Ecoregions ====
The Marine Ecoregions of the World classification defines 232 marine ecoregions (e.g. Adriatic Sea, Cortezian, Ningaloo, Ross Sea) for the coastal and shelf waters of the world.
==== Provinces ====
These marine ecoregions form part of a nested system and are grouped into 62 provinces (e.g. the South China Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Central Indian Ocean Islands).
==== Realms ====
The provinces in turn, are grouped into 12 major realms. The latter are considered analogous to the eight terrestrial realms, represent large regions of the ocean basins:
Arctic
Temperate Northern Atlantic
Temperate Northern Pacific
Tropical Atlantic
Western Indo-Pacific
Central Indo-Pacific
Eastern Indo-Pacific
Tropical Eastern Pacific
Temperate South America
Temperate Southern Africa
Temperate Australasia
Southern Ocean
== Other marine ecoregion classifications ==
Other classifications of marine ecoregions or equivalent areas have been widely developed at national and regional levels, as well as a small number of global schemes.
Each of these systems, along with numerous regional biogeographic classifications, was used to inform the MEOW system. The WWF Global 200 work also identifies a number of major habitat types that correspond to the terrestrial biomes: polar, temperate shelves and seas, temperate upwelling, tropical upwelling, tropical coral, pelagic (trades and westerlies), abyssal, and hadal (ocean trench).
Briggs Coastal Provinces
One of the most comprehensive early classifications was the system of 53 coastal provinces developed by Briggs in 1974. The near-global system of 64 large marine ecosystems has a partial biogeographic basis.
WWF Global 200
The World Wildlife Fund—WWF identified 43 priority marine ecoregions, as part of its Global 200 initiative.
== See also ==
List of marine ecoregions
Marine botany
Marine ecosystem
== References ==
== External links ==
Nature.org: Marine Ecoregions of the World—MEOW

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Marine ecosystems are the largest of Earth's aquatic ecosystems and exist in waters that have a high salt content. These systems contrast with freshwater ecosystems, which have a lower salt content. Marine waters cover more than 70% of the surface of the Earth and account for more than 97% of Earth's water supply and 90% of habitable space on Earth. Seawater has an average salinity of 35 parts per thousand of water. Actual salinity varies among different marine ecosystems. Marine ecosystems can be divided into many zones depending upon water depth and shoreline features. The oceanic zone is the vast open part of the ocean where animals such as whales, sharks, and tuna live. The benthic zone consists of substrates below water where many invertebrates live. The intertidal zone is the area between high and low tides. Other near-shore (neritic) zones can include mudflats, seagrass meadows, mangroves, rocky intertidal systems, salt marshes, coral reefs, kelp forests and lagoons. In the deep water, hydrothermal vents may occur where chemosynthetic sulfur bacteria form the base of the food web.
Marine ecosystems are characterized by the biological community of organisms that they are associated with and their physical environment. Classes of organisms found in marine ecosystems include brown algae, dinoflagellates, corals, cephalopods, echinoderms, and sharks.
Marine ecosystems are important sources of ecosystem services and food and jobs for significant portions of the global population. Human uses of marine ecosystems and pollution in marine ecosystems are significantly threats to the stability of these ecosystems. Environmental problems concerning marine ecosystems include unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (for example overfishing of certain species), marine pollution, climate change, and building on coastal areas. Moreover, much of the carbon dioxide causing global warming and heat captured by global warming are absorbed by the ocean, ocean chemistry is changing through processes like ocean acidification which in turn threatens marine ecosystems.
Because of the opportunities in marine ecosystems for humans and the threats created by humans, the international community has prioritized "Life below water" as Sustainable Development Goal 14. The goal is to "Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development".
== Types or locations ==
=== Marine coastal ecosystems ===
==== Coral reefs ====
Coral reefs are one of the most well-known marine ecosystems in the world, with the largest being the Great Barrier Reef. These reefs are composed of large coral colonies of a variety of species living together. The corals form multiple symbiotic relationships with the organisms around them.
==== Mangroves ====
Mangroves are trees or shrubs that grow in low-oxygen soil near coastlines in tropical or subtropical latitudes. They are an extremely productive and complex ecosystem that connects the land and sea. Mangroves consist of species that are not necessarily related to each other and are often grouped for the characteristics they share rather than genetic similarity. Because of their proximity to the coast, they have all developed adaptions such as salt excretion and root aeration to live in salty, oxygen-depleted water. Mangroves can often be recognized by their dense tangle of roots that act to protect the coast by reducing erosion from storm surges, currents, wave, and tides. The mangrove ecosystem is also an important source of food for many species as well as excellent at sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with global mangrove carbon storage is estimated at 34 million metric tons per year.
==== Seagrass meadows ====
Seagrasses form dense underwater meadows which are among the most productive ecosystems in the world. They provide habitats and food for a diversity of marine life comparable to coral reefs. This includes invertebrates like shrimp and crabs, cod and flatfish, marine mammals and birds. They provide refuges for endangered species such as seahorses, turtles, and dugongs. They function as nursery habitats for shrimps, scallops and many commercial fish species. Seagrass meadows provide coastal storm protection by the way their leaves absorb energy from waves as they hit the coast. They keep coastal waters healthy by absorbing bacteria and nutrients, and slow the speed of climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide into the sediment of the ocean floor.
Seagrasses evolved from marine algae which colonized land and became land plants, and then returned to the ocean about 100 million years ago. However, today seagrass meadows are being damaged by human activities such as pollution from land runoff, fishing boats that drag dredges or trawls across the meadows uprooting the grass, and overfishing which unbalances the ecosystem. Seagrass meadows are currently being destroyed at a rate of about two football fields every hour.
==== Kelp forests ====
Kelp forests occur worldwide throughout temperate and polar coastal oceans. In 2007, kelp forests were also discovered in tropical waters near Ecuador.
Physically formed by brown macroalgae, kelp forests provide a unique habitat for marine organisms and are a source for understanding many ecological processes. Over the last century, they have been the focus of extensive research, particularly in trophic ecology, and continue to provoke important ideas that are relevant beyond this unique ecosystem. For example, kelp forests can influence coastal oceanographic patterns and provide many ecosystem services.
However, the influence of humans has often contributed to kelp forest degradation. Of particular concern are the effects of overfishing nearshore ecosystems, which can release herbivores from their normal population regulation and result in the overgrazing of kelp and other algae. This can rapidly result in transitions to barren landscapes where relatively few species persist. Already due to the combined effects of overfishing and climate change, kelp forests have all but disappeared in many especially vulnerable places, such as Tasmania's east coast and the coast of Northern California. The implementation of marine protected areas is one management strategy useful for addressing such issues, since it may limit the impacts of fishing and buffer the ecosystem from additive effects of other environmental stressors.
==== Estuaries ====

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Estuaries occur where there is a noticeable change in salinity between saltwater and freshwater sources. This is typically found where rivers meet the ocean or sea. The wildlife found within estuaries is unique as the water in these areas is brackish - a mix of freshwater flowing to the ocean and salty seawater. Other types of estuaries also exist and have similar characteristics as traditional brackish estuaries. The Great Lakes are a prime example. There, river water mixes with lake water and creates freshwater estuaries. Estuaries are extremely productive ecosystems that many humans and animal species rely on for various activities. This can be seen as, of the 32 largest cities in the world, 22 are located on estuaries as they provide many environmental and economic benefits such as crucial habitat for many species, and being economic hubs for many coastal communities. Estuaries also provide essential ecosystem services such as water filtration, habitat protection, erosion control, gas regulation nutrient cycling, and it even gives education, recreation and tourism opportunities to people.
==== Lagoons ====
Lagoons are areas that are separated from larger water by natural barriers such as coral reefs or sandbars. There are two types of lagoons, coastal and oceanic/atoll lagoons. A coastal lagoon is, as the definition above, simply a body of water that is separated from the ocean by a barrier. An atoll lagoon is a circular coral reef or several coral islands that surround a lagoon. Atoll lagoons are often much deeper than coastal lagoons. Most lagoons are very shallow meaning that they are greatly affected by changes in precipitation, evaporation and wind. This means that salinity and temperature are widely varied in lagoons and that they can have water that ranges from fresh to hypersaline. Lagoons can be found in on coasts all over the world, on every continent except Antarctica and is an extremely diverse habitat being home to a wide array of species including birds, fish, crabs, plankton and more. Lagoons are also important to the economy as they provide a wide array of ecosystem services in addition to being the home of so many different species. Some of these services include fisheries, nutrient cycling, flood protection, water filtration, and even human tradition.
==== Salt marsh ====
Salt marshes are a transition from the ocean to the land, where fresh and saltwater mix. The soil in these marshes is often made up of mud and a layer of organic material called peat. Peat is characterized as waterlogged and root-filled decomposing plant matter that often causes low oxygen levels (hypoxia). These hypoxic conditions causes growth of the bacteria that also gives salt marshes the sulfurous smell they are often known for. Salt marshes exist around the world and are needed for healthy ecosystems and a healthy economy. They are extremely productive ecosystems and they provide essential services for more than 75 percent of fishery species and protect shorelines from erosion and flooding. Salt marshes can be generally divided into the high marsh, low marsh, and the upland border. The low marsh is closer to the ocean, with it being flooded at nearly every tide except low tide. The high marsh is located between the low marsh and the upland border and it usually only flooded when higher than usual tides are present. The upland border is the freshwater edge of the marsh and is usually located at elevations slightly higher than the high marsh. This region is usually only flooded under extreme weather conditions and experiences much less waterlogged conditions and salt stress than other areas of the marsh.
==== Intertidal zones ====
Intertidal zones are the areas that are visible and exposed to air during low tide and covered up by saltwater during high tide. There are four physical divisions of the intertidal zone with each one having its distinct characteristics and wildlife. These divisions are the Spray zone, High intertidal zone, Middle Intertidal zone, and Low intertidal zone. The Spray zone is a damp area that is usually only reached by the ocean and submerged only under high tides or storms. The high intertidal zone is submerged at high tide but remains dry for long periods between high tides. Due to the large variance of conditions possible in this region, it is inhabited by resilient wildlife that can withstand these changes such as barnacles, marine snails, mussels and hermit crabs. Tides flow over the middle intertidal zone two times a day and this zone has a larger variety of wildlife. The low intertidal zone is submerged nearly all the time except during the lowest tides and life is more abundant here due to the protection that the water gives.
=== Ocean surface ===

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Organisms that live freely at the surface, termed neuston, include keystone organisms like the golden seaweed Sargassum that makes up the Sargasso Sea, floating barnacles, marine snails, nudibranchs, and cnidarians. Many ecologically and economically important fish species live as or rely upon neuston. Species at the surface are not distributed uniformly; the ocean's surface harbours unique neustonic communities and ecoregions found at only certain latitudes and only in specific ocean basins. But the surface is also on the front line of climate change and pollution. Life on the ocean's surface connects worlds. From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there.
The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and harbours an ecosystem unique to this environment. This sun-drenched habitat can be defined as roughly one metre in depth, as nearly half of UV-B is attenuated within this first meter. Organisms here must contend with wave action and unique chemical and physical properties. The surface is utilised by a wide range of species, from various fish and cetaceans, to species that ride on ocean debris (termed rafters). Most prominently, the surface is home to a unique community of free-living organisms, termed neuston (from the Greek word, υεω, which means both to swim and to float. Floating organisms are also sometimes referred to as pleuston, though neuston is more commonly used). Despite the diversity and importance of the ocean's surface in connecting disparate habitats, and the risks it faces, not a lot is known about neustonic life.
A stream of airborne microorganisms circles the planet above weather systems but below commercial air lanes. Some peripatetic microorganisms are swept up from terrestrial dust storms, but most originate from marine microorganisms in sea spray. In 2018, scientists reported that hundreds of millions of viruses and tens of millions of bacteria are deposited daily on every square meter around the planet.
=== Deep sea and sea floor ===
The deep sea contains up to 95% of the space occupied by living organisms. Combined with the sea floor (or benthic zone), these two areas have yet to be fully explored and have their organisms documented.
=== Large marine ecosystems ===
In 1984, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States developed the concept of large marine ecosystems (sometimes abbreviated to LMEs), to identify areas of the oceans for environmental conservation purposes and to enable collaborative ecosystem-based management in transnational areas, in a way consistent with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This name refers to relatively large regions on the order of 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi) or greater, characterized by their distinct bathymetry, hydrography, productivity, and trophically dependent populations. Such LMEs encompass coastal areas from river basins and estuaries to the seaward boundaries of continental shelves and the outer margins of the major ocean current systems.
Altogether, there are 66 LMEs, which contribute an estimated $3 trillion annually. This includes being responsible for 90% of global annual marine fishery biomass. LME-based conservation is based on recognition that the world's coastal ocean waters are degraded by unsustainable fishing practices, habitat degradation, eutrophication, toxic pollution, aerosol contamination, and emerging diseases, and that positive actions to mitigate these threats require coordinated actions by governments and civil society to recover depleted fish populations, restore degraded habitats and reduce coastal pollution. Five modules are considered when assessing LMEs: productivity, fish and fisheries, pollution and ecosystem health, socioeconomics, and governance. Periodically assessing the state of each module within a marine LME is encouraged to ensure maintained health of the ecosystem and future benefit to managing governments. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) aids in managing LMEs off the coasts of Africa and Asia by creating resource management agreements between environmental, fisheries, energy and tourism ministers of bordering countries. This means participating countries share knowledge and resources pertaining to local LMEs to promote longevity and recovery of fisheries and other industries dependent upon LMEs.
Large marine ecosystems include:
== Role in ecosystem services ==
In addition to providing many benefits to the natural world, marine ecosystems also provide social, economic, and biological ecosystem services to humans. Pelagic marine systems regulate the global climate, contribute to the water cycle, maintain biodiversity, provide food and energy resources, and create opportunities for recreation and tourism. Economically, marine systems support billions of dollars' worth of capture fisheries, aquaculture, offshore oil and gas, and trade and shipping.
Ecosystem services fall into multiple categories, including supporting services, provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services.
The productivity of a marine ecosystem can be measured in several ways. Measurements pertaining to zooplankton biodiversity and species composition, zooplankton biomass, water-column structure, photosynthetically active radiation, transparency, chlorophyll-a, nitrate, and primary production are used to assess changes in LME productivity and potential fisheries yield. Sensors attached to the bottom of ships or deployed on floats can measure these metrics and be used to quantitatively describe changes in productivity alongside physical changes in the water column such as temperature and salinity. This data can be used in conjunction with satellite measurements of chlorophyll and sea surface temperatures to validate measurements and observe trends on greater spatial and temporal scales.
Bottom-trawl surveys and pelagic-species acoustic surveys are used to assess changes in fish biodiversity and abundance in LMEs. Fish populations can be surveyed for stock identification, length, stomach content, age-growth relationships, fecundity, coastal pollution and associated pathological conditions, as well as multispecies trophic relationships. Fish trawls can also collect sediment and inform us about ocean-bottom conditions such as anoxia.
== Threats ==

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=== Human exploitation and development ===
Coastal marine ecosystems experience growing population pressures with nearly 40% of people in the world living within 100 km of the coast. Humans often aggregate near coastal habitats to take advantage of ecosystem services. For example, coastal capture fisheries from mangroves and coral reef habitats are estimated to be worth a minimum of $34 billion per year. Yet, many of these habitats are either marginally protected or not protected. Mangrove area has declined worldwide by more than one-third since 1950, and 60% of the world's coral reefs are now immediately or directly threatened. Human development, aquaculture, and industrialization often lead to the destruction, replacement, or degradation of coastal habitats.
Moving offshore, pelagic marine systems are directly threatened by overfishing. Global fisheries landings peaked in the late 1980s, but are now declining, despite increasing fishing effort. Fish biomass and average trophic level of fisheries landing are decreasing, leading to declines in marine biodiversity. In particular, local extinctions have led to declines in large, long-lived, slow-growing species, and those that have narrow geographic ranges. Biodiversity declines can lead to associated declines in ecosystem services. A long-term study reports the decline of 74–92% of catch per unit effort of sharks in Australian coastline from the 1960s to 2010s. Such biodiversity losses impact not just species themselves, but humans as well, and can contribute to climate change across the globe. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that managing and protecting marine ecosystems is crucial in attempting to conserve biodiversity in the face of Earth's rapidly changing climate.
=== Pollution ===
=== Invasive species ===
Global aquarium trade
Ballast water transport
Aquaculture
=== Climate change ===
Warming temperatures (see ocean heat content, sea surface temperature, and marine heat wave)
Increased frequency/intensity of storms
Ocean acidification
Sea level rise
== Society and culture ==
=== Global goals ===
By integrating socioeconomic metrics with ecosystem management solutions, scientific findings can be utilized to benefit both the environment and economy of local regions. Management efforts must be practical and cost-effective. In 2000, the Department of Natural Resource Economics at the University of Rhode Island has created a method for measuring and understanding the human dimensions of LMEs and for taking into consideration both socioeconomic and environmental costs and benefits of managing Large Marine Ecosystems.
International attention to address the threats of coasts has been captured in Sustainable Development Goal 14 "Life Below Water" which sets goals for international policy focused on preserving coastal ecosystems and supporting more sustainable economic practices for coastal communities. Furthermore, the United Nations has declared 2021-2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, but restoration of coastal ecosystems has received insufficient attention.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—EPA: Marine Ecosystems
Smithsonian Institution: Ocean Portal
Marine Ecosystems Research Programme (UK)

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Marine energy, also known as ocean energy, ocean power, or marine and hydrokinetic energy, refers to energy harnessed from waves, tides, salinity gradients, and temperature differences in the ocean. The movement of water in the world's oceans stores vast amounts of kinetic energy, which can be converted into electricity to power homes, transportation, and industries.
Marine energy includes wave power, which is derived from surface waves, and tidal power, which is obtained from the kinetic energy of moving water. Offshore wind power, however, is not considered marine energy because it is generated from wind, even if the wind turbines are located over water.The oceans have a tremendous amount of energy and are close to many if not most concentrated populations. Ocean energy has the potential of providing a substantial amount of new renewable energy around the world.
While marine energy is a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, its development can impact marine ecosystems, wildlife, and the physical environment. Potential effects include habitat disruption, noise pollution, and electromagnetic fields from subsea cables, which may require mitigation strategies such as fish-friendly turbine designs and environmental impact assessments.
Government policies, economic incentives, and regulatory frameworks contribute significantly to advancing marine energy, with countries like the UK, Canada, and South Korea leading in tidal and wave energy projects.
== Global potential ==
The global potential for marine energy is significant, with estimates suggesting that 20,000 to 80,000 terawatt-hours per year (TWh/y) of electricity could be generated from ocean temperature differences, salinity gradients, tides, currents, waves, and swells.
Indonesia, as an archipelagic country that is three quarters ocean, has 49 GW recognized potential ocean energy and has 727 GW theoretical potential ocean energy.
== Forms of ocean energy ==
The oceans are a vast, largely untapped source of energy, including surface waves, fluid flow, salinity gradients, and thermal differences.
Marine and Hydrokinetic (MHK) or marine energy development in U.S. and international waters includes projects using the following devices:
Wave power converters in open coastal areas with significant waves;
Tidal turbines placed in coastal and estuarine areas;
In-stream turbines in fast-moving rivers;
Ocean current turbines in areas of strong marine currents;
Ocean thermal energy converters in deep tropical waters.
=== Marine current power ===
Strong ocean currents are driven by temperature, wind, salinity, bathymetry, and the rotation of the Earth. The Sun acts as the primary driving force, causing winds and temperature differences. Because there are only small fluctuations in current speed and stream location with no changes in direction, ocean currents may be suitable locations for deploying energy extraction devices such as turbines.
Ocean currents are instrumental in determining the climate in many regions around the world. While little is known about the effects of removing ocean current energy, the impacts of removing current energy on the farfield environment may be a significant environmental concern. The typical turbine issues with blade strike, entanglement of marine organisms, and acoustic effects still exists; however, these may be magnified due to the presence of more diverse populations of marine organisms using ocean currents for migration purposes. Locations can be further offshore and therefore require longer power cables that could affect the marine environment with electromagnetic output.
=== Osmotic power ===
At the mouth of rivers where fresh water mixes with salt water, energy associated with the salinity gradient can be harnessed using pressure-retarded reverse osmosis process and associated conversion technologies. Another system is based on using freshwater upwelling through a turbine immersed in seawater, and one involving electrochemical reactions is also in development.
Significant research took place from 1975 to 1985 and gave various results regarding the economy of PRO and RED plants. Small-scale investigations into salinity power production take place in other countries like Japan, Israel, and the United States. In Europe the research is concentrated in Norway and the Netherlands, in both places small pilots are tested. Salinity gradient energy is the energy available from the difference in salt concentration between freshwater with saltwater. This energy source is not easy to understand, as it is not directly occurring in nature in the form of heat, waterfalls, wind, waves, or radiation.
=== Ocean thermal energy ===
Water typically varies in temperature from the surface warmed by direct sunlight to greater depths where sunlight cannot penetrate. This differential is greatest in tropical waters, making this technology most applicable in water locations. A fluid is often vaporized to drive a turbine that may generate electricity or produce desalinized water. Systems may be either open-cycle, closed-cycle, or hybrid.
=== Tidal power ===
The energy from moving masses of water – a popular form of hydroelectric power generation. Tidal power generation comprises three main forms, namely tidal stream power, tidal barrage power, and dynamic tidal power.
=== Wave power ===

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Solar energy from the Sun creates temperature differentials that result in wind. The interaction between wind and the surface of water creates waves, which are larger when there is a greater distance for them to build up. Wave energy potential is greatest between 30° and 60° latitude in both hemispheres on the west coast because of the global direction of wind. When evaluating wave energy as a technology type, it is important to distinguish between the four most common approaches: point absorber buoys, surface attenuators, oscillating water columns, and overtopping devices.
The wave energy sector is reaching a significant milestone in the development of the industry, with steps towards commercial viability being taken. The more advanced device developers are currently progressing beyond single unit demonstration devices and are proceeding to array development and multi-megawatt projects. The backing of major utility companies is now manifesting itself through partnerships within the development process, unlocking further investment, and in some cases, international co-operation.
At a simplified level, wave energy technology can be located near-shore and offshore. Wave energy converters can also be designed for operation in specific water depth conditions: deep water, intermediate water or shallow water. The fundamental device design will be dependent on the location of the device and the intended resource characteristics.
== Environmental effects ==
Marine energy, harnessed from renewable sources such as waves, tides, and ocean currents, is widely regarded as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. However, similar to other energy technologies, marine energy may have environmental impacts that need to be carefully assessed. These effects can be broadly categorized into impacts on marine ecosystems, wildlife, and the physical environment.
Impacts on Marine Ecosystems
The deployment of marine energy infrastructure can alter local ecosystems by modifying water flow, sediment transport, and habitat structures. For instance, tidal barrages, which block the natural flow of water, can lead to changes in salinity levels and sediment deposition in estuaries. Such alterations can disrupt benthic habitats, affecting species that rely on these environments for survival. Research has shown that tidal energy projects can result in localized habitat loss, particularly for species sensitive to changes in sediment composition and water flow.
Wave energy converters (WECs) can also influence marine ecosystems. While they may create artificial reefs that attract certain species, they can simultaneously displace others, leading to competition for resources. In some cases, these structures have been observed to enhance biodiversity, but the overall impact depends on the specific design and location of the devices. The ecological trade-offs associated with WECs highlight the importance of careful planning and monitoring to balance energy production with environmental conservation.
Effects on Marine Wildlife
Marine energy technologies pose risks to marine wildlife, particularly through collisions with underwater turbines, noise pollution, and electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by subsea cables. For example, tidal turbines, which operate in high-flow environments, can pose a threat to fish and marine mammals that may collide with rotating blades. While the risk of collision is generally considered low, it can be significant for slow-moving or migratory species, necessitating the development of fish-friendly turbine designs.
Noise pollution is another concern associated with marine energy installations. The construction and operation of devices can generate underwater noise, which may disrupt marine life. Cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins, rely heavily on sound for communication, navigation, and foraging. Prolonged exposure to noise can lead to behavioral changes, increased stress levels, and even habitat abandonment. Mitigation measures, such as noise-reduction technologies and strategic placement of devices, are required to minimize these impacts.
Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from subsea power cables can also affect marine species, particularly those sensitive to electromagnetic stimuli, such as sharks and rays.
Physical and Chemical Changes
The installation of marine energy infrastructure can lead to physical changes in the marine environment, such as altered wave patterns and coastal erosion. For example, large-scale wave energy farms can reduce the amount of wave energy reaching the shore, which may impact coastal processes like sediment transport. In some cases, this could exacerbate coastal erosion, particularly in areas already vulnerable to such changes.
Chemical impacts, such as the release of antifouling agents or other pollutants from marine energy devices, are another potential concern. While these impacts are generally minor compared to those associated with fossil fuel extraction, they still require careful management to minimize harm to marine ecosystems. Regular maintenance and the use of environmentally friendly materials can help mitigate these risks.
Mitigation and Best Practices
Governments and organizations have developed regulatory frameworks and best practices to address these environmental effects. Regulatory bodies typically require environmental impact assessments (EIAs) before deploying marine energy projects. These assessments help identify potential risks and guide mitigation strategies, such as the use of fish-friendly turbine designs, noise-reduction technologies, and strategic placement of devices to minimize ecological disruption.
International organizations, such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), have published guidelines for sustainable marine energy development. These guidelines emphasize the importance of stakeholder engagement, adaptive management, and long-term monitoring to ensure that marine energy projects are environmentally responsible. By adhering to these principles, the marine energy industry can balance the need for renewable energy with the protection of marine ecosystems and wildlife.
== Policies, Economics, and Government Initiatives ==
The development of marine energy is heavily influenced by government policies, economic incentives, and regulatory frameworks. These factors play a critical role in fostering innovation, attracting investment, and ensuring the sustainable deployment of marine energy technologies.

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Economic Considerations
Marine energy is still in the early stages of commercialization, and its economic viability depends on reducing costs and improving efficiency. The high capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) associated with marine energy projects have historically been barriers to widespread adoption. However, technological advancements, economies of scale, and government support are helping to drive down costs. For example, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for tidal and wave energy has decreased significantly in recent years, though it remains higher than that of more established renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
Government subsidies, grants, and tax incentives are often used to offset the high initial costs of marine energy projects. These financial mechanisms are designed to encourage private sector investment and accelerate the deployment of marine energy technologies.
Government Policies and Regulatory Frameworks
Government policies significantly influence the development of marine energy. Many countries have implemented renewable energy targets, feed-in tariffs, and renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to promote the development of marine energy. For instance, the European Union has set ambitious renewable energy targets as part of its Green Deal, with marine energy identified as a key component of its strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
In the United Kingdom, the Marine Energy Programme has been instrumental in supporting the development of tidal and wave energy. The program provides funding for research and development (R&D), as well as demonstration projects. The UK government has also established the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, which guarantees a fixed price for electricity generated from marine energy, providing long-term revenue certainty for developers.
United States has implemented policies to support marine energy through the Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). The WPTO funds R&D initiatives and provides grants for pilot projects. The Marine Renewable Energy Act has also been proposed to create a regulatory framework for the development of marine energy resources in U.S. waters.
Case Studies
United Kingdom: The UK is a global leader in marine energy, particularly tidal energy. The MeyGen tidal energy project in Scotland is one of the largest tidal stream projects in the world. Supported by government funding and private investment, the project has demonstrated the potential for large-scale tidal energy generation. The UK's supportive policy environment, including the CfD scheme, has played a key role in the project's success.
Canada: Canada has significant marine energy resources, particularly in the Bay of Fundy, which has some of the highest tidal ranges in the world. The Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) in Nova Scotia serves as a test site for tidal energy technologies. The Canadian government has provided funding for FORCE and established regulatory frameworks to facilitate the deployment of marine energy projects.
South Korea: South Korea has made substantial investments in marine energy as part of its renewable energy strategy. The Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station is the world's largest tidal power plant, with a capacity of 254 MW. The project was developed with significant government support and is a representative example of large-scale tidal energy deployment.
France: France has a long history of tidal energy development, dating back to the Rance Tidal Power Station, which was commissioned in 1966 and remains one of the oldest and most successful tidal power plants in the world. The French government continues to support marine energy through R&D funding and policy initiatives aimed at expanding renewable energy capacity.
== See also ==
Energy harvesting
Marine current power
Tidal power
Wave power
Ocean thermal energy conversion
Osmotic power
Renewable energy
Renewable energy commercialization
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Omar Ellabban, Haitham Abu-Rub, Frede Blaabjerg: Renewable energy resources: Current status, future prospects and their enabling technology. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 39, (2014), 748–764, doi:10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.113.
== External links ==
The Ocean Energy Systems
European Ocean Energy Association
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC)
Ocean Energy Council
SuperGen UK Centre for Marine Energy Research
Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy
Marine Energy Projects Database
Tethys - Environmental Effects of Wind and Marine Renewable Energy
Tethys Engineering - Technical information on marine energy
Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository

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A marine habitat is a habitat that supports marine life. Marine life depends in some way on the saltwater that is in the sea (the term marine comes from the Latin mare, meaning sea or ocean). A habitat is an ecological or environmental area inhabited by one or more living species. The marine environment supports many kinds of these habitats.
Marine habitats can be divided into coastal and open ocean habitats. Coastal habitats are found in the area that extends from as far as the tide comes in on the shoreline out to the edge of the continental shelf. Most marine life is found in coastal habitats, even though the shelf area occupies only seven percent of the total ocean area. Open ocean habitats are found in the deep ocean beyond the edge of the continental shelf.
Alternatively, marine habitats can be divided into pelagic and demersal zones. Pelagic habitats are found near the surface or in the open water column, away from the bottom of the ocean. Demersal habitats are near or on the bottom of the ocean. An organism living in a pelagic habitat is said to be a pelagic organism, as in pelagic fish. Similarly, an organism living in a demersal habitat is said to be a demersal organism, as in demersal fish. Pelagic habitats are intrinsically shifting and ephemeral, depending on what ocean currents are doing.
Marine habitats can be modified by their inhabitants. Some marine organisms, like corals, kelp, mangroves and seagrasses, are ecosystem engineers which reshape the marine environment to the point where they create further habitat for other organisms. By volume the ocean provides most of the habitable space on the planet.
== Overview ==
In contrast to terrestrial habitats, marine habitats are shifting and ephemeral. Swimming organisms find areas by the edge of a continental shelf a good habitat, but only while upwellings bring nutrient rich water to the surface. Shellfish find habitat on sandy beaches, but storms, tides and currents mean their habitat continually reinvents itself.
The presence of seawater is common to all marine habitats. Beyond that many other things determine whether a marine area makes a good habitat and the type of habitat it makes. For example:
temperature – is affected by geographical latitude, ocean currents, weather, the discharge of rivers, and by the presence of hydrothermal vents or cold seeps
sunlight – photosynthetic processes depend on how deep and turbid the water is
nutrients – are transported by ocean currents to different marine habitats from land runoff, or by upwellings from the deep sea, or they sink through the sea as marine snow
salinity – varies, particularly in estuaries or near river deltas, or by hydrothermal vents
dissolved gases – oxygen levels in particular, can be increased by wave actions and decreased during algal blooms
acidity – this is partly to do with dissolved gases above, since the acidity of the ocean is largely controlled by how much carbon dioxide is in the water.
turbulence – ocean waves, fast currents and the agitation of water affect the nature of habitats
cover – the availability of cover such as the adjacency of the sea bottom, or the presence of floating objects
substrate – The slope, orientation, profile and rugosity of hard substrates, and particle size, sorting and density of unconsolidated sediment bottoms can make a big difference to the life forms that can settle on it.
the occupying organisms themselves – since organisms modify their habitats by the act of occupying them, and some, like corals, kelp, mangroves and seagrasses, create further habitats for other organisms.
There are five major oceans, of which the Pacific Ocean is nearly as large as the rest put together. Coastlines fringe the land for nearly 380,000 kilometres.
Altogether, the ocean occupies 71 percent of the world surface, averaging nearly four kilometres in depth. By volume, the ocean contains more than 99 percent of the Earth's liquid water. The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out it would be more appropriate to refer to the planet Earth as the planet Sea or the planet
Ocean.
Marine habitats can be broadly divided into pelagic and demersal habitats. Pelagic habitats are the habitats of the open water column, away from the bottom of the ocean. Demersal habitats are the habitats that are near or on the bottom of the ocean. An organism living in a pelagic habitat is said to be a pelagic organism, as in pelagic fish. Similarly, an organism living in a demersal habitat is said to be a demersal organism, as in demersal fish. Pelagic habitats are intrinsically ephemeral, depending on what ocean currents are doing.
The land-based ecosystem depends on topsoil and fresh water, while the marine ecosystem depends on dissolved nutrients washed down from the land.
Ocean deoxygenation poses a threat to marine habitats, due to the growth of low oxygen zones.
== Ocean currents ==

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In marine systems, ocean currents have a key role determining which areas are effective as habitats, since ocean currents transport the basic nutrients needed to support marine life. Plankton are the life forms that inhabit the ocean that are so small (less than 2 mm) that they cannot effectively propel themselves through the water, but must drift instead with the currents. If the current carries the right nutrients, and if it also flows at a suitably shallow depth where there is plenty of sunlight, then such a current itself can become a suitable habitat for photosynthesizing tiny algae called phytoplankton. These tiny plants are the primary producers in the ocean, at the start of the food chain. In turn, as the population of drifting phytoplankton grows, the water becomes a suitable habitat for zooplankton, which feed on the phytoplankton. While phytoplankton are tiny drifting plants, zooplankton are tiny drifting animals, such as the larvae of fish and marine invertebrates. If sufficient zooplankton establish themselves, the current becomes a candidate habitat for the forage fish that feed on them. And then if sufficient forage fish move to the area, it becomes a candidate habitat for larger predatory fish and other marine animals that feed on the forage fish. In this dynamic way, the current itself can, over time, become a moving habitat for multiple types of marine life.
Ocean currents can be generated by differences in the density of the water. How dense water is depends on how saline or warm it is. If water contains differences in salt content or temperature, then the different densities will initiate a current. Water that is saltier or cooler will be denser, and will sink in relation to the surrounding water. Conversely, warmer and less salty water will float to the surface. Atmospheric winds and pressure differences also produces surface currents, waves and seiches. Ocean currents are also generated by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon (tides), and seismic activity (tsunami).
The rotation of the Earth affects the direction ocean currents take, and explains which way the large circular ocean gyres rotate in the image above left. Suppose a current at the equator is heading north. The Earth rotates eastward, so the water possesses that rotational momentum. But the further the water moves north, the slower the earth moves eastward. If the current could get to the North Pole, the earth would not be moving eastward at all. To conserve its rotational momentum, the further the current travels north the faster it must move eastward. So the effect is that the current curves to the right. This is the Coriolis effect. It is weakest at the equator and strongest at the poles. The effect is opposite south of the equator, where currents curve left.
== Topography ==
== Biomass ==
One measure of the relative importance of different marine habitats is the rate at which they produce biomass.
== Coastal ==
Marine coasts are dynamic environments which constantly change, like the ocean which partially shape them. The Earth's natural processes, including weather and sea level change, result in the erosion, accretion and resculpturing of coasts as well as the flooding and creation of continental shelves and drowned river valleys.
The main agents responsible for deposition and erosion along coastlines are waves, tides and currents. The formation of coasts also depends on the nature of the rocks they are made of – the harder the rocks the less likely they are to erode, so variations in rock hardness result in coastlines with different shapes.
Tides often determine the range over which sediment is deposited or eroded. Areas with high tidal ranges allow waves to reach farther up the shore, and areas with lower tidal ranges produce deposition at a smaller elevation interval. The tidal range is influenced by the size and shape of the coastline. Tides do not typically cause erosion by themselves; however, tidal bores can erode as the waves surge up river estuaries from the ocean.
Waves erode coastline as they break on shore releasing their energy; the larger the wave the more energy it releases and the more sediment it moves. Sediment deposited by waves comes from eroded cliff faces and is moved along the coastline by the waves. Sediment deposited by rivers is the dominant influence on the amount of sediment located on a coastline.
The sedimentologist Francis Shepard classified coasts as primary or secondary.
Primary coasts are shaped by non-marine processes, by changes in the land form. If a coast is in much the same condition as it was when sea level was stabilised after the last ice age, it is called a primary coast. "Primary coasts are created by erosion (the wearing away of soil or rock), deposition (the buildup of sediment or sand) or tectonic activity (changes in the structure of the rock and soil because of earthquakes). Many of these coastlines were formed as the sea level rose during the last 18,000 years, submerging river and glacial valleys to form bays and fjords." An example of a primary coast is a river delta, which forms when a river deposits soil and other material as it enters the sea.
Secondary coasts are produced by marine processes, such as the action of the sea or by creatures that live in it. Secondary coastlines include sea cliffs, barrier islands, mud flats, coral reefs, mangrove swamps and salt marshes.

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Continental coastlines usually have a continental shelf, a shelf of relatively shallow water, less than 200 metres deep, which extends 68 km on average beyond the coast. Worldwide, continental shelves occupy a total area of about 24 million km2 (9 million sq mi), 8% of the ocean's total area and nearly 5% of the world's total area. Since the continental shelf is usually less than 200 metres deep, it follows that coastal habitats are generally photic, situated in the sunlit epipelagic zone. This means the conditions for photosynthetic processes so important for primary production, are available to coastal marine habitats. Because land is nearby, there are large discharges of nutrient rich land runoff into coastal waters. Further, periodic upwellings from the deep ocean can provide cool and nutrient rich currents along the edge of the continental shelf.
As a result, coastal marine life is the most abundant in the world. It is found in tidal pools, fjords and estuaries, near sandy shores and rocky coastlines, around coral reefs and on or above the continental shelf. Coastal fish include small forage fish as well as the larger predator fish that feed on them. Forage fish thrive in inshore waters where high productivity results from upwelling and shoreline run off of nutrients. Some are partial residents that spawn in streams, estuaries and bays, but most complete their life cycle in the zone. There can also be a mutualism between species that occupy adjacent marine habitats. For example, fringing reefs just below low tide level have a mutually beneficial relationship with mangrove forests at high tide level and sea grass meadows in between: the reefs protect the mangroves and seagrass from strong currents and waves that would damage them or erode the sediments in which they are rooted, while the mangroves and seagrass protect the coral from large influxes of silt, fresh water and pollutants. This additional level of variety in the environment is beneficial to many types of coral reef animals, which for example may feed in the sea grass and use the reefs for protection or breeding.
Coastal habitats are the most visible marine habitats, but they are not the only important marine habitats. Coastlines run for 380,000 kilometres, and the total volume of the ocean is 1,370 million cu km. This means that for each metre of coast, there is 3.6 cu km of ocean space available somewhere for marine habitats.
=== Intertidal ===
Intertidal zones, those areas close to shore, are constantly being exposed and covered by the ocean's tides. A huge array of life lives within this zone.
Shore habitats range from the upper intertidal zones to the area where land vegetation takes prominence. It can be underwater anywhere from daily to very infrequently. Many species here are scavengers, living off of sea life that is washed up on the shore. Many land animals also make much use of the shore and intertidal habitats. A subgroup of organisms in this habitat bores and grinds exposed rock through the process of bioerosion.
=== Sandy shores ===
Sandy shores, also called beaches, are coastal shorelines where sand accumulates. Waves and currents shift the sand, continually building and eroding the shoreline. Longshore currents flow parallel to the beaches, making waves break obliquely on the sand. These currents transport large amounts of sand along coasts, forming spits, barrier islands and tombolos. Longshore currents also commonly create offshore bars, which give beaches some stability by reducing erosion.
Sandy shores are full of life. The grains of sand host diatoms, bacteria and other microscopic creatures. Some fish and turtles return to certain beaches and spawn eggs in the sand. Birds habitat beaches, like gulls, loons, sandpipers, terns and pelicans. Aquatic mammals, such sea lions, recuperate on them. Clams, periwinkles, crabs, shrimp, starfish and sea urchins are found on most beaches.
Sand is a sediment made from small grains or particles with diameters between about 60 μm and 2 mm. Mud (see mudflats below) is a sediment made from particles finer than sand. This small particle size means that mud particles tend to stick together, whereas sand particles do not. Mud is not easily shifted by waves and currents, and when it dries out, cakes into a solid. By contrast, sand is easily shifted by waves and currents, and when sand dries out it can be blown in the wind, accumulating into shifting sand dunes. Beyond the high tide mark, if the beach is low-lying, the wind can form rolling hills of sand dunes. Small dunes shift and reshape under the influence of the wind while larger dunes stabilise the sand with vegetation.
Ocean processes grade loose sediments to particle sizes other than sand, such as gravel or cobbles. Waves breaking on a beach can leave a berm, which is a raised ridge of coarser pebbles or sand, at the high tide mark. Shingle beaches are made of particles larger than sand, such as cobbles, or small stones. These beaches make poor habitats. Little life survives because the stones are churned and pounded together by waves and currents.
=== Rocky shores ===

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