Search Results

There is a growing body of evidence that many of the thousands of prescription and over-the-counter medications ultimately make their way into water bodies and drinking-water supplies. Typical wastewater treatment plants may not be effective at…

Any living organism taxonomically assigned to the classification kingdom known as Animalia. Members of the kingdom Animalia—that is, animals (see illustration)—possess certain characteristics that distinguish them from organisms belonging to the…

An ongoing current event in which a large number of living species are threatened with extinction or are going extinct because of environmentally destructive human activities. The Earth is presently in the midst of a mass extinction event. In the…

A class of the asterozoan group of the phylum Echinodermata, often known as sea stars or starfish. Members of the class Asteroidea, that is, asteroids, are notable echinoderms with a star-shaped body plan (Fig. 1). Unlike members of their sister…

Wildfires, also termed bushfires or forest fires, are currently devastating large swaths of land in Australia. Detrimental ecologic consequences of these uncontrolled combustions of forest fuels and vegetation are numerous. One of the most serious…

An aquatic mammalian order comprising approximately 90 living species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises and their fossil relatives. Like all other mammals, members of the order Cetacea (cetaceans) nurse their young with milk produced by the mother,…

Management of the human use of natural resources to provide the maximum benefit to current generations while maintaining capacity to meet the needs of future generations. Conservation includes both the protection and rational use of natural…

The response of corals to environmental stress in which they eject the single-cell algae that live within the transparent coral tissue, making the white coral skeleton visible. Corals (Fig. 1) are animals that live in a partnership (symbiosis) with…

A measure of the three-dimensional structure of live coral communities on reefs. Coral reef structural complexity is an intrinsic element of coral reef ecosystems and quantitates the surface area of coral in relation to its linear area. The…

A multidisciplinary field for analyzing large amounts of data—current and past (historical)—which are processed using tools and methods from statistics, applied mathematics, artificial intelligence, and computer programming, with the object of…