Challenging paradigms in estuarine ecology and management

By Michael Elliott, A. Whitfield. 2011

527 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract For many years, estuarine science has been the ‘poor relation’ in aquatic research – freshwater scientists ignored estuaries as they tended to get confused by salt and tides, and marine scientists were more preoccupied by large open systems. Estuaries were merely regarded by each group as either river mouths or sea inlets respectively. For the past four decades, however, estuaries (and other transitional waters) have been regarded as being ecosystems in their own right. Although often not termed as such, this has led to paradigms being generated to summarise estuarine structure and functioning and which relate to both the natural science and management of these systems. This paper defines, details and affirms these paradigms that can be grouped into those covering firstly the science (definitions, scales, linkages, productivity, tolerances and variability) and secondly the management (pressures, valuation, health and services) of estuaries. The more ‘science’ orientated paradigms incorporate the development and types of ecotones, the nature of stressed and variable systems (with specific reference to resilience and redundancy), the relationship between generalists and specialists produced by environmental tolerance, the relevance of scale in relation to functioning and connectivity, the sources of production and degree of productivity, the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning and the stress-subsidy debates. The more ‘management’ targeted paradigms include the development and effects of exogenic unmanaged pressures and endogenic managed pressures, the perception of health and the ability to manage estuaries (related to internal and external influences), and the influence of all of these on the production of ecosystem services and societal benefits.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/78a7b2e2899d2b9cec18de6e1b37cdff34bb1c28

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In Global and Planetary Change

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Citations in the corpus

Life in the salinity gradient: Discovering mechanisms behind a new biodiversity pattern (2013, background): “In the light of new information and understanding, there is a constant need to test and review established paradigms that are generally structured around some fundamental aspects of science (Elliott and Whitfield, 2011; Telesh et al., 2011a).”
Biogeographical region and environmental conditions drive functional traits of estuarine fish assemblages worldwide (2017, background): “…fishes in hyperhaline estuaries supports hypothesis 7 (Table 1) and is justified by the higher physiological tolerance of these fishes to high salinity conditions (high osmoregulatory capacity), their generalist behaviour and dietary flexibility (Elliott & Whitfield, 2011; Whitfield et al., 2012).”
Framework for understanding marine ecosystem health (2013, background): “Ideally, these models will be of sufficient generality to apply to systems of naturally low species diversity, such as those found in estuaries (Elliott & Whitfield 2011), as well as to the more species-rich open sea ecosystems.”
Freshwater eels: A symbol of the effects of global change (2018, background): “Dams and weirs are not the only factors affecting eel habitats: rivers provide multiple goods and services to society (Postel and Richter 2003; Wolanski et al. 2011; Elliott and Whitfield 2011) that have led to river channelization, hydro-morphological modifications, drying out of lateral wetland, w”
Home range size of adult Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in a coastal and estuarine system is habitat and sex-specific (2016, background): “Estuaries, such as the Leschenault Estuary in the sheltered water habitat of our study, are highly productive systems (Semeniuk et al. 2000, Elliott and Whitfield 2011).”