Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 2
Coastal Marine Biodiversity
Challenges and Threats
Jerónimo Pan, 1,2, * M. Alejandra Marcoval, 1,2
Sergio M. Bazzini, 2,3,5 Micaela V. Vallina 2,3,6 and
Silvia G. De Marco 3,4
Global Change and Coastal Marine Ecosystems
Global change , a term that adequately fi ts into the focus of this topic,
is broader than climate change and comprises the major anthropogenic
forcings that produced a signifi cant change or impact on the natural
environment during the last ~ 200 years. Global change issues have to be
addressed with a planetary perspective, and as part of a time continuum,
running from a few centuries ago, increasing its rates in the present and
with implications in the near future. It is usually said that global change is
an unprecedented human experiment on the planet, and as any experiment
its consequences and reaches are to a certain degree, unpredictable.
Marine systems are highly responsive to alterations in the physical
environment (particularly those with decadal scales), and also highly
adaptable to such changes (Steele 1998), which makes it diffi cult to defi ne
 
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