Michael J. Kennish, Hans W. Paerl

• Coastal Lagoons: Critical Habitats of Environmental Change. Assessing the Response of the Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, USA to Human and Climatic Disturbances: Management Implications. Sources and Fates of Nitrogen in Virginia Coastal Bays. Ecosystem Health Indexed through Networks of Nitrogen Cycling. Blooms in Lagoons: Different from Those of River-Dominated Estuaries. Relationship between Macroinfaunal Diversity and Community Stability, and a Disturbance Caused by a Persistent Brown Tide Bloom in Laguna Madre, Texas. The Choptank Basin in Transition: Intensifying Agriculture, Slow Urbanization, and Estuarine Eutrophication. Seagrass Decline in New Jersey Coastal Lagoons: A Response to Increasing Eutrophication. Controls Acting on Benthic Macrophyte Communities in a Temperate and a Tropical Estuary. Phase Shifts, Alternative Stable States, and the Status of Southern California Lagoons. Lagoons of the Nile Delta. Origins and Fate of Inorganic Nitrogen from Land to Coastal Ocean on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Subtropical Karstic Coastal Lagoon Assessment, SE Mexico: The Yucatan Peninsula Case. Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Planktonic Microbes in a Mesotidal Coastal Lagoon (Ria Formosa, SE Portugal): Impact of Climatic Changes and Local Human Influences. A Comparison of Eutrophication Processes in Three Chinese Subtropical Semienclosed Embayments with Different Buffering Capacities. The Wadden Sea: A Coastal Ecosystem under Continuous Change. The Patos Lagoon Estuary: Biotic Responses to Natural and Anthropogenic Impacts in the Last Decades (1979–2008). Structure and Function of Warm Temperate East Australian Coastal Lagoons: Implications for Natural and Anthropogenic Changes. Response of Venice Lagoon Ecosystem to Natural and Anthropogenic Pressures over the Last 50 Years. Effect of Freshwater Inflow on Nutrient Loading and Macrobenthos Secondary Production in Texas Lagoons. Index.

One of the advantages of a book of this nature is that it brings together the recent work of leading experts in the field of coastal lagoon research into one volume. Although each chapter tends to focus on a particular system or aspect of research within this field, the major findings of these chapters are neatly summarized by the editors who also provide an overview of the knowledge and challenges that face scientists and managers who work in these important and often highly impacted ecosystems.—Alan K. Whitfield, Chief Scientist, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), in Marine Biology Research, 2011; 7: 416--417