The south-east Queensland region is currently experiencing the most rapid urbanisation in Australia. This growth in human population, industry and infrastructure puts pressure on the unique and diverse natural environment of Moreton Bay. Much loved by locals and holiday-goers, Moreton Bay is also an important biogeographic region because its coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves and saltmarshes provide a supportive environment for both tropical and temperate species. The bay supports a large number of species of global conservation significance, including marine turtles, dugongs, dolphins, whales and migratory shorebirds, which use the area for feeding or breeding. Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay provides an interdisciplinary examination of Moreton Bay, increasing understanding of existing and emerging pressures on the region and how these may be mitigated and managed. With chapters on the bay's human uses by Aboriginal peoples and later settlers, its geology, water quality, marine habitats and animal communities, and commercial and recreational fisheries, this book will be of value to students in the marine sciences, environmental consultants, policy-makers and recreational fishers.

Coastal wetlands are under a great deal of pressure from the dual forces of rising sea level and the intervention of human populations both along the estuary and in the river catchment. Direct impacts include the destruction or degradation of wetlands from land reclamation and infrastructures. Indirect impacts derive from the discharge of pollutants, changes in river flows and sediment supplies, land clearing, and dam operations. As sea level rises, coastal wetlands in most areas of the world migrate landward to occupy former uplands. The competition of these lands from human development is intensifying, making the landward migration impossible in many cases. This book provides an understanding of the functioning of coastal ecosystems and the ecological services that they provide, and suggestions for their management. In this book a CD is included containing color figures of wetlands and estuaries in different parts of the world. - Includes a CD containing color figures of wetlands and estuaries in different parts of the world.

This book is the outcome of a major international conference on waterbirds held in Edinburgh in April 2004.

Policy makers and resource managers must make decisions that affect the resilience and sustainability of natural resources, including biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, these decisions are often based on evidence or theory derived from highly altered systems and over short time periods of low-magnitude environmental and climatic change. Because natural systems change and evolve across multiple timescales from instantaneous to millennial, long-term understanding of how past life has responded to perturbations can inform resource managers. By using these natural laboratories of the past, conservation paleobiology and paleoecology provide the framework necessary to anticipate and plan for future changes. The goal of this Research Topic is to heighten awareness among conservation and restoration practitioners to the value and applications of long-term perspectives provided by conservation paleobiology and paleoecology. Most conservation studies focus on systems already impacted by anthropogenic change; these studies would benefit from paleontological data through expanded temporal scales, identification of baselines, and an understanding of how organisms have responded to past changes. However, resource management decisions rarely include input from paleontologists, and paleoecological research is rarely incorporated into conservation decision-making. We seek to bridge this research-implementation gap by highlighting the application of paleoecological data to issues such as biodiversity dynamics, extinction risks, and resilience to perturbations, among other topics. We hope to foster new cross-disciplinary synergies by encouraging conservation scientists and managers to collaborate with paleontologists to improve conservation decision-making and by increasing awareness among paleontologists to the needs of the resource management community. This Research Topic will provide a forum for both the paleontological and resource management communities to exchange ideas that will enhance restoration and conservation decision-making. We invite papers on conceptual advances, reviews of specific topics to guide efforts in research or practice, case studies of successful applications, articles describing datasets with applied value, and perspective papers summarizing a body of paleontological research with relevance to the resource management community. Topics can include but are not limited to: • Responses of species, communities, and ecosystems to perturbations • Strategies to achieve the direct integration of paleobiology and paleoecology into on-ground resource management • Identifying baselines and reference conditions • Increasing the robustness of forecasting models through the incorporation of paleontological data • Identifying key species, interactions, and other phenomena as indicators of impending change • New methodologies, analytical tools, and/or proxies in the application of paleontological data to conservation and restoration practice Lynn Wingard, Damien Fordham, and Greg Dietl have no conflicts of interest. Chris Schneider has a potential conflict of interest where manuscripts pertain to stakeholders in the petroleum industry, as she is an independent contractor in the Alberta Oil Sands mining area.

Australian Saltmarsh Ecology presents the first comprehensive review of the ecology and management of Australian saltmarshes. The past 10 years in particular have seen a sustained research effort into this previously poorly understood and neglected resource. Leading experts in the field outline what is known of the biogeography and geomorphology of Australian saltmarshes, their fish and invertebrate ecology, the use of Australian saltmarshes by birds and insectivorous bats, and the particular challenges of management, including the control of mosquito pests, and the issue of sea-level rise. They provide a powerful argument that coastal saltmarsh is a unique and critical habitat vulnerable to the combined impacts of coastal development and sea-level rise. The book will be an important reference for saltmarsh researchers, marine and aquatic biologists, natural resource managers, environmentalists and ecologists, as well as undergraduate students and the interested layperson.