Global environmental change, which includes climate change, biodiversity loss, changes in hydrological and biogeochemical cycles, and intensive exploitation of natural resources, is having significant impacts on the world's oceans. This book advances knowledge of the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems, and their past, present, and future responses to physical and anthropogenic forcing. The book illustrates how climate and humans impact marine ecosystems by a comprehensive review of the physical and ecological processes that structure marine ecosystems and the observation, experimentation, and modelling approaches required for their study. Recognizing the interactive roles played by humans in using marine resources and in responding to global changes in marine systems, the book includes chapters on the human dimensions of marine ecosystem changes and on effective management approaches in the era of change. Part IV reviews the state of the art in predicting the responses of marine ecosystems to future global change scenarios. The book provides a synthesis of the work conducted under the auspices of the Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics (GLOBEC) project over the last two decades, as the largest, multi-disciplinary, international effort focused on understanding the impacts of external forcing on the structure and dynamics of global marine ecosystems.
