An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms—aquatic life—that are dependent on each other and on their environment. The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems may be lentic ; lotic ; and wetlands.
Hydrobiology is the science of life and life processes in water. Much of modern hydrobiology can be viewed as a sub-discipline of ecology but the sphere of hydrobiology includes taxonomy, economic and industrial biology, morphology, and physiology. The one distinguishing aspect is that all fields relate to aquatic organisms. Most work is related to limnology and can be divided into lotic system ecology and lentic system ecology.
James Leonard Brierley Smith was a South African ichthyologist, organic chemist, and university professor. He was the first to identify a taxidermied fish as a coelacanth, at the time thought to be long extinct.
The Chalumna River is a river in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is approximately 78 km long, forming at the confluence of two small rivers, the Qugwala in the West and the Mtyolo in the East. It empties into the Indian Ocean through an estuary near Kayser's Beach.
Percy Alexander Hulley is a South African zoologist and ichthyologist.. He is a research associate at the South African Museum and has described many species of fish including the taillight shark.
South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) is the intermediary agency between the policies and strategies of the Government of South Africa and South Africa's research institutions.
Enrico Gennari is an Italian marine biologist who specialises in the study of the great white shark.
Aquatic biodiversity research is the field of scientific research studying marine and freshwater biological diversity.
Jacqueline Myriam McGlade is a British-born Canadian marine biologist and environmental informatics professor. Her research concerns the spatial and nonlinear dynamics of ecosystems, climate change and scenario development. She is currently professor of resilience and sustainable development at the University College London Institute for Global Prosperity and Faculty of Engineering, UK, and professor at Strathmore University in the Institute for Public Policy and Governance, Kenya.
The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) is a science network of people, organisations and, most importantly observation platforms, that perform Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) in South Africa and its surrounding oceans. The SAEON is of global importance as an innovative approach in ecology to understand environmental change and to determine the impact of anthropogenic forces at multiple scales but it is a remarkably complex challenge to statistically discern between ubiquitous natural variability and exogenous forcing. The SAEON constitutes a national government response to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002) and is a component of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations). The SAEON has become the leader in environmental science and observation in South Africa, but has been criticised for taking a long time to establish, a situation which was inevitable in view of SAEON's multiple stakeholder corps. It has also been raised that the cost of replicated experimental treatments across SAEON sites will be high.
John Ernest "Jack" Randall was an American ichthyologist and a leading authority on coral reef fishes. Randall described over 800 species and authored 11 books and over 900 scientific papers and popular articles. He spent most of his career working in Hawaii. He died in April 2020 at the age of 95.
The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is an organisation established in 2004 in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, No 10 of 2004, under the South African Department of Environmental Affairs, tasked with research and dissemination of information on biodiversity, and legally mandated to contribute to the management of the country’s biodiversity resources.
Rajeev Raghavan is a fisheries scientist and aquatic conservation biologist known for his work on the freshwater fishes of the Indian subcontinent. Rajeev is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Fisheries Resource Management, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, Kochi, India, and the South Asia Chair of the IUCN’s Freshwater Fish Specialist Group.
Margaret Mary Smith was born on 26 September 1916 in Indwe, Eastern Cape, a small village on the border of the Transkei. She was an ichthyologist, accomplished fish illustrator, and an academic.
The Marine biodiversity of South Africa is the variety of living organisms that live in the seas off the coast of South Africa. It includes genetic, species and ecosystems biodiversity in a range of habitats spread over a range of ecologically varied regions, influenced by the geomorphology of the seabed and circulation of major and local water masses, which distribute both living organisms and nutrients in complex and time-variable patterns.
SeaKeys is a large collaborative marine biodiversity project funded through the Foundational Biodiversity Information Program in South Africa. The purpose of the project is to collect and distribute genetic, species and ecosystem information relating to marine biodiversity in southern Africa, which may be used to support informed decision-making about the marine environment.
Phillip Clarence Heemstra was an American-South African ichthyologist. He was born in Melrose Park, Illinois, United States as the son of Clarence William Heemstra and his wife, Lydia. He attended school in Ottawa, Illinois, and completed a B.Sc. Zoology in 1963 at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois, as well as his MSc degree (1968) and doctorate (1974) in marine biology at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida. He moved to live in South Africa in 1978.
Sarah Fawcett is a South African oceanographer and climatologist. A senior lecturer in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Cape Town, she is particularly interested in the role of oceans in regulating biogeochemical cycles and how their dysregulation contributes to climate change. She was honoured in the World Economic Forum Young Scientists Class of 2020, and a P-Rating from the National Research Foundation, which recognizes that the scientist's work will likely have high impact.
The Biodiversity of South Africa is the variety of living organisms within the boundaries of South Africa and its exclusive economic zone. South Africa is a region of high biodiversity in the terrestrial and marine realms. The country is ranked sixth out of the world's seventeen megadiverse countries, and is rated among the top 10 for plant species diversity and third for marine endemism.
Professor Reinette "Oonsie" Biggs is a South African sustainability scientist whose research focuses on food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Biggs is the co-director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, South Africa and a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.
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