Estuaries are areas of high productivity, crucial in the life histories of many fish, invertebrates, and birds, for example, and the sustainability of estuarine biodiversity is vital to the ecological and economic health of coastal regions. On the other hand, estuarine ecosystems are exposed to toxic anthropogenic effluents transported by rivers from remote and nearby conurbations and industrial and agricultural concerns. It is important, therefore, to have techniques that enable society to assess the degrees of exposure of estuaries to anthropogenic toxic contamination and the significance of this exposure to the ecology of the biota living there, especially the effects on biota of commercial significance. This book describes.
