There are incentive indications that the growth of human population, the
increasing use and abuse of natural resources combined with climate
changes (probably due to anthropic pollution, to some extent) exert a
considerable stress on closed (or semi-enclosed) seas and lakes. In many
regions of the world, marine and lacustrine hydrosystems are (or have
been) the object of severe or fatal alterations, from changes in
regional hydrological regimes and/or modifications of the quantity or
the quality of water resources associated with (natural or man-made)
land reclamation, deterioration of geochemical balances (increased
salinity, oxygen's depletion .. . ), mutations of ecosystems
(eutrophication, dramatic decrease in biological diversity ... ) to
geological disturbances and to the socio-economic perturbations which
have been - or may be in the near future - the consequences of them.
Seas and lakes are dying all over the world and some may be regarded as
already dead and there is an urgent need to try to understand how this
is happening and identify the causes of the observed mutations, weighing
the relative effects of climatic evolution and anthropic interferences.
This book is the outcome of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, held in
Liege in May 2003. The Workshop was organized at th the University of
Liege as a follow on meeting to the 35 International Liege Colloquium on
Ocean Dynamics, dedicated in 2003 to Dying and Dead Seas. The book
contains the synthesis of the lectures given by 16 main speakers during
the ARW.