Dying and dead seas climatic versus anthropic causes : [Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Dying and Dead Seas - Climatic Versus Anthropic Causes, Liege, Belgium, 7-10 May 2003

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. Front Matter....Pages i-viii What do we know about dead, dying and endangered lakes and seas?....Pages 1-48 Water Management Aspects of Amu Darya....Pages 49-76 Morphoological Changes in the Aral Sea:Satellite Imagery and Water Balance Model....Pages 77-89 Aral Sea Basin Evolution: Geodynamic Aspect....Pages 91-97 The Aral Sea Crisis....Pages 99-123 Hydrobiology of the Aral Sea....Pages 125-157 Main Features of the Caspian Sea Hydrology....Pages 159-184 Hydrobiology of the Caspian Sea....Pages 185-226 Contamination of the Caspian Sea: An Overview on Recent Findings....Pages 227-251 1,000-Year Environmental History of Lake Issyk-Kul....Pages 253-285 The Dead Sea as a Dying Lake....Pages 287-305 The Continued Degradation of Lake Corangamite, Australia....Pages 307-319 Lake Chad: A Changing Environment....Pages 321-339 Genetic Traces of Environmental Variations in Ancient Lakes....Pages 341-357 Hypoxia and the Physics of the Louisiana Coastal Current....Pages 359-372 Back Matter....Pages 373-384