As most port areas throughout the world, Guanabara Bay (GB), which hosts the Harbour of Rio de Janeiro (HRJ), is under intense environmental stress. Located in one of the most iconic places of the world, GB environmental status has been the focus of worldwide attention with the imminent 2016 Olympic Games. The aim of this study was to discuss all past and current relevant aspects to characterize the environment of GB and its main harbour, including geomorphology, climatology, hydrology, geography and biodiversity aspects.

The past was a world of giants, with abundant whales in the sea and large animals roaming the land. However, that world came to an end following massive late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions on land and widespread population reductions in great whale populations over the past few centuries. These losses are likely to have had important consequences for broad-scale nutrient cycling, because recent literature suggests that large animals disproportionately drive nutrient movement.

The Bahía Blanca Estuary, located at the Atlantic coast of Argentina, includes a governmental nature reserve to protect biodiversity, lands and water; however, as the process of industrialization and urbanization is stepping rapidly at the neighbouring area, the potential increase in contaminant loads is a serious concern. After several contaminants surveys at the estuary, no single study has been yet performed in order to study the native mussels population assemblages vs.

Pollen analysis of 1.75 m deep sediment core from Tula-Jalda (Amarkantak) in Anuppur district, Madhya Pradesh shows that around 4500–3600 cal years BP, this region supported open mixed tropical deciduous forests comprising chiefly Madhuca indica followed by Terminalia, Mitragyna parvifolia, Haldina cordifolia, Emblica officinalis and Acacia, under a warm and relatively less humid climate. The retrieval of Cerealia and other cultural plants, viz. Artemisia, Cheno/Am and Caryophyllaceae signifies that the region was under cereal-based agricultural practice.

The deep ocean was once assumed to be lifeless and barren. Today we know that even the deepest waters teem with living creatures, some of them thought to be little changed from when life itself first appeared on the planet. The deep ocean is also essential to the earth’s biosphere—it regulates global temperatures, stores carbon, provides habitat for countless species, and cycles nutrients for marine food webs. Currently stressed by pollution, industrial fishing, and oil and gas development, these cold, dark waters now face another challenge: mining.

Forty years after the ocean floor was first mapped by hand, a team of Australian researchers has created the first digital map of the entire sea floor. Made by the University of Sydney's School of Geosciences and National ICT Australia (NICTA), the map can be used to plot the planet's underwater carbon sinks and understand how oceans respond to climate change.

Knowing the patterns of distribution of sediments in the global ocean is critical for understanding biogeochemical cycles and how deep-sea deposits respond to environmental change at the sea surface. We present the first digital map of seafloor lithologies based on descriptions of nearly 14,500 samples from original cruise reports, interpolated using a support vector machine algorithm. We show that sediment distribution is more complex, with significant deviations from earlier hand-drawn maps, and that major lithologies occur in drastically different proportions globally.

The Bengal Basin evolved as a rift-controlled extensional basin along the NNE–SSW trending Basin Margin Fault coevally with the 85 East Ridge in the Bay of Bengal during the short-lived hotspot activity south of Bhubaneswar. The basin opening post-dated the Kereguelen Plume magmatism (at ~116 Ma), but predated the phase of continental collision that triggered the rise of the Himalaya in the north. Supply of sediments in the initial stages of basin opening was from the west, mainly through the denudation and erosion of the uplifted Precambrian Shield.

An ecomorphodynamic model was developed to study how Avicennia marina mangroves influence channel network evolution in sandy tidal embayments. The model accounts for the effects of mangrove trees on tidal flow patterns and sediment dynamics. Mangrove growth is in turn controlled by hydrodynamic conditions. The presence of mangroves was found to enhance the initiation and branching of tidal channels, partly because the extra flow resistance in mangrove forests favours flow concentration, and thus sediment erosion in between vegetated areas.