Hamdy Abo-Taleb

By Hamdy Abo-Taleb

Zooplankton is the source of life for most of aquatic organisms especially in their larval stages. Its importance come from that most fishes depend on it as a source of life after absorbance of the yolk sac. Moreover, the greatest aquatic creatures like many species of whales are filter feeders where the planktonic organisms form the main bulk of their food. The importance of zooplankton as a main source of nutrition of marine fish larvae has been long professed. Many scientists attributed the ability of a fish population to outdistance through the larval period without vast mortality as one of the primary factors determining the size of the resulting year class and hypothesized that competition for food during the larval time might be a major factor affecting survival and subsequent year class strength.

Part of the book: Biological Research in Aquatic Science

By Mohamed E. El Raey and Hamdy A. Abo-Taleb

The state of the ecosystems can be inferred in two ways, known as bioinference. One way (ground-based) is the use of some organisms to determine the environmental conditions within an ecosystem. The other is the use of multiband airborne or satellite imagery to identify the vegetation cover status, and also to track the biological diversity in marine ecosystems such as coral reef status, resources variation, and pollution. The standard example for the first state is the plankton as they represent a primary tool for ecologists to assess the health state of the marine environment. Their fast responses to the variability of the ecosystem, their nonexploitation as commercial organisms, and their favoring of subtle environmental conditions have suggested them to be bioindicators of climate variability. These organisms can be used to identify many environmental problems including water acidification, eutrophication, and pollution. Remote sensing technique is being widely used today to solve many environmental problems due to the broad view and accuracy of the results and its participation in determining the environmental conditions of different ecosystems. For example, remote sensing applications are used in vegetation and mangrove ecosystem management. Moreover, it is used to assess eutrophication problems by multiband spectrum remote sensing.

Part of the book: Advances in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment