Plankton: Guide to Their Ecology and Monitoring for Water Quality

by Iain M. Suthers, David Rissik, Anthony Richardson

This Second Edition of Plankton is a fully updated introduction to the biology, ecology and identification of plankton and their use in monitoring water quality. It includes expanded, illustrated descriptions of all major groups of freshwater, coastal and marine phytoplankton and zooplankton and a new chapter on teaching science using plankton. Best practice methods for plankton sampling and monitoring programs are presented using case studies, along with explanations of how to analyse and interpret sampling data.

Healthy waterways and oceans are essential for our increasingly urbanised world. Yet monitoring water quality in aquatic environments is a challenge, as it varies from hour to hour due to stormwater and currents. Being at the base of the aquatic food web and present in huge numbers, plankton are strongly influenced by changes in environment and provide an indication of water quality integrated over days and weeks. Plankton are the aquatic version of a canary in a coal mine. They are also vital for our existence, providing not only food for fish, seabirds, seals and sharks, but producing oxygen, cycling nutrients, processing pollutants, and removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. This new edition:

contains a new chapter on Plankton in the Classroom has greatly expanded coverage of coastal and marine phytoplankton explains the role of plankton in aquatic ecosystems and its usefulness as a water quality indicator updates and details best practice in methodology for plankton sampling and monitoring programs brings together widely-scattered information on freshwater and coastal phytoplankton and zooplankton and provides a list of up-to-date references.
Plankton is an invaluable reference for teachers and students, environmental managers, ecologists, estuary and catchment management committees, and coastal engineers.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The small 2009 book Plankton: A Guide to Their Ecology and Monitoring for Water Quality is not a pop-science book but is, rather, a small technical handbook for those working in, or otherwise interested in, the subject matter indicated by the title. Its market appeal is narrow, and often a reader of this kind of guidebook will pick and choose among its contents, finding the parts of immediate interest to himself. This slender ecological treatise is published by CISRO Publishing of Collingwood, Victoria, Australia, and most, if not all, of the case studies and citations presented here are of Australian origin, which one might expect would further curtail a more cosmopolitan appeal. Yet the ecological examples filling these pages are easily generalized to the world at large. The physical characteristics of terrain and chemical (nutrient) inputs impact plankton populations the world over. What's more, the editing done by Iain M Suthers and David Rissik is superb, yielding a volume which is stylistically consistent and of the highest caliber. Unexpectedly, this book turns out to be eminently readable, surprisingly non-put-downable, and a joy to have discovered.

The book's focus is on the ecology and taxonomy of freshwater and coastal marine phytoplankton and zooplankton and how to study them. Although not a comprehensive treatment of these subjects, it's impressive just how much Suthers and Rissik have managed to squeeze in to 256 pages. The taxonomy is practical, focusing on the most frequently encountered groups, but never oversimplifying. Highlights for me include the pragmatic value of sorting plankton by size, discussions of toxicology concerns and trophic dynamics, issues in water sampling, the groupings of zooplankton by habitat including a very helpful chart, the taxonomic guidelines to copepods and cladocerans, and another chart for the provisional identification of fish larvae. There's even an impressive chart of algal pigments here, and meritorious light microscopy and line drawings of zooplankton, planktonic stages of crustaceans, gelatinous organisms, mollusks, worms, and small organisms (<0.2 mm). The core of the book, for me, are Chapters 5-8, which present the diversity, biology, and ecology of freshwater phytoplankton, coastal marine phytoplankton, freshwater zooplankton, and coastal marine zooplankton in rich detail.

This volume becomes a one-stop reference for anyone who's staring through a microscope at a freshwater or coastal marine specimen and trying to understand what she's seeing. Rather than consult any number of more specific references, this book will get you started down the right path.