Aquatic Pollution: An Introductory Text

Understand aquatic pollutants and their effects on global water resources

Recognizing, controlling, and mitigating aquatic pollution remains one of society’s most difficult environmental challenges. Aquatic Pollution: An Introductory Text, now in its Fifth Edition, delivers a thorough account of pollutants affecting rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. Written by a leading environmental scientist with decades of oceanographic research experience, this textbook examines every major pollution category from urban runoff to persistent organic pollutants.

This edition features expanded coverage of global warming effects on oceans, including coral bleaching and thermohaline circulation changes with comparisons to the Permian-Triassic extinction event. New sections address ocean acidification and persistent organic pollutants. Updated case studies and the latest data on aquatic pollution and global temperature projections ensure currency. The book covers both freshwater and marine environments comprehensively.

Readers will also find:

• Detailed analysis of thermal pollution expanded to include climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems and circulation patterns worldwide
• Coverage of acid deposition effects with new material on ocean acidification and its consequences for marine life and ecosystems
• Discussion of pesticides and persistent organic pollutants including their environmental fate, bioaccumulation, and ecological effects across aquatic systems
• Examination of nutrient loading, sewage disposal, oil spills, and urban runoff with updated research findings and real-world case studies
• Refreshed case studies throughout providing current examples of pollution challenges and mitigation strategies from around the globe

Essential for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental science, zoology, oceanography, biology, and civil engineering, this textbook provides the depth practitioners need. Policymakers and environmental activists will also find it an invaluable reference for understanding aquatic pollution science and developing effective mitigation strategies.

EDWARD A. LAWS is a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Louisiana State University and a founding team member and investigator in the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is also the author of El Nino and the Peruvian Anchovy Fishery and Mathematical Methods for Oceanographers.