• DOI:10.1006/ECSS.1999.0543
• Corpus ID: 54920298

Visualization in Marine Science

@article{Wolanski2000VisualizationIM,
  title={Visualization in Marine Science},
  author={Eric Wolanski and Simon Spagnol and Patrick Gentien and Malcolm L. Spaulding and David Prandle},
  journal={Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science},
  year={2000},
  volume={50},
  pages={7-9}
}

• E. Wolanski, S. Spagnol, +2 authors D. Prandle
• Published 2000
• Environmental Science
• Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science

Most marine scientists will have attended meetings or read papers where authors struggle to explain underlying processes hidden in vast, complex data sets originating from observations and/or models. These authors used a large number of graphs and displayed large tables to distil some meaningful characteristics, but all too often the reader is left puzzled or unconvinced. In part this reflects the spatial and temporal complexity of the marine environment. A range of data analysis techniques and models is required to identify and explain the diversity associated with physical, biological and chemical oceanographic processes. Interdisciplinary communication between physicists, chemists and biologists is complicated by the separate technical ‘ languages ’ that have evolved in their disparate scientific developments. As a result, effective integration of their respective data sets is hindered and insight into their salient characteristics obscured. Throughout the world marine and coastal ecosystems are under increasing pressure. The destruction of these environments is fastest in the tropics where mangroves and coral reefs are most threatened and presently being destroyed at an alarming rate, although as the paper by Shalovenkov shows, some temperate regions like the Black Sea have been degraded as a result of benign neglect. Sound