Integrated coastal management (ICM) has been considered worldwide to be a suitable approach to realizing comprehensive schemes to protect or develop coastal regions. A complex regulatory system stretching from international to local levels provides a framework for ICM practices. This raises the question whether and to what extent ICM practices have been supported by legal and policy frameworks at the international and national levels in different settings in both developed and developing countries. This paper examines four case studies in Germany, Costa Rica, Mexico and South Africa. Two research methods were used. First, a document-based analysis was conducted in two parts: a literature review of the content of ICM, and a policy and law analysis of the jurisdictions of the four case studies and at the international level (i.e., treaties and declarations). Second, a qualitative analysis was conducted based on in-depth interviews involving 21 decision-makers representing all the case studies. With a view to enhance the effective use of international and national legal and policy instruments and their implementation in a more local site specific context, this study considers four principles currently guiding ICM practices: (i) incorporation of international instruments’ principles in national legal and policy frameworks, (ii) participation, (iii) sustainable development and (iv) monitoring. An I-P-S ((I) incorporation of international instruments’ principles in national frameworks, (P) participation (S) sustainable development) diagram is used for an integrative assessment of ICM and indicates directions for further improvements at the case study sites. The embeddedness of ICM into national legal and policy frameworks is a success factor for ICM, however, it is often limited due to a lack of implementation. Furthermore, ICM can easily be jeopardized if ICM is allocated a marginalized position.

Subsurface mixing of seawater and terrestrial-borne meteoric waters on carbonate landscapes creates karst subterranean estuaries, an area of the coastal aquifer with poorly understood carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning, and impact on submarine groundwater discharge. Caves in karst platforms facilitate water and material exchange between the marine and terrestrial environments, and their internal sedimentation patterns document long-term environmental change. Sediment records from a flooded coastal cave in Cozumel Island (Mexico) document decreasing terrestrial organic matter (OM) deposition within the karst subterranean estuary over the last ∼1,000 years, with older sediment likely exported out of the cave by intense storm events. While stable carbon isotopic values (δ¹³C_orgranging from −22.5 to −27.1‰) and C:N ratios (ranging from 9.9 to 18.9) indicate that mangrove and other terrestrial detritus surrounding an inland sinkhole are the primarily sedimentary OM supply, an upcore decrease in bulk OM and enrichment of δ¹³C_orgvalues are observed. These patterns suggest that a reduction in the local mangrove habitat decreased the terrestrial particulate OM input to the cave over time. The benthic foraminiferal community in basal core sediment have higher proportions of infaunal taxa (i.e.,Bolivina) andAmmonia, and assemblages shift to increased miliolids and less infaunal taxa at the core-top sediment. The combined results suggest that a decrease in terrestrial OM through time had a concomitant impact on benthic meiofaunal habitats, potentially by impacting dissolved oxygen availability at the microhabitat scale or resource partitioning by foraminifera. The evidence presented here indicates that landscape and watershed level changes can impact ecosystem functioning within adjacent subterranean estuaries.

The subterranean ecosystems in tropical areas of Mexico, North of Guatemala & Belize are very abundant because the karstic soil that allow these formations are the main composition in the Yucatán Peninsula and several mountains systems in these countries; also, they have a strong relationship with tropical forest adjacent where the main energy into the caves have an alloctonous origin. In these three countries there are three different cave conditions: a) freshwater semi-dry caves, b) flooded freshwater systems and c) anchialine systems. Mainly crustaceans and freshwater fishes are the major representative group in the aquatic diversity in these systems because the anchialine members are restricted to Yucatán Peninsula and Islands adjacent. Around 5000 entries to subterranean world there are among these countries, where the Yucatan Peninsula is the area with major caves or cenotes in comparison with southern of Mexico, North of Guatemala and Belize. Into these systems are possible found crustaceans and fishes from different families. The objective of this paper is present a review of these systems according with each karstic areas and show the current map including the location of each systems; as well their subterranean aquatic biodiversity and, finally discuss the relationships among these different areas using their biological aquatic richness in consideration with ecological subterranean conditions.

Editorial: The effects of environmental change on anchialine ecosystems

The Mexican Caribbean coast has great scenic beauty both on the surface and underwater, which is why it has been a developing area for tourism since the 1970s, establishing sites such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen and empowering others such as Cozumel and Tulum. Their biological richness is enormous, especially in the Mesoamerican Reef of which they are a part. However, this richness and scenic beauty are not possible without the ecological assemblages that exist within these regions’ adjacent ecosystems, mainly the surrounding seasonally dry tropical forest and the coastal wetlands that, together with the oceanographic characteristics of the Caribbean Sea, potentiate it, turning the region into the most visited in Latin America. To this end, groundwater plays a very important role in the assemblages of biotic and abiotic elements that are shared with the Caribbean Sea; thus, its constant monitoring allows us to identify how the changes that occur in the tropical forest are producing various changes in the composition and abundance of coastal reef elements. Here, we present results of our study of groundwater conditions (temp, pH, oxygen dissolved, and salinity) in nineteen cenotes and underground rivers of the Riviera Maya and six cenotes of Cozumel. We also profiled the predominant vegetation on the surface of this region, which is a seasonally dry tropical forest, to understand the components and functioning of these subterranean ecosystems to assess their vulnerability and identify their threats from human development (population growth, tourism development, mobility capacity). These threats not only affect the cave and coastal organisms but also the tropical karstic landscapes that are characteristic of these systems.

Freshwater Prawns (Palaemonidae: Macrobrachium) with Abbreviated Larval Development in Rivers of Mexico: Uses, Management, and Conservation Opportunities | InTechOpen, Published on: 2016-08-10. Authors: Luis M. Mejía-Ortíz, Marilú López-Mejia, Antonio Chale Chim, et