Introduction
The continent of Africa straddles the equator and extends to about 35° latitude both north and south. It is, therefore, dominated by warm water regions and its coastline includes environments such as coral reefs and mangroves, except at the northwest and southwestern extremes, where temperate environments occur. The African coastline, excluding Madagascar (4,000 km), totals 35,000 km. A review of the literature dealing with sandy beaches in Africa (Bally 1986) found the earliest paper to have been published in the 1880s and, of more than 1,000 papers published over 100 years, 19% concerned north Africa, 16% west Africa, 15% east Africa and Madagascar, and 55% southern Africa, particularly South Africa. Early papers were primarily taxonomic but later publications were mainly ecological. English was the language of 59% of the papers, followed by French (29%), German (7%), and Italian (3%). This sketch for literature on sandy beaches is probably representative of all papers...
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Bibliography
Bally R (1986) A bibliography of sandy beaches and sandy beach organisms on the African Continent. South African national scientific programmes report, no 126. CSIR, Pretoria
Branch GM, Griffiths CL (1988) The Benguela ecosystem. Part V. The coastal zone. Oceanogr Mar Biol Annu Rev 26:395–486
Brown AC, McLachlan A (1990) Ecology of Sandy shores. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Davies IL (1972) Geographical variation in coastal development. Longman, London
Davies BR, O’Keefe JH, Sneddon CD (1993) A synthesis of the ecological functioning, conservation and management of South African River ecosystems. Water Research Commission, Pretoria
Por DF (1968) Lessepsian migration, Ecological studies, vol 23. Springer, New York
Sheppard C, Price A, Roberts C (1992) Marine ecology of the Arabian region. Academic, London
Spalding M, Blasco F, Field C (1997) World mangrove atlas. International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems/Smith Settle, Yorkshire/Otley
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
McLachlan, A. (2018). Africa, Coastal Ecology. In: Finkl, C., Makowski, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Coastal Science . Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48657-4_2-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48657-4_2-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48657-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48657-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences