Description
Book SynopsisScattered like dots rising from the deep across vast expanses of the world's tropical and subtropical oceans, atolls with their turquoise lagoons and reefs teeming with colorful marine life have captured the public imagination. They have also been the homeland of millions of people for millennia as various groups of migrants spread across the far reaches if the Pacific, Indian and Western Atlantic regions. Developed from recently available satellite data, A Global Atlas of Atolls presents high-quality details of 476 atolls across the globe, characterizing aspects of the atoll rim, the lagoon, and their coral reef communities in unprecedented detail. In synthesizing and enhancing understanding of these unique seascapes, this volume provides a distinct compendium of descriptions and images, as well as documentation of the environmental conditions of winds, waves, and tides and a summary of the background literature for each atoll area. There is no comparable work.
After a
Table of Contents
Introduction. Materials and Methods. Polynesia and the Tuamotu Archipelago. The Society Islands. The Cook Islands. South Central Pacific (Swains, Rose, Beveridge). Tokelau Islands. Tuvalu. Kiribati (Line, Phoenix, Gilbert Islands). Hawaii and the Central Pacific Atolls of the USA. Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Micronesia and The Caroline Islands. Melanesia, New Guinea and the Coral Sea. The Solomon Islands. Fiji. The Coral Sea. North West Australia. Indonesia. South China and the Sulu Sea. Central Indian Ocean (Lakshadweep, Maldive and Chagos Archipelagos). Western Indian Ocean. Western Atlantic Ocean . Summary and Atolls of the 21st century.
