Innovative technique to record human impact on coastal waters

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - 04:10 in Paleontology & Archaeology

With their sedentary lifestyles and filter-feeding habits, clams have been silent witnesses to the changes that humans have inflicted upon their waters. These clams are silent no more, as Dr Ruth H. Carmichael of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and her colleagues have reported in their recent paper in the prestigious journal Aquatic Biology. Using stable isotope techniques, Carmichael demonstrated it is possible to identify and trace wastewater inputs to estuaries and coastal food webs by studying the organic matrix in the shell of the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria...

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