Type and evolution of landscapes of Nansha Islands

Abstract

AlkglliACT: Landscapes of the Nansha Islands may be divided into five types: tropical marine organism-breeding landscape d reef knoll like Zengmu Shoal, Wan'an Bank and so on; tropical marine organism-breeding landscape of atoll including all emerged reefs and most submerged reefs; tropical evergreen arbor-bush forest and phosphorous lime soil landscape of limesand Islets like Taiping Islet, Nanwei islet and so on; tropical shallow sea marine organism-breeding landw.ape of southern continental shelf; tropical oceanic and deep-sea marine organism landscape in middle and north parts of the Nansha Islands area. These five landscape types may be also summed up as two categories, one is tropical sea landscape including those in shallow and deep sea, the other is tropical coral reef landscape including those of reef knoll, atoll and limesand islet. This paper outlines the evolutional model of landscapes of the Nansha Islands. The distribution and evolution of landscape types are related with palaeogeography and modern environmental conditions. The former shallow sea of the Nansha islands was coastal zone in the Late Pleistocene epoch. Deep sea is evolved f'etxn shallow sea due t~ long and slow subsidence of crust. Modern coral reefs develop on old reef top of the Late pleistocene epoch or on baserock of continental shdf in the Holocene due to the rise of sea levd in postglaeial. Limesand islet is in the peak of developmental stage.

Hydroids (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) from marine environments in Taiwan

“…The macrobenthic hydroid M. pennarius was especially abundant at Nansha Island (Zhao 1998;Tang 1991b). Its dense population there establishes an ecological environment described as an 'imitative steppe on sea floor' (Zhao 1998) and a 'sea-floor prairie' (Tang 1991b).…”

“…Its dense population there establishes an ecological environment described as an 'imitative steppe on sea floor' (Zhao 1998) and a 'sea-floor prairie' (Tang 1991b). M. pennarius is widely distributed in the Indo-Malayan and Sino-Japanese subregions of the Indo-West Pacific region (Tang 1991b), including India, Ceylon, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, southern Japan, Palau, and New Zealand (Schuchert 2003).…”

“…These include the fauna of Japan to the north (e.g., Hirohito 1988Hirohito , 1995, the Yellow Sea (Tang and Huang 1986), the East China Sea (Tang and Xu 1978;Liu and Li 2002), the Taiwan Strait (Kubota et al 1999;Xu and Huang 2004), the Philippine Islands (Hargitt 1924), and the South China Sea (Tang 1991a(Tang , b, 1998Yeh 1995;Zhao 1998). Liu (2008) and Huang and Lin (2012) provided checklists and illustrations of Hydrozoa in waters adjacent to mainland China.…”

Sustainability assessment for an offshore coral reef island based on scenario simulation and emergy analysis

“…The average yearly precipitation is 2745.38 mm. According to previous studies, the average tidal range in the surrounding sea area is 3.2 m (Zhao, 1996), and the yearly wave energy resource storage is 7.2E+10 joules per meter (Zheng, 2011).…”

The mitochondrial genome of Monoserius pennarius (Linnaeus, 1758) from the East China Sea

“…The species Monoserius pennarius (Hydrozoa: Leptothecata: Aglaopheniidae), a macrobenthic hydroid, is widely distributed in the tropical Indo-West Pacific east of Sri Lanka (Tang 1991 ). Its elongated body and dense growth on the seafloor create a unique ecological habitat known as the ‘seafloor prairie’ (Zhao 1998 ). This environment attracts various epizoans and climbing animals, forming a vertically layered assemblage (Tang 1991 ).…”