Coastal pollution

Pollution of air, land and water about coastal cities is of particular importance since that’s where much of the world’s population live (1). Most of the pollution is associated with combustion, so there is a combination of Aristotle’s four basic elements - air, earth, water and fire. The overall environmental stress on the coastal plain, from the foothills of the hinterland to the edge of the continental shelf, arises from interactions of the four components, not least the effect of atmospheric nitrogen pollutants on water quality, affecting aquatic ecosystems. Deposition from the atmosphere can be either wet (in rainfall, e.g. acid rain) or dry. The latter has been greatly underestimated in the past, so that control measures are inadequate.

(1) Hicks, B.B. 1998. Wind, water, Earth and fire - a return to an Aristotelian environment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 79, 1925-33.