Algae And Metropolitan Wastes

Algae Abstracts is the first in a series of bibliographies on water re sources and pollution published by IFI/ Plenum Data Corporation in cooperation with the Water Resources Scientific Information Center (WRSIC). It is produced wholly from the information base compris ing material abstracted and indexed for Selected Water Resources Abstracts. The bibliography is divided into volumes according to the publication dates of the source documents. Volume 1 contains 569 abstracts cov ering publication dates up to and including 1969; Volume 2 contains 730 abstracts covering the years 1970 to 1972. The material included in this bibliography represents computer selections based on the presence of a form of the word "alga" somewhere in the referenced citation. Substantively, the material typifies WRSIC's "centers of com petence" approach to information support of the Office of Water Re sources Research (OWRR) of the Department of the Interior. Most of the references in this bibliography are the work of the center of competence on eutrophication at the University of Wisconsin. The indexes refer to the WRSIC accession number, which follows each abstract. The Significant Descriptor Index is made up of a fraction of the total descriptors and identifiers by which each paper has been indexed. It represents weighted terms that best describe the informa tion content; this status is indicated by the asterisks which precede them. The General Index includes all the remaining descriptors and identifiers by which each paper in this bibliography has been indexed.

With the continuous increase in human population and its constant demands on the aquatic environment, there has been a compounding of the interrelationships between algae and man. These relatively simple green plants not too long ago were often considered as merely biological curiosities. Within the past twenty-five years, with advances in technology and the increased eutrophication of lakes and streams, the interplay between algae and man has become more complex and more im portant. Problems of taste, odor, toxicity, or obnoxious growth caused by algae are unfortunately quite familiar to the water supplier and to the public health worker. Algae have met their role in the space age as a possible source for food or as a gas ex changer. In order to explore any of these practical problems, it is essential to have adequate, basic knowledge of algal taxonomy, physiology, cytogenetics and ecology. This book is the outgrowth of a North Atlantic Treaty Organi zation Advanced Study Institute in which authorities in both the applied and basic fields of phycology, as well as in cognate disci plines, met and discussed various topics related to algae. It is of significance to note that this was the first NATO Advanced Study Institute to be held in the United States and that it had for its theme a subject which is of import for the welfare of all mankind.