The book provides a cross-disciplinary and multi-scale assessment of a world top river, the Changjiang (Yangtze River) and its adjacent marginal environment, the East China Sea. The studies in this volume bridges the watersheds of the river and the marginal sea through a combined approach of hydro-dynamics, geochemistry, sedimentary processes, ecology and fishery. The response of ecosystem to the external driving forces is examined via process-oriented observations, mesocosm experiments and numerical simulations in combination. The lessons learnt from the case studies of Changjiang and East China Sea can be beneficial to those who are doing inter-disciplinary researches in the continuum from watersheds to continental margins.

Jing Zhang is a full professor at the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University at Shanghai, China. While working as mentor for postgraduate studies, he teaches chemical oceanography and biogeochemistry. He completed undergraduate studies at the Nanjing University (China), and received his MSc from the Ocean University of Qingdao (China) and his PhD from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) in France. His research experience has been in the multi-disciplinary studies from the river watersheds to the continental margins, where he and his colleagues worked on the transfer and transformation of chemical elements at land - ocean interfaces and the impacts on the food-web structure and ecosystem function.