The White House on Tuesday issued its final plan for managing the nation’s oceans, outlining a strategy that aims to coordinate the work of more than two dozen agencies and reconcile competing interests including fishing, offshore energy exploration and recreational activities.

The impacts of global warming are often described in the context of human activities or how it will affect charismatic megafauna and visible landscape features.

With negotiations at an end, WWF Director General Jim Leape today issued the following closing statement about the Rio+20 summit: "This was a conference about life: about future generations; about the forests, oceans, rivers and lakes that we all depend on for our food, water and energy. It was a conference to address the pressing challenge of building a future that can sustain us.

 As people pump groundwater for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses, the water doesn't just seep back into the ground -- it also evaporates into the atmosphere, or runs off into rivers and canals, eventually emptying into the world's oceans.

New research suggests that global warming is causing the cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the oceans to intensify more than scientists had expected, an ominous finding that may indicate a higher potential for extreme weather in coming decades.

A new genre of electric power-generating stations could supply electricity for more than a half billion people by tapping just one-tenth of the global potential of a little-known energy source that exists where rivers flow into the ocean, a new analysis has concluded.

Production of energy from the difference between salt water and fresh water is most convenient near the oceans, but now, using an ammonium bicarbonate salt solution, Penn State researchers can combine bacterial degradation of waste water with energy extracted from the salt-water fresh-water gradient to produce power anywhere.

The world's oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.

The United States has thousands of miles of coastline, and more than half of its population lives in counties bordering oceans or the Great Lakes — areas administered by a hodgepodge of federal, state or other agencies, often with conflicting goals. For years, environmental groups and expert panels have called for federal oversight for these areas.

A global blue carbon market that would create direct economic gain for those who protect ocean habitats is the main feature of a plan issued today by five United Nations agencies to improve the management of the world's ocean and coastal areas.