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Coastal ecosystems are undergoing unprecedented rates of environmental change. Many of these changes are anthropogenically-driven and linked to long-term, climate-related phenomena. This thesis focusses on ecological change in soft sediment intertidal habitats. One of the largest harbours in Europe, Poole Harbour, is used as a case study. It contains a variety of important habitats including intertidal mudflat and non-tidal saline lagoon. The two main themes of the thesis are 1) assessing the physical and ecological factors that determine benthic invertebrate abundance, distribution and community structure, which is examined at the scale of the whole harbour, and at the scale of individual habitats: an intertidal mudflat and a saline lagoon; and 2) predicting the response of an overwintering shorebird population, the pied avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta), to future environmental changes, such as sea-level rise and habitat loss. This is achieved by development of an individual-based model (IBM) and consideration of the species’ unique foraging behaviour. This study contributes to the understanding of the factors structuring soft sediment benthic communities, including the use of data from fine-scale hydrodynamic models. It offers a unique comparison of the spatial and temporal variables driving community structure of a saline lagoon and an intertidal mudflat. It also provides insight into the foraging ecology of the pied avocet at a level of detail that has not previously been considered, including a comparison of foraging behaviour in a tidal and non-tidal habitat, the importance of social foraging, and the novel application of an IBM to this species.

I utilize participant observation, autoethnography and in-depth interviews with women who have given birth at home and homebirth midwives in Oklahoma to understand perceptions and responses to society's hegemonic birth system, its power, ideology, and practices. Employing Foucauldian, Foucauldian feminist, and Social Constructivist frameworks, I illuminate issues of reality construction, knowledge, and power related to the homebirth experience. Participants expressed distinctions between biomedical and midwifery models. They described complex processes whereby women's bodies are transformed into docile bodies through disciplinary technologies, including control of ideology and panopticonic domination of time, space, and movements of the body. This process involved technocratic constructions of women's bodies and birth as pathological and women's bodies as defective machines that require application of technology and expert action to birth. Homebirth mothers and midwives articulated narratives of empowerment, knowledge, and control in the philosophy and practice of the midwifery model and homebirth, and subscribed to a holistic paradigm that involved constructing women's bodies and birth as healthy and normal, understanding women as social beings, and valuing nature over technology. Homebirth was directly and indirectly presented as resistance to normalizing medical hegemony whereby respondents claimed ownership of their bodies, births, and babies, pursuing this aim through active creation of agency, empowerment, and practice of alternative birth models.