提升生态系统质量和稳定性的生态学原理及技术途径之探讨

提升生态系统质量和稳定性是国家生态环境建设的迫切任务,但生态系统质量及其稳定性的生态学原理是亟待阐述的生态学难题。本文在梳理生态系统质量和稳定性的影响因素及其相互作用关系基础上,从生物集聚与结构嵌套的自组织、生态要素关联及生态过程耦合、生态系统整体性及功能涌现、生态服务外溢及功效权衡、资源供给能力和环境适宜性的协同互作、自然变化和人类活动交互影响等视角,论述了生态系统质量及其稳定性演变的生态学原理,并围绕生态系统宏观格局调整、自然保护地体系建设、区域复合生态系统综合管理、退化生态系统恢复、受损生态系统重建、典型生态系统过程管理等层级,提出了提升生态系统质量及其稳定性的技术途径与管理策略。     

城市地域生态调控的空间途径——以深圳市为例

城市地域的可持续发展必须以生态环境的可持续发展为前提和保障。景观生态学主要研究地表各种景观空间格局与生态过程及其相互作用,其原理和规律为在实践中通过优化景观格局,提高生态系统稳定性提供了理论框架。以深圳市为例,尝试综合运用生态敏感性与适宜性分析和景观格局整体优化的方法,通过对生态系统的格局分析与问题诊断,构建合理、稳定的生态系统结构,保障生态系统服务功能的正常发挥。案例研究将深圳市域的整体生态结构分为自然生态空间、城镇发展空间和生态廊道3部分。城镇发展空间具有文化支持的生态功能,自然生态空间具有环境服务和生物生产的生态功能;生态廊道主要起到加强生态联系,提高生态系统稳定性,并防止城市发展空间无序蔓延的功能。城镇景观斑块镶嵌于自然生态景观基质中,并通过多种类型的生态廊道相连,形成区域生态系统的良性循环。案例研究表明,景观生态规划方法的综合应用,可以将景观生态学原理和规律比较合理的运用于实践。     

自然生态空间格局构建与规划理论研究

广义的生态空间是指具有自然属性,以提供生态系统服务为主导功能的空间,包括自然生态空间、城镇生态空间和农业生态空间。自然生态空间是指与城镇空间、农业空间并列的,分布在城镇空间与农业空间之外的国土空间,在分布上具有完整性和连续性。探讨了自然生态空间的定义、内涵以及自然生态空间格局构建的理论和技术要点,提出以重要生态功能维护格局、人居环境屏障格局和生物多样性保护格局为主体,构建自然生态空间格局体系的思路。自然生态空间格局构建的最终目的是对国土空间开发行为进行管控,理顺保护与发展的关系,最终达到保护重要生态空间及促进区域可持续发展的目的。在落实生态文明战略、维护国家生态安全的背景下,构建自然生态空间格局对于优化国土空间开发格局,指导生态保护与建设具有重要意义。     

海南岛东北部土地利用与生态系统服务价值空间自相关格局分析

土地利用/覆被变化是全球环境变化的重要原因,对生态系统服务价值空间分布格局有直接影响。以海南岛东北部为研究对象,基于遥感影像数据,应用空间自相关理论定量探讨了土地利用与生态系统服务价值的空间自相关格局和分布特征,并运用双变量空间自相关分析两者之间的空间响应规律。结果表明:2016年海南岛东北部生态系统服务功能总价值为132.09亿元,其中林地构成生态系统服务功能价值的主体,而湿地的单位生态系统服务价值最高。土地利用类型具有显著的空间自相关性(P0.05),不同土地利用类型所表现的空间聚集或异常的区域及范围明显不同,以建设用地和林地的空间聚集性最强。研究区生态系统服务价值在空间上呈显著的正相关性(P0.05),高值区明显聚集于海岸带、东寨港和清澜港红树林一带,低值区集中在海口城区、文昌北部农耕区域;土地利用程度与生态系统服务价值呈空间负相关关系(P0.05),且具有明显的空间溢出效应。根据研究结论建议继续实施生态修复与保护政策,优化土地利用结构,提升生态核心的服务价值,实现区域可持续发展和维护生态安全。     

城市绿色空间格局的定量化方法研究进展

城市绿色空间格局的变化是影响城市生态系统社会、经济与生态功能的重要因素.在分析城市绿地数量和结构时空动态变化的基础上,重点综述了城市绿地斑块和廊道连接的景观格局指数法和网络分析方法,探讨了城市绿地与居住用地的空间交互作用以及可达性分析方法,比较了城市绿地沿城乡分布的梯度分析方法.并总结了城市绿色空间格局研究的热点领域,包括城市绿色空间格局的空间显式表征和多尺度分析,以及格局的定量研究与规划的结合,并应用于生态系统服务的评价.     

基于生态系统服务的城市生态管理分区——以深圳市为例

生态系统服务是人类赖以生存和发展的基础,开展城市生态系统服务评估并对生态管理单元实行分区管控有助于人居环境的改善。针对高度城市化地区生态系统服务的功能特征,采用生态系统服务价值当量测算不同用地类型的生态系统服务价值。研究从生态功能和经济功能2个方面构建生态系统服务指标体系,对2017年深圳市666个社区单元的生态系统服务价值进行评估;运用空间自相关分析方法,依据局部空间自相关的集聚特征叠加产生的组合类型,划分不同社区生态管理单元,并提出生态分区管控策略。研究结果表明：①生态系统服务价值评估便于高度城市化地区城市生态系统服务功能的整体评价。②2017年深圳市生态系统服务价值空间差异明显,呈现东部高、中西部低的空间格局。深圳市生态系统服务总价值约583.96亿元,最高值为大鹏新区的160.25亿元,最低值为福田区的13.24亿元。③将深圳市666个社区单元划分为4类城市生态管理分区,并采用差异化的分区管控措施,表明有效的城市生态管理分区能够兼顾各项生态系统服务功能并实现功能效益的最优化。该研究结果可为区域生态系统服务精细化管理和生态治理差异化管控提供借鉴。     

基于功能与空间格局的区域生态系统保管策略

本研究以位于长江流域的湖北省兴山县为研究区域,着重讨论了基于功能与空间格局的生态系统保育策略,即以改善生态系统功能为评价指标,以调整生态因子的空间格局为手段的生态系统保育策略。根据该县的地理位置,我们以生态系统功能中的水源函养为森林生态系统保育的评价指标。利用基于地理信息系统的水涵养能力。利用生态系统中水涵养能力的空间异质性和变化－位置效应在生态因子改变中的作用,我们提出了“基于空间格局的森林扩展”的策略。将该策略应用于兴山县的生态系统保育,以期达到保育森林与改善水涵养能力的双重目的。本研究为保育,管理和持续利用长江流域和其他遭遇同样问题的区域的生态系统提供了有价值的信息。     

微生物相互作用中的空间自组织

微生物在全球生态系统中占据着重要地位, 其中一个重要的研究领域是微生物与环境(包括无机环境与生物环境)之间的相互作用。在生态相互作用过程中, 微生物常常通过自组织形成特定的空间模式。微生物的空间模式在种群稳定性、群落动态变化以及维持合作行为方面具有重要作用。本文中, 我们梳理了当下对微生物空间自组织及其所形成的空间模式的研究内容, 首先介绍什么是空间自组织, 再根据生态相互作用类型对自组织的空间模式进行描述, 其中重点讨论合作与竞争中的空间模式, 接着关注微生物空间自组织的过程, 最后我们指出空间自组织对整个群体的结构和功能稳定具有重要意义。研究微生物种群间相互作用中的空间模式, 有助于探索维持合作行为的新机制, 进而为微生物共生系统的构建提供新的理解。     

土壤动物群落空间格局和构建机制研究进展

群落空间格局和构建机制一直是生态学研究的核心内容。在生物多样性严重丧失的背景下, 揭示群落空间格局及其构建机制, 有助于深刻理解生物多样性丧失的原因, 更有助于应对生物多样性保护等重大生态环境问题。然而, 陆地生态系统的研究多集中于地上生物群落, 对地下生态系统, 尤其是土壤动物空间格局和构建机制的研究尚不充分。事实上, 土壤动物多样性是全球生物多样性的关键组成之一, 是地下生态系统结构和功能维持的重要部分。对土壤动物空间格局和构建机制的研究, 能明确不同空间尺度条件下土壤动物多样性的维持机制。土壤动物群落常在多种空间尺度形成复杂的空间分布格局, 因此, 本文首先介绍了不同空间尺度主要土壤动物群落的空间自相关性特征, 阐述了土壤动物群落斑块和孔隙镶嵌分布的复杂空间格局。继而阐明这种空间格局主要受生物间作用、环境过滤和随机扩散的调控, 并说明这三个过程对土壤动物群落的调控能力和作用方式。作者提出, 这三个过程仍是今后土壤动物群落空间格局和构建机制研究的重点内容, 需要进一步加强以土壤动物为研究对象的群落构建理论的验证和发展。我国土壤动物群落空间格局和构建机制起步较晚, 希望本文能够促进我国土壤动物生态学相关领域的研究。     

区域生态安全格局:概念与理论基础

提出区域生态安全格局概念的提出 ,适应了生态系统恢复和生物多样性保护的发展需求。针对区域生态环境问题 ,通过干扰排除以及空间格局规划和管理 ,能够保护和恢复生物多样性 ,维持生态系统结构、功能和过程的完整性 ,实现对区域生态环境问题的有效控制和持续改善。区域生态安全格局的研究对象具有针对性、研究尺度具有区域性、研究问题具有系统性、研究手段具有主动性。它强调区域尺度的生物多样性保护、退化生态系统恢复及其空间合理配置、生态系统健康的维持、景观生态格局的优化、以及对社会经济发展需求的满足。它更加强调格局与过程安全及其整体集成 ,将生态系统管理对策落实到具体的空间地域上 ,实现管理效果的直观可视。相关理论 ,景观生态学、干扰生态学、保护生物学、恢复生态学、生态经济学、生态伦理学、和复合生态系统理论等为其提供了坚实的理论基础。区域生态安全格局不存在一个固定标准 ,人类对生态系统服务功能需求的不断变化是生态系统管理的根本原因。实现区域生态安全不但要以社会、经济、文化、道德、法律、和法规为手段 ,更要以其不断发展对生态系统服务功能的新需求为目标逐步进行。区域生态安全格局研究对于解决区域生态环境问题具有不可替代的作用 ,具有广阔应用前景。     

Scale-dependent feedback and regular spatial patterns in young mussel beds

In the past decade, theoretical ecologists have emphasized that local interactions between predators and prey may invoke emergent spatial patterning at larger spatial scales. However, empirical evidence for the occurrence of emergent spatial patterning is scarce, which questions the relevance of the proposed mechanisms to ecological theory. We report on regular spatial patterns in young mussel beds on soft sediments in the Wadden Sea. We propose that scale-dependent feedback, resulting from short-range facilitation by mutual protection from waves and currents and long-range competition for algae, induces spatial self-organization, thereby providing a possible explanation for the observed patterning. The emergent self-organization affects the functioning of mussel bed ecosystems by enhancing productivity and resilience against disturbance. Moreover, self-organization allows mussels to persist at algal concentrations that would not permit survival of mussels in a homogeneous bed. Our results emphasize the importance of self-organization in affecting the emergent properties of natural systems at larger spatial scales.     

Meta-ecosystems: a theoretical framework for a spatial ecosystem ecology

This contribution proposes the meta‐ecosystem concept as a natural extension of the metapopulation and metacommunity concepts. A meta‐ecosystem is defined as a set of ecosystems connected by spatial flows of energy, materials and organisms across ecosystem boundaries. This concept provides a powerful theoretical tool to understand the emergent properties that arise from spatial coupling of local ecosystems, such as global source–sink constraints, diversity–productivity patterns, stabilization of ecosystem processes and indirect interactions at landscape or regional scales. The meta‐ecosystem perspective thereby has the potential to integrate the perspectives of community and landscape ecology, to provide novel fundamental insights into the dynamics and functioning of ecosystems from local to global scales, and to increase our ability to predict the consequences of land‐use changes on biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services to human societies.     

Ecosystem spatial self-organization: Free order for nothing?

Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems (CAS) by nature, which means that macroscopic patterns and properties emerge from, and feed back to affect, the interactions among adaptive individual ecological agents. These agents then further adapt (genetically) to the outcomes of those interactions. The concept of self-organization has become increasingly important for understanding ecosystem spatial heterogeneity and its consequences. It is well accepted that ecosystems can self-organize, and that resulting spatial structures carry functional consequences. Feedbacks from the outcome of spatial pattern to the individual agents from which patterns emerge, are an essential component of the definition of CAS but have been rarely examined for ecosystems. We explore whether spatial self-organization provides a mechanism for such feedback for ecosystems as CAS, that is, whether ecosystem-level outcomes of self-organized patterning could feed back to affect or even reinforce local pattern-forming processes at the agent level. Diffuse feedbacks of ecological and evolutionary significance ensue as a result of spatial heterogeneity and regular patterning, whether this spatial heterogeneity results from an underlying template effect or from self-organization. However, feedbacks directed specifically at pattern-forming agents to enhance pattern formation—reinforcing feedback—depend upon the level of organization of agents. Reinforcing evolutionary feedbacks occur at the individual level or below. At the ecosystem level, evidence for mechanisms of feedback from outcomes to patterning to agents forming the patterning remain tenuous. Spatial self-organization is a powerful dynamic in ecosystem and landscape science but feedbacks have been only loosely integrated so far. Self-organized patterns influencing dynamics at the ecosystem level represent “order for free”. Whether or not this free order generated at the ecosystem level carries evolutionary function or is merely epiphenomenal is a fundamental question that we address here.     

How life‐history traits affect ecosystem properties: effects of dispersal in meta‐ecosystems

The concept of life‐history traits and the study of these traits are the hallmark of population biology. Acknowledging their variability and evolution has allowed us to understand how species adapt in response to their environment. The same traits are also involved in how species alter ecosystems and shape their dynamics and functioning. Some theories, such as the metabolic theory of ecology, ecological stoichiometry or pace‐of‐life theory, already recognize this junction, but only do so in an implicitly non‐spatial context. Meanwhile, for a decade now, it has been argued that ecosystem properties have to be understood at a larger scale using meta‐ecosystem theory because source–sink dynamics, community assembly and ecosystem stability are all modified by spatial structure. Here, we argue that some ecosystem properties can be linked to a single life‐history trait, dispersal, i.e. the tendency of organisms to live, compete and reproduce away from their birth place. By articulating recent theoretical and empirical studies linking ecosystem functioning and dynamics to species dispersal, we aim to highlight both the known connections between life‐history traits and ecosystem properties and the unknown areas, which deserve further empirical and theoretical developments.     

Regular pattern formation in real ecosystems

Localized ecological interactions can generate striking large-scale spatial patterns in ecosystems through spatial self-organization. Possible mechanisms include oscillating consumer-resource interactions, localized disturbance-recovery processes and scale-dependent feedback. Despite abundant theoretical literature, studies revealing spatial self-organization in real ecosystems are limited. Recently, however, many examples of regular pattern formation have been discovered, supporting the importance of scale-dependent feedback. Here, we review these studies, showing regular pattern formation to be a general phenomenon rather than a peculiarity. We provide a conceptual framework explaining how scale-dependent feedback determines regular pattern formation in ecosystems. More empirical studies are needed to better understand regular pattern formation in ecosystems, and how this affects the response of ecosystems to global environmental change.     

集合生态系统研究15年回顾与展望

集合生态系统(meta-ecosystem)由法国的Loreau教授等于2003年提出,是指"由跨生态系统边界的物质流、能量流和生物体流所连接起来的一系列生态系统的集合",是对只关注生物体(organism)迁移交换的集合种群(meta-population)和集合群落(meta-community)概念的外推,也是为了给生态系统空间异质性研究提供一个重要的分析路径,对研究和理解生态系统的结构、过程、功能和异质性具有重要意义。通过对相关文献的梳理分析,简述了集合生态系统研究的基本状况,分析了对集合生态系统概念的狭义和广义两种理解,指出了探讨集合生态系统结构的两个方向,构建了分析集合生态系统研究的六维整体框架,综述了研究集合生态系统的两类方法,探讨了经验化的集合生态系统(empirical meta-ecosystem)的3种空间结构和两种构建路径。将集合生态系统概念和理论引入流域复合生态系统(integrated watershed ecosystem)的分析,为流域生态学研究提供新的概念框架。     

The importance of ecological memory for trophic rewilding as an ecosystem restoration approach

Increasing human pressure on strongly defaunated ecosystems is characteristic of the Anthropocene and calls for proactive restoration approaches that promote self‐sustaining, functioning ecosystems. However, the suitability of novel restoration concepts such as trophic rewilding is still under discussion given fragmentary empirical data and limited theory development. Here, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates the concept of ‘ecological memory’ into trophic rewilding. The ecological memory of an ecosystem is defined as an ecosystem's accumulated abiotic and biotic material and information legacies from past dynamics. By summarising existing knowledge about the ecological effects of megafauna extinction and rewilding across a large range of spatial and temporal scales, we identify two key drivers of ecosystem responses to trophic rewilding: (i) impact potential of (re)introduced megafauna, and (ii) ecological memory characterising the focal ecosystem. The impact potential of (re)introduced megafauna species can be estimated from species properties such as lifetime per capita engineering capacity, population density, home range size and niche overlap with resident species. The importance of ecological memory characterising the focal ecosystem depends on (i) the absolute time since megafauna loss, (ii) the speed of abiotic and biotic turnover, (iii) the strength of species interactions characterising the focal ecosystem, and (iv) the compensatory capacity of surrounding source ecosystems. These properties related to the focal and surrounding ecosystems mediate material and information legacies (its ecological memory) and modulate the net ecosystem impact of (re)introduced megafauna species. We provide practical advice about how to quantify all these properties while highlighting the strong link between ecological memory and historically contingent ecosystem trajectories. With this newly established ecological memory–rewilding framework, we hope to guide future empirical studies that investigate the ecological effects of trophic rewilding and other ecosystem‐restoration approaches. The proposed integrated conceptual framework should also assist managers and decision makers to anticipate the possible trajectories of ecosystem dynamics after restoration actions and to weigh plausible alternatives. This will help practitioners to develop adaptive management strategies for trophic rewilding that could facilitate sustainable management of functioning ecosystems in an increasingly human‐dominated world.     

Self-organization and vegetation collapse in salt marsh ecosystems

Complexity theory predicts that local feedback processes may strongly affect the organization of ecosystems on larger spatial scales. Whether complexity leads to increased resilience and stability or to increased vulnerability and criticality remains one of the dominant questions in ecology. We present a combined theoretical and empirical study of complex dynamics in mineralogenic salt marsh ecosystems that emerge from a positive feedback between clay accumulation and plant growth. Positive feedback induces self-organizing within the ecosystem, which buffers for the strong physical gradient that characterizes the marine-terrestrial boundary, and improves plant growth along the gradient. However, as a consequence of these self-organizing properties, salt marshes approach a critical state as the edge of the salt marsh and the adjacent intertidal flat becomes increasingly steep and vulnerable to wave attack. Disturbance caused, for instance, by a storm may induce a cascade of vegetation collapse and severe erosion on the cliff edge, leading to salt marsh destruction. Our study shows that on short timescales, self-organization improves the functioning of salt marsh ecosystems. On long timescales, however, self-organization may lead to destruction of salt marsh vegetation.