如何设计与开展现代生态学研究——第五届“国际青年生态学者论坛”述评

为促进中国青年生态学者与海外生态学者的交流与合作,由中国生态学学会、中华海外生态学者协会和国际青年学者论坛委员会联合举办的第五届国际青年生态学者论坛,于2014年5月16日至18日在河南大学(开封)顺利召开。围绕"如何设计与开展现代生态学研究"的主题,本届论坛的科学议题包含了以下五个方面:(1)如何设计现代生态学的研究;(2)生态学不同领域的研究方法;(3)针对不同生态学问题所采用的数据分析方法;(4)撰写生态学领域研究项目申请书方面的成功经验交流;(5)英文论文写作过程中的注意事项,传授提高生态学英文论文写作能力的经验和技巧。国际青年生态学者论坛促进了青年生态学者与国际专家的交流,对我国生态学科的发展和生态学人才的成长具有重要意义。     

红壤生态学

红壤是一种重要类型的土壤,面积大、分布广,条件优越,开发利用潜力巨大。当前,红壤退化严重、生态环境问题突出,亟待研究治理。建立红壤生态学,将红壤生态学的理论与技术运用到红壤的生态治理、环境改善及其合理开发利用中,既是现实需要又是形势所迫,势在必行。红壤生态学是由土壤学与生态学交叉、复合而形成的一门新兴、边缘农业应用科学,是土壤生态学的一个分支学科。红壤生态学以红壤为研究对象,探索红壤生态系统中生物与生物、生物与环境、环境因子与环境因子之间的相互关系及其作用机理,深入揭示红壤生态系统的结构、功能、演变规律及调控措施,最终目标是要实现红壤资源的可持续利用和红壤生态系统的可持续发展。红壤生态学着重研究以下7个方面的内容:(1)红壤生态系统的结构;(2)红壤生态系统的功能;(3)红壤生态系统的演变;(4)红壤生态系统的退化;(5)红壤生态系统的平衡;(6)红壤生态系统的调控;(7)红壤资源的开发利用。红壤生态学具有以下几个明显的特征:交叉性与边缘性、复合性与综合性、实践性与应用性、理论性与学术性、多样性与复杂性、层次性与系统性,以及长期性与战略性。今后,红壤生态学将向着规范化、数字化、高效化、国际化方向发展。为促进红壤生态学的又好又快发展,应采取以下战略对策:一是培养专门人才;二是增加物质投入;三是建设研发平台;四是加强交流合作;五是勇于开拓创新。     

应用生态学的现状与发展

应用生态学可定义为研究协调人类与生物、资源、环境之间关系以达到和谐目的的科学。生态学已成为包含上百个分支的庞大学科, 当前的弱点和存在问题主要是:缺乏科学的严格性、实验技能和应用技术薄弱以及生态学在迅速扩展过程中正失去自身的学科边界。数学和计算机技术在生态学研究和实践中的应用, 生态实验、宏观生态学研究和生态工程技术的研究和发展可能是未来应用生态学研究最活跃的领域。     

区域生态学的特点、学科定位及其与相邻学科的关系

区域生态学作为生态学的一门重要分支学科,起源于20世纪70年代的区域综合科学考察和环境污染调查,旨在研究区域生态环境问题形成背景和驱动因子,探讨区域生态环境问题解决的思路和方法。基于前人研究成果和文献综述,系统分析了区域生态学研究的特点,剖析了区域生态学的性质和学科定位。在此基础上进一步比较了区域生态学与景观生态学、生态系统生态学、区域自然地理学和宏观生态学的共性与差异。认为:(1)区域生态学研究对象是具有特定生态环境属性的区域生态综合体,既具有特定要素主导下的空间均质性,也具有多种要素耦合作用下的空间异质性特征,是一门问题导向的应用性基础学科;(2)区域生态学研究需要具有多元综合、问题导向和系统集成的思维,从多层次、多视角探讨区域生态环境问题的解决方案;(3)区域生态学属于宏观生态学研究的范畴,处于分子生态学、个体生态学、种群生态学、群落生态学、生态系统生态学、景观生态学、区域生态学和全球生态学这个生态学学科体系的较高层次。     

论广西生态安全

生态安全是近年来生态学研究的热点问题,也是可持续发展的重大战略问题。广西生态安全面临的突出问题与挑战,包括:生态破坏、水土流失、石漠化、土壤衰退、植被退化、生物多样性降低、物种入侵、环境污染、自然灾害、结构受损、功能减退、可持续发展面临威胁等。造成广西生态安全问题存在的原因是多方面的,既有历史原因,也有现实因素;既有自然原因,更有人为因素。根本的原因是:不良的生产活动、不当的"三废"排放、过快的人口增长和频发的自然灾害。针对广西存在的上述生态安全问题,必须采取有效对策和措施:(1)提高认识;(2)完善制度;(3)严格执法;(4)绿色考评;(5)生态补偿;(6)加强研究;(7)促进合作;(8)分区分类;(9)增大投入;(10)增强能力。     

森林生态学的任务及面临的发展问题

森林生态学是生态学的一个分支学科 ,也是林学的一个分支学科 .2 0世纪 90年代 ,国家自然科学基金委员会曾先后组织我国许多科学家研究和编写出版了一系列自然学科发展战略调研报告 ,其中包括了“生态学发展战略”和“林学发展战略” ,森林生态学为它们的重要分支学科 .“生态学发展战略”由已故的马世骏先生主持 ,由中国生态学会组织科学家们完成 .它相当全面地、系统地和深刻地总结了生态学发展历史 ,提出了发展预测和今后的重要研究领域 .它正确地指出 ,当前的生态学已由经典的生态学任务 ,即研究阐明生物及其环境的相互关系的科学 ,发展…     

基因工程生物的生态影响及其评价

随着基因工程技术的迅速发展,基因工程产生的生物将被广泛地应用于非受控的自然环境中,这将带来诸多的环境和生态方面的问题。本文概述了基因工程生物在非受控环境下可能产生的生态影响,提出了“基因工程生态学”这一新的应用生态学分支领域,探讨了该分支学科的概念、主要研究内容和目标,以及当前应采取的研究策略,并就发展基因工程生态学的有关问题提出了建议。     

应用生态学的现状与展望

应用生态学是迅猛发展的现代生态学的主体．寻求解决人口、资源、环境等问题是应用生态学发展的主要动力．经过40年的发展,应用生态学已发展成为一个庞大的学科门类．应用生态学未来的发展应更多地关注受人类影响和管理的生态系统并将人视为生态系统的组成成分．应用生态学在当前和今后应给予优先重视的研究领域,包括生态系统与生物圈的可持续利用、生态系统服务与生态设计、转基因生物的生态学评价、生物入侵生态学、流行病生态学、生态预报、生态过程及其调控等．在今后若干年内。围绕这些领域,可能会出现广泛而活跃的研究热潮以及一些新的特点．     

中国园林生态学发展综述

运用文献计量等方法对已有科研成果进行统计分析,结果表明:中国近50年园林生态学科领域科研发展经过了起步探索(1962-1981)、缓慢发展(1982-2001)、快速发展(2002-2011)3个时期,园林生态学作为生态学一个新的分支学科,于20世纪90年代末初见端倪,作为一门新兴独立的应用生态学分支学科于21世纪初已基本形成.中国园林生态学领域的研究包括园林生态系统中生物与环境相互作用关系问题、人与环境相互作用关系问题以及园林生态系统与其他生态系统之间相互作用关系问题.当代园林生态研究主要有生态效益研究、生物与环境研究、人的需求与行为研究、生态规划与生态管理研究4个方面,目前园林生态学研究主要侧重生物与环境研究和生态效益研究,两方面的研究成果占总体研究成果的76.3％.不同研究方面也有各自的侧重点,如生物与环境研究侧重对植物的研究,生态效益研究侧重净化环境、水土保持和防灾减灾,生态规划与生态管理研究则侧重生态规划与设计.对四个研究方面的论文主题词检索和高频主题关键词的分布进行统计,结果显示,研究的热点有多样性、群落、水土保持、防灾避险、净化环境、生态规划与设计等.对CNKI中4个研究方面成果中获基金资助项目论文进行统计(不排重),总体成果中基金项目论文所占比重为10.8％,国家和地方基金是园林生态学科研基金资助的主要来源,基金论文比例之和达到85.4％,且国家和地方基金资助论文较多的是“生态与环境研究”和“生态效益研究”,合计占基金论文79.1％.SCI-E中收录的文献基金论文率为47.1％,是CNKI数据库收录的文献基金论文率的4.3倍,且国际基金是基金论文的主要资助来源之一,说明中国园林生态学领域部分科研成果得到国际学界关注.基于CNKI相关主题词统计,“园林生态学”的研究成果只有“景观生态学”的1％,“城市生态学”的8.3％,“园林生态学”学科系统理论研究在相关生态学科研究中所占比重很低,其理论和方法研究还较薄弱.今后在进一步完善学科理论体系、持续开展生态效益和园林植物研究的同时,为更好地研究和解决人-自然复合生态系统问题,提供更多的科学理论支撑,还需拓展交叉生态心理学或环境心理学等其他相关理论,更多地关注人与环境互相作用关系以及生态规划与生态管理等方面的研究,既使环境更好地满足人的行为需求,也使人认识到改变一些行为能更好地保护环境.     

生态学

(一) 生态学的地位和作用生态学是从个体、种群、群落和生态系统等水平研究生物与环境以及生物与生物之间相互关系的科学。在为农、林、牧、渔、狩猎和医疗卫生等事业服务过程中,生态学发展了它的理论和技术。随着社会经济高速发展,全球性的人口、粮食、资源、环境等当代重大社会问题相继出现,促进了生态学的迅速发展。当前,生态学已发展成了一个多学科交叉的科学体系。现代生态学是有关人类生存的科学,它帮助人类协调经济发展和保护生态环境的相互关系,它是     

Toward a more expansive conception of ecological science

There are two competing conceptions of the nature and domain of ecological science in the popular and academic literature, an orthodox conception and a more expansive conception. The orthodox conception conceives ecology as a natural biological science distinct from the human social sciences. The more expansive conception views ecology as a science whose domain properly spans both the natural and social sciences. On the more expansive conception, non-traditional ecological disciplines such as ecological psychology, ecological anthropology and ecological economics may legitimately be regarded as sub-disciplines of ecology, and the practitioners of such disciplines as ecologists. The orthodox-expansionist issue is significant both for the practice of ecology and for the self-identity of the philosophy of ecology. I argue in favour of the expansionist conception of ecology on general conceptual grounds, and by developing the case for one particular non-traditional ecological discipline, ecological psychology.     

生态学的科学概念及其演变与当代生态学学科体系之商榷

生态学既是生物学的分支学科,也是环境科学、地球系统科学的重要组成部分,其研究成果可直接服务于植物、动物、微生物的生物多样性保护、生物资源利用及生物产业管理等应用领域.生态系统概念将经典生态学或者基础生态学研究扩展到了生态系统生态学或者生态系统科学的新阶段,奠定了大尺度及全球生态环境科学研究的理论基础,促进了生物学、地理...     

Richard J. Hobbs: how one ecologist has influenced the way we think about restoration ecology

Professor Richard Hobbs has had a profound influence on the development of the discipline of restoration ecology. With more than 300 publications spanning a broad scope of applied ecological sciences, he has collaborated with hundreds of researchers. His sometimes‐provocative insights, balanced by extensive empirical research, will have a lasting impact by encouraging people to think more broadly about the science and practice of ecological restoration. Here, on the eve of his retirement, some of his staff and students, past and present, take a retrospective look at his contributions to restoration ecology both as a scientist and as a mentor.     

Ecology after 100 years: Progress and pseudo-progress

Has the science of ecology fulfilled the promises made by the originators of ecological science at the start of the last century? What should ecology achieve? Have good policies for environmental management flowed out of ecological science? These important questions are rarely discussed by ecologists working on detailed studies of individual systems. Until we decide what we wish to achieve as ecologists we cannot define progress toward those goals. Ecologists desire to achieve an understanding of how the natural world operates, how humans have modified the natural world, and how to alleviate problems arising from human actions. Ecologists have made impressive gains over the past century in achieving these goals, but this progress has been uneven. Some sub-disciplines of ecology are well developed empirically and theoretically, while others languish for reasons that are not always clear. Fundamental problems can be lost to view as ecologists fiddle with unimportant pseudo-problems. Bandwagons develop and disappear with limited success in addressing problems. The public demands progress from all the sciences, and as time moves along and problems get worse, more rapid progress is demanded. The result for ecology has too often been poor, short-term science and poor management decisions. But since the science is rarely repeated and the management results may be a generation or two down the line, it is difficult for the public or for scientists to decide how good or bad the scientific advice has been. In ecology over the past 100 years we have made solid achievements in behavioural ecology, population dynamics, and ecological methods, we have made some progress in understanding community and ecosystem dynamics, but we have made less useful progress in developing theoretical ecology, landscape ecology, and natural resource management. The key to increasing progress is to adopt a systems approach with explicit hypotheses, theoretical models, and field experiments on a scale defined by the problem. With continuous feedback between problems, possible solutions, relevant theory and experimental data we can achieve our scientific goals.     

Reinterpreting Industrial Ecology

This article argues that industrial ecology has, to date, largely engaged with the ecological sciences at a superficial level, which has both attracted criticism of the field and limited its practical application for sustainable industrial development. On the basis of an analysis of the principle of succession, the role of waste, and the concept of diversity, the article highlights some of the key misconceptions that have resulted from the superficial engagement with the science of ecology. It is argued that industrial ecology should not be seen as a metaphor for industrial development; industrial ecology is the ecology of industry and should be studied as such. There are manifold general principles of ecology that underpin our understanding of the world; however, the physical manifestation and causal effects of these principles are particular to the system and its constituent elements under analysis. It is thus proposed that context‐specific observation and analysis of industry are required before theoretical and practical advancement of the field can be achieved.     

Mechanistic analogy: how microcosms explain nature

Microcosm studies of ecological processes have been criticized for being unrealistic. However, since lack of realism is inherent to all experimental science, if lack of realism invalidates microcosm models of ecological processes, then such lack of realism must either also invalidate much of the rest of experimental ecology or its force with respect to microcosm studies must derive from some other limitation of microcosm apparatus. We believe that the logic of the microcosm program for ecological research has been misunderstood. Here, we respond to the criticism that microcosm studies play at most a heuristic role in ecology with a new account of scientific experimentation developed specifically with ecology and other environmental sciences in mind. Central to our account are the concepts of model-based reasoning and analogical inference. We find that microcosm studies are sound when they serve as models for nature and when certain properties, referred to as the essential properties, are in positive analogy. By extension, our account also justifies numerous other kinds of ecological experimentation. These results are important because reliable causal accounts of ecological processes are necessary for sound application of ecological theory to conservation and environmental science. A severe sensitivity to reliable representation of causes is the chief virtue of the microcosm approach.     

A tale of four stories: soil ecology, theory, evolution and the publication system

Background

Soil ecology has produced a huge corpus of results on relations between soil organisms, ecosystem processes controlled by these organisms and links between belowground and aboveground processes. However, some soil scientists think that soil ecology is short of modelling and evolutionary approaches and has developed too independently from general ecology. We have tested quantitatively these hypotheses through a bibliographic study (about 23000 articles) comparing soil ecology journals, generalist ecology journals, evolutionary ecology journals and theoretical ecology journals.

Findings

We have shown that soil ecology is not well represented in generalist ecology journals and that soil ecologists poorly use modelling and evolutionary approaches. Moreover, the articles published by a typical soil ecology journal (Soil Biology and Biochemistry) are cited by and cite low percentages of articles published in generalist ecology journals, evolutionary ecology journals and theoretical ecology journals.

Conclusion

This confirms our hypotheses and suggests that soil ecology would benefit from an effort towards modelling and evolutionary approaches. This effort should promote the building of a general conceptual framework for soil ecology and bridges between soil ecology and general ecology. We give some historical reasons for the parsimonious use of modelling and evolutionary approaches by soil ecologists. We finally suggest that a publication system that classifies journals according to their Impact Factors and their level of generality is probably inadequate to integrate “particularity” (empirical observations) and “generality” (general theories), which is the goal of all natural sciences. Such a system might also be particularly detrimental to the development of a science such as ecology that is intrinsically multidisciplinary.     

无人机技术在广州南沙区河涌景观特征生态调查中的应用研究进展

在城市化进程逐步加快、社会经济水平趋于高阶的时代,城市生态系统是当前开展交叉学科研究的重要对象,融合了自然科学(如林学、生态学等)和社会科学(如管理学、人文地理学等)领域的思想体系和研究方法。作为一种新兴技术,无人机遥感已在生物学、地理学、信息科学等多个学科领域广泛使用。主要从监测、研究、评估和保护等四个方面简要叙述了无人机技术在林业生态研究和管理中的应用情况,并以广州南沙区河涌景观为例简要分析了无人机技术在珠江三角洲地区城市森林景观中的实际应用。试图为我国城市区域的森林生态、生物多样性与人居环境研究和管理工作提供参考。     

Ecology: The Science Versus the Myth

This paper describes the foundations of ecology as a science and argues for adherence to scientific principles in the environmental arena. Ecology as a science does not present moral or ethical guidance for societal use in environmental management. Moral, ethical, economic, and political values are integral parts of environmental management, but they are derived outside the realm of science. We emphasize the importance of preserving the power of science as a methodology to acquire objective information separated from societal values. Environmental Risk Assessment is a process that engages and requires both the life and social sciences for successful environmental management.     

Ecology of soils: a new science of the biosphere class

The history of a new science, ecology of soils, is described. Its object, subject, and methodology are discussed, with emphasis placed upon the top-priority problems. It has been proved that ecology of soils is among the sciences whose concern is the study of biosphere. Examples are given to illustrate rules and laws of the new science. It is shown in particular that humus components and their ratios are bearing on climate parameters and fall on definite ecological ranges of certain kinds of soils characterized by different ratios of humic acids.