Restoration Ecology and the Ecosystem Perspective

The ecosystem perspective provides a framework within which most other aspects of the ecology of restoration can be incorporated. By considering the ecosystem functions of a restoration project, the restorationist is forced to consider the placement of the project in the landscape—its boundaries, its connections or lack thereof to adjoining ecosystems, and its receipts and losses of materials and energy from its physical surroundings. These characteristics may set limits on the kind(s) of biotic communities that can be created on the site. The ecosystem perspective also gives restorationists conceptual tools for structuring and evaluating restorations. These include the mass balance approach to nutrient, pollutant, and energy budgets; subsidy/stress effects of inputs; food web architecture; feedback among ecosystem components; efficiency of nutrient transfers, primary productivity and decomposition as system-determining rates; and disturbance regimes. However, there are many uncertainties concerning these concepts, their relation to each other, and their relationships to population- and community-level phenomena. The nature of restoration projects provides a unique opportunity for research on these problems; the large spatial scale of restorations and the freedom to manipulate species, soil, water, and even the landscape could allow ecosystem-level experiments to be conducted that could not be performed otherwise.     

保护生物学、保护生态学与生物多样性科学

正在查阅生物多样性方面的文献时,经常会遇到3个学科,即保护生物学、保护生态学和生物多样性科学。三者的关系如何?各自具有怎样的特点和发展过程?为了更好地理解3个学科的产生背景和特点,需要回顾一下始于19世纪中叶的保护运动     

Disease Ecology Meets Ecosystem Science

Growing evidence indicates that parasites—when considered—can play influential roles in ecosystem structure and function, highlighting the need to integrate disease ecology and ecosystem science. To strengthen links between these traditionally disparate fields, we identified mechanisms through which parasites can affect ecosystems and used empirical literature searches to explore how commonly such mechanisms have been documented, the ecosystem properties affected, and the types of ecosystems in which they occur. Our results indicate that ecosystem-disease research has remained consistently rare, comprising less than 2% of disease ecology publications. Existing studies from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems, however, demonstrate that parasites can strongly affect (1) biogeochemical cycles of water, carbon, nutrients, and trace elements, (2) fluxes of biomass and energy, and (3) temporal ecosystem dynamics including disturbance, succession, and stability. Mechanistically, most studies have demonstrated density-mediated indirect effects, rather than trait-mediated effects, or direct effects of parasites, although whether this is representative remains unclear. Looking forward, we highlight the importance of applying traits-based approaches to predict when parasites are most likely to exert ecosystem-level effects. Future research should include efforts to extend host–parasite studies across levels of ecological organization, large-scale manipulations to experimentally quantify ecosystem roles of parasites, and the integration of parasites and disease into models of ecosystem functioning.     

重力生态学与农田生态系统生产力

农田生态系统是对人类生存发展具有重大影响的生态系统之一。农田生态系统生产力水平与影响作物生长发育的自然环境因子如光、气、热、水、肥、土等具有不可分割的联系。其中一些环境因子如光、气、热等在一定的区域内和较长的时间范围内并无显著变化差异,     

秦岭羚牛的生态与保护对策

秦岭羚牛被世界自然保护联盟列为易危物种.是中国的国家Ⅰ级重点保护野生动物,仅分布于中国陕西省南部的秦岭大巴山地区.从分布、栖息地、种群状况、集群特征、活动规律、食性、季节性迁移行为、繁殖生态和防御行为等方面概述了秦岭羚牛的生态习性,并提出了对该物种的保护与管理建议.     

Current Practices in Reporting Uncertainty in Ecosystem Ecology

Ecosystem budgets of water and elements can be difficult to estimate and are often unreplicated, making it challenging to provide confidence in estimates of ecosystem pools and fluxes. We conducted a survey to learn about current practices in reporting uncertainties in precipitation, streamflow, soils, and vegetation. Uncertainty derives from natural variation, which is commonly characterized by replicate samples, and from imperfect knowledge, which includes measurement error and model error (model fit and model selection). We asked questions about whether researchers report uncertainties in these sources, whether they know how to do so, and how important they believe the sources to be. We also asked questions about identifying missing or unusable values, filling gaps in data, and dealing with analytical concentrations below detection limits. We obtained responses from 140 researchers representing 90 research sites around the world. Natural variation was the most important source of uncertainty in calculations of biomass and soil pools, according to respondents in these fields, and sampling error was the source they most often reported. In contrast, uncertainty in the chemical analysis of precipitation and stream water was the source most commonly reported by hydrologists, although they rated this one of the least important sources of uncertainty to calculations of hydrologic flux. Awareness of types of uncertainty can help identify sources of uncertainty that may have been overlooked, and quantifying them will help determine which sources are most important to report.