Vegetation classification,mapping, and monitoring at Voyageurs National Park,Minnesota: An application of the U.S. National Vegetation Classification

Question: How can the U.S. National Vegetation Classification (USNVC) serve as an effective tool for classifying and mapping vegetation, and inform assessments and monitoring? Location: Voyageurs National Park, northern Minnesota, U.S.A and environs. The park contains 54 243 ha of terrestrial habitat in the sub-boreal region of North America. Methods: We classified and mapped the natural vegetation using the USNVC, with ‘alliance’and ‘association’as base units. We compiled 259 classification plots and 1251 accuracy assessment test plots. Both plot and type ordinations were used to analyse vegetation and environmental patterns. Color infrared aerial photography (1:15840 scale) was used for mapping. Polygons were manually drawn, then transferred into digital form. Classification and mapping products are stored in publicly available databases. Past fire and logging events were used to assess distribution of forest types. Results and Discussion: Ordination and cluster analyses confirmed 49 associations and 42 alliances, with three associations ranked as globally vulnerable to extirpation. Ordination provided a useful summary of vegetation and ecological gradients. Overall map accuracy was 82.4%. Pinus banksiana - Picea mariana forests were less frequent in areas unburned since the 1930s. Conclusion: The USNVC provides a consistent ecological tool for summarizing and mapping vegetation. The products provide a baseline for assessing forests and wetlands, including fire management. The standardized classification and map units provide local to continental perspectives on park resources through linkages to state, provincial, and national classifications in the U.S. and Canada, and to NatureServe's Ecological Systems classification.     

The Evolution of Quality Systems in Human Bone Banking: The U.S. Experience

This paper illustrates the evolutionary changes that have taken place in human bone banking in the United States since the 1970s to the present, with an emphasis on quality control systems. Specific examples of quality controls are outlined, along with their intended purposes. Particular importance is placed on the gradual change in emphasis from bacteriological concerns to viral concerns and quality control systems.     

深圳市植被的基本特点及其生态评价

深圳市是我国沿海对外开放的经济特区,位于广东省的南部,与香港相连,面临热带南海,为热带、亚热带的过渡区。本市植被类型多样,地带性的代表植被类型为热带常绿季雨林和南亚热带季雨性常绿阔叶林;其组成种类、外貌和结构以及群落的组合和分布规律均表现出热带和亚热带的过渡性,显示出与环境相适应的关系。根据本市植被类型的组合、分布及其与环境的关系,从植物生态学的角度提出植被的生态评价,为经济特区农、林、果、牧等的合理开发利用和改造提供科学依据。     

Restoring the Vegetation of Mined Peatlands in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, U.S.A.

South Park is a high‐elevation, semi‐arid, treeless intermountain basin in central Colorado. A few extreme rich fens occur on the western margin and in the center of South Park where regional and local groundwater flow systems discharge to the ground surface. Over the past 40 years there has been extensive peat mining in these fens, but restoration methods have yet to be developed and successfully applied. The first part of this study compared the naturally reestablished vegetation on six mined peatlands with six pristine sites, while the second part of the study tested different revegetation techniques in 27 plots with varying depths to the water table. The six mined sites had only 30 plant species as compared with 122 species in the unmined sites; 43% of the species in the mined sites were not present in the undisturbed fens. Even after 40 years the sedges and willows that dominate the undisturbed sites were largely absent on the mined sites. The revegetation experiments seeded eight species, transplanted Carex aquatilis (water sedge) seedlings, transplanted rhizomes from six species, and transplanted four species of willow cuttings. Of the eight species seeded, only Triglochin maritima (arrowgrass) germinated and established seedlings. C. aquatilis seedlings, rhizome transplants of C. aquatilis, Kobresia simpliciuscula (elk sedge), and Juncus arcticus (arctic rush), and willow cuttings all had differing patterns of survival with respect to the annual maximum height of the water table. These results indicate that the dominant species can be successfully reintroduced to mined surfaces with the appropriate hydrologic conditions, but human intervention will be necessary to rapidly re‐establish these species. The slow rate of peat accumulation means that restoration of the mined fens will require hundreds, if not thousands, of years.     

Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems

Hierarchies and adaptive cycles comprise the basis of ecosystems and social-ecological systems across scales. Together they form a panarchy. The panarchy describes how a healthy system can invent and experiment, benefiting from inventions that create opportunity while being kept safe from those that destabilize because of their nature or excessive exuberance. Each level is allowed to operate at its own pace, protected from above by slower, larger levels but invigorated from below by faster, smaller cycles of innovation. The whole panarchy is therefore both creative and conserving. The interactions between cycles in a panarchy combine learning with continuity. An analysis of this process helps to clarify the meaning of “sustainable development.” Sustainability is the capacity to create, test, and maintain adaptive capability. Development is the process of creating, testing, and maintaining opportunity. The phrase that combines the two, “sustainable development,” thus refers to the goal of fostering adaptive capabilities and creating opportunities. It is therefore not an oxymoron but a term that describes a logical partnership. Received 7 March 2001; accepted 16 March 2001.     

The Process of Loss: Exploring the Interactions Between Economic and Ecological Systems

SYNOPSIS. Though only a few naturalists have read much economictheory, current understandings of how biological diversity isbeing lost are largely framed by the models developed by economistsover the past two centuries. There is more than a touch of ironyhere. While conservation biologists are challenging the courseof economic development, their perception of the process ofbiodiversity loss is driven by historic patterns of economicreasoning that have become a part of popular consciousness.To be sure, the early economic models were designed to addressthe development of agriculture and the use of land. But agricultureis the most dependent on biodiversity. At the same time, thegeographic expansion of agricultural activities and the choiceof agricultural technologies have been the key driving forceof biodiversity loss. Laterm economic models addressed the limitsof markets to provide guiding signals for human interactionwith the complexities of ecosystems. Even the way we frame howwe should respond to the greatest long-term threat to biodiversity,the likelihood of climate change, is rooted in the economicsof more than half a century ago. This article elaborates these economic framings of the interactionof economic systems with the environment and discusses theirpolicy implications. One of the major problems is that evenexisting economic understandings of the processes of biodiversityloss are only accepted within a part of the economics professionbecause these understandings conflict with political ideologiesheld by most American economists. Thus processes of biodiversityloss are maintained, not for a lack of knowledge, but for adesire among people to maintain simple views of biological systems.Even the patterns of reasoning held by economists who do ponderbiological systems, however, are inadequate. The paper concludeswith suggestions of additional ways of modeling the interactionsbetween human activity and biological systems which may providefurther insight into how we might better maintain biologicaldiversity.     

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Generic Ecological Assessment Endpoints

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that one of the major impediments to the advancement and application of ecological risk assessment is doubt concerning appropriate assessment endpoints. The Agency's Risk Assessment Forum determined that the best solution to this problem was to define a set of generic ecological assessment endpoints (GEAEs). They are assessment endpoints that are applicable to a wide range of ecological risk assessments; because they reflect the programmatic goals of the Agency, they are applicable to a wide array of environmental issues, and they may be estimated using existing assessment tools. They are not specifically defined for individual cases; some ad hoc elaboration by users is expected. The GEAEs are not exhaustive or mandatory. Although most of the Agency's ecological decisions have been based on organism-level effects, GEAEs are also defined for populations, ecosystems, and special places.     

Galactic Factors,the Young Sun,the Earth,and the Biophysics of Living Systems

The effects of radiation from the young Sun and galactic cosmic rays on the physical conditions on the early Earth are significantly underestimated in studies of the problems related to the origin and evolution of the biosphere. This review considers the dynamics of solar and galactic processes over the 4.56 billion years of the existence of the Solar System. These factors substantially affected the development of adaptive technologies in ancient and modern living systems. The features of biosphere development are considered for the early Earth under the young Sun, which was fainter, but more flare active. The radiation spectrum of the young Sun is discussed together with the paradoxical mismatch between the solar radiation spectrum and the chlorophyll adsorption spectrum. Ways of solving the paradox are proposed. The role of solar radiation is important when studying models of the early biosphere of the Earth and hypothetical biospheres of giant planet satellites and exoplanets.

     

Earth Systems Engineering: The Role of Industrial Ecology in an Engineered World

A principal result of the Industrial Revolution and concomitant changes in human population levels, technology systerns, and culture has been the evolution of a world in which the dynamics of major natural systems are increasingly dominated by human activity Many resulting anthropogenic perturbations of fundamental natural systems-for example, the nitrogen and carbon cycles and heavy metal stocks and flows-have been both unanticipated and problematic. Reducing such unintended consequences of human activity will require development of the ability to rationally engineer and manage coupled human-natural systems in a highly integrated fashion. Such "earth systems engineering" activity will rely on industrial ecology studies and methodologies to provide critical elements of the required science bb and technology (S&T) base. Although the need to develop such anffff earth systems engineering Andustrial ecology capability is clear, it is also apparent that the current S&T bbbase, institutional structures, and ethical systems are inadequate to support such activity Accordingly, it is desirable to begin to develop such support structures while recognizing that premature attempts to engineer fundamental natural systems should be discouraged.