In recent years several prominent summits on ecological concerns have identified biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems as a major sustainability issue with implications for food security conservation health and well-being and adaptation
Sustainable development means protecting the future of these environments through the social-ecological systems in
That's how University of Guelph integrative biologists might recast a line from an iconic folk tune for their new research paper warning about the perils of ecosystem breakdown.
Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance.
Their research confirms that having lots of species in an area helps ecosystems avoid irreversible collapse after human disturbances such as climate change or pest invasion.
Macdougall said the study supports resource management strategies that increase biodiversity on land and in aquatic ecosystems.
--but it's an ecosystem that is more vulnerable to collapse he said adding that this study helps explain why species diversity matters.
and ecosystem stability said many ecosystems are at a tipping point including grasslands that may easily become either woodlands or deserts.
They're a really productive ecosystem that produces year in and year out and seems stable
and the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has shown that these variations reveal how vulnerable the rainforest is to climate change.
But if this effect declines or climate warming occurs due to something other than a carbon dioxide increase we expect to see a significant release of carbon from tropical ecosystems.
Our research has shed light on the former but the latter remains a significant pressure on this ecosystem.
Astonishing ten new species of semiaquatic freshwater earthworms revealedthe semiaquatic earthworms in the genus Glyphidrilus are somewhat unfamiliar species that live between the terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems of rivers streams canals
Brennan who works at the ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit in Salinas has published some his findings in Agronomy Journal and Applied Soil Ecology.
It is hoped this research--which was published in the journal Ecology--will make a difference by highlighting the importance of protecting vulnerable calves in captivity from the effects of climate changeexperts at the University of Sheffield accessed unique recordings of the life
but a different father said Diggle a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
Co-authors on the study included Chi-Chih Wu a CU-Boulder doctoral student in the ecology
This particular ecosystem between the earth and the sea plays a major role in protecting the particularly unstable muddy coastline (2) against erosion.
#Amazon freshwater ecosystems are vulnerable to degradationa study published in Conservation Letters this week found that freshwater ecosystems in the Amazon are highly vulnerable to environmental degradation.
River lake and wetland ecosystems--encompassing approximately one-fifth of the Amazon basin area--are being degraded increasingly by deforestation pollution construction of dams
Damage to Amazon freshwater ecosystems greatly impacts Amazonians who historically have been so dependent on freshwater ecosystem goods
Little attention has been paid to freshwater ecosystems which through the hydrological cycle are interconnected to other ecosystems at local and distant locations being highly sensitive to a broad array of human impacts.
Despite some terrestrial protections that are high by global standards this paper shows key gaps in protection for the Amazon's freshwater systems
The principal threat to most Amazon freshwater ecosystems is large-scale alteration of the basin's natural hydrology.
Adequate protection of Amazon freshwater ecosystems requires broadening the forest-centric focus of prevailing environmental management
and conservation strategies to encompass aquatic ecosystems. By building upon existing protected areas it is possible to develop a river catchment-based conservation framework that protects both aquatic
and terrestrial ecosystems effectively protecting the Amazon river-forest system. The Amazon watershed spans six countries with Brazil Bolivia and Peru accounting for most of the area.
but the case with Amazon freshwater ecosystems is different because no one talks about it. Their problem has been concealed said Castello.
We now need to do the same for these aquatic ecosystems. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Woods Hole Research center.
The combination of marine and terrestrial data enable us to link the environmental record at specific fossil sites to regional ecological
According to the entomologist hoverflies are present in practically all terrestrial ecosystems and they carry out very important biological functions such as pollination nutrient recycling
Most efforts to figure out the ecological workings of the virus have focused on reports of infected people a crude indicator at best says Crowder.
#How plant communities endure stressthe Stress Gradient Hypothesis holds that as stress increases in an ecosystem mutually supportive interactions become more significant and negative interactions such as competition become less so.
but is backed now by a review of hundreds of studies co-authored in Ecology Letters by Mark Bertness professor of biology at Brown who first formally proposed the hypothesis in 1994.
Ecology is rife with predation competition and other dramatic negative interactions but those alone do not determine the course life On earth.
when ecosystems become threatened by conditions such as drought. Ecologists have argued about the hypothesis ever since Brown University ecologist Mark Bertness co-proposed it in 1994;
Bertness says a large new global meta-analysis he co-authored in Ecology Letters definitively shows that it is true.
The evidence principally analyzed by former Brown visiting graduate student Qiang He of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China comes from 206 studies of 727 shifts of plant interactions amid varying degrees or gradients
of stress on six continents. Examining the data from each paper and contacting original authors when necessary He determined the overall trends across the many experiments.
These findings were consistent across fitness measures stress types growth forms life histories origins climatic zones ecosystems and methodologies.
The hypothesis and the importance of positive interactions in ecology began to occur to Bertness in the 1970s and 1980s.
Bertness published the Stress Gradient Hypothesis in Trends in Ecological Evolution with Ray Callaway then a graduate student at the University of California-Santa barbara. Callaway is now a professor at the University of Montana.
We're no longer in the casual earlier stages of ecology says biologist Mark Bertness. Nearly two decades later with so much evidence now assembled Bertness said ecologists should feel confident enough in the Stress Gradient Hypothesis to employ it as a rule of thumb.
Rather than continuing to debate whether the hypothesis is said valid he researchers could now focus on crafting experiments to probe how much predictive value the hypothesis has
The hypothesis suggests for example that marine ecosystem managers who want to help tropical fish should focus on sustaining foundational species in the ecosystem such as corals.
With the ecosystem's foundation shored up the natural tendency among species toward greater positive interactions under stress should allow the fish to weather stress better.
We're no longer in the casual earlier stages of ecology Bertness said. In our lifetimes we're watching Caribbean coral reefs die kelp forests die
In other words with nature under stress Bertness hopes that He's efforts to pull together the available data will lead ecologists to pull together
and maples on the University of Michigan's central campus Diag undergraduate researchers and their faculty adviser helped explain an observation that had puzzled insect ecologists who study voracious leaf-munching gypsy moth caterpillars.
Biology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The amount of essential amino acids in oak leaves was 30-42 percent higher than the EAA content of maple leaves in the spring and summer.
In the short term though this is basic research that is driven by the curiosity of ecologists to understand nature better.
The ability to literally walk out the door to work on tree defenses against pests like the gypsy moth coupled with an abundance of undergraduate talent makes the U-M campus an ideal location for studies in insect chemical ecology Barbehenn said.
This study is encouraging in that it demonstrates that we can monitor a fisher population over a large area with simple methods said Bill Zielinski a PSW research ecologist who coordinated the analysis of the research data.
One quarter of CO2 emissions are going to terrestrial ecosystems but the details of those processes and how they will respond to a changing climate are understood inadequately particularly for tropical forests Chambers said.
Large-scale tree mortality in tropical ecosystems could thus act as a positive feedback mechanism accelerating the global warming effect.
and forest ecosystems becomes ever more important. We need to establish a baseline so we can say how these forests functioned before we changed the climate Chambers said.
The cascade of ecological cause and effect is described by Tyler Coverdale and colleagues at Brown University in a paper published online this month in ESA's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
People who live near the marshes complain about the die off because it's not nice to look at said Coverdale.
but it is also a substantial loss of a valuable ecological resource. When fishermen hook too many predatory fishes out of the marsh's ecosystem the fishes'prey go on fruitfully multiplying unchecked.
The reverberations down the food chain can result in uncomfortable environmental changes for human residents. The problem for Cape cod is the native purple marsh crab (Sesarma reticulatum)
when a new awareness of the ecological and economic benefits of the marsh brought strict limitations on further development.
Alone the ditches did not fundamentally alter the marsh ecosystem. The species that colonized the ditches were already present in the marsh;
As a fishing enthusiast himself Coverdale does not see ecologists and fishermen as opposing forces.
The above story is provided based on materials by Ecological Society of America. The original article was written by Liza Lester.
The Dartmouth-led study published in the January issue of the journal Population Ecology confirmed for the first time that the abundance of a certain animal species--in this case the southern pine beetle--fluctuates innately between extremes with no middle ground.
By learning what factors control those tipping points impacts on ecosystems can be averted through monitoring and occasional intervention strategies.
but ecosystems become overloaded because of inadequate practices of handling ensures the scientist. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United nations (FAO) nowadays the largest number of goats can be found in the poorest of countries and especially those
For example the uncontrolled growth of the cashmere goat to increase production of its prized wool has meant in some cases that the ecosystems have become overloaded.
and in controlling exotic vegetation plagues that could put ecosystems at risk. We wanted to perform a global review taking into account very different regions of the world from the Himalayan peaks to tropical areas
Over less than a decade the rates of land and water grabbing have increased dramatically said Paolo D'Odorico Ernest H. Ern Professor of Environmental sciences in the University of Virginia's College of Arts
D'Odorico said that in most cases where land has been acquired there is a switch from natural ecosystems--such as forests
These results reveal that we do not know ye the behavior of those ecosystems that we aim to preserve.
The study by Chloe Inskip and her colleagues from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in Kent UK and Wildteam Bangladesh is the first to use participatory risk mapping (PRM)
Large-scale droughts can lead to sustained releases of carbon dioxide from decaying wood affecting ecosystems and Earth's carbon cycle.
Saatchi said such megadroughts can have long-lasting effects on rainforest ecosystems. Our results suggest that
This may alter the structure and function of Amazonian rainforest ecosystems. The team found that the area affected by the 2005 drought was much larger than scientists had predicted previously.
and analyzes its likely effects on human health water energy transportation agriculture forests ecosystems and biodiversity.
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia was a lead convening author of the Midwest chapter.
Kristin Powell a graduate student in the lab of Tiffany Knight associate professor of biology and director of the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Sciences together with consulting ecologist Jon Chase think they've located one
To test for scale dependence in the field they then chose three study sites from very different ecosystems across the United states each straddling an invasion front:
because you've found every species that's present in that ecosystem type Knight says. At an invaded site you reach that plateau later
Invasive plants have negative impacts on plant communities at smaller scales--the scales that are crucial for necessary ecosystem services like water management and nutrient cycling.
and increase the abundances of these native species so that they can contribute to critical ecosystem services
These findings may be a bellwether of the radical changes in ecosystem stability that could result from anticipated future increases in extreme events.
They chose this simple ecosystem because it is composed of just three herbivores in the winter--the wild Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) the Svalbard rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta hyperborea)
Svalbard's relatively simple ecosystem which lacks specialist predators combined with large weather fluctuations from year to year
and strong climate signals in the population dynamics of herbivores are the likely explanations for how such clear climate effects can be observed at the ecosystem level.
and extreme events may have important implications for ecosystem functioning and stability in the circumpolar Arctic in the future.
The question says UCSB Bren School of Environmental science & Management Professor and LCA expert Roland Geyer is
. and published in the Dec 26 issue of the journal Environmental science & Technology showed photovoltaics (PV) to be much more efficient than biomass at turning sunlight into energy to fuel a car.
because it gives scientists a peek inside the black box of ecological change. The work may also help predict effects on important agricultural crops which depend on flowering to produce fruit.
which climate change has accelerated explains Stan Temple a co-author of the study and an emeritus UW-Madison professor of wildlife ecology.
Importantly the results give scientists a peek into the subtleties of ecological change in response to climate change.
A second data set of flowering times for 23 species in southern Wisconsin was compiled by Leopold a renowned wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin and author of A Sand County Almanac.
The results of the study that focused on tigers were published in Ecology and Evolution and the results from the study that tracked leopards were published in Diversity and Distributions.
and lead author of the Ecology and Evolution paper. These habitats and corridors in India are threatened by infrastructural developments
's Conservation Ecology Center. The other authors are Thomas Wood in the Department of Environmental science and Policy at George Mason University and H. S. Panwar former director of Project Tiger India and Wildlife Institute
of India. The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute plays a key role in the Smithsonian's global efforts to understand
The team's next steps will be to process data to understand more about climate change impacts on this high elevation ecosystem
and U s. Geological Survey satellite program is resulting in for the first time the ability to tease out the small events that can cause big changes in an ecosystem.
and severe storms said Lewis interim director of CU's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental sciences.
as a result of the beetle epidemic said Lewis also a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
while having the smallest effect possible on downstream ecosystems. This study shows that at least in some areas it is possible to remove a large part of the tree biomass from a watershed with a very minimal effect on the stream ecosystem he said.
Understory vegetation left intact after beetle outbreaks gains an ecological advantage in terms of survival and growth since small trees no longer have to compete with large trees
and have more access to light water and nutrients said Mccutchan. Research by study co-author and former CU undergraduate Rachel Ertz showed concentrations of nitrate in the needles of small pines that survived beetle infestations were higher than those in healthy trees outside
and Gene Likens of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook N y. The severe pine beetle epidemic in Colorado
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences.
This is shown by a current study conducted by the Landau-based Institute of Environmental sciences of the University of Koblenz-Landau.
Current practice unsuitableour study shows that current methods of sampling for the investigation of insecticides in water resources are unsuitable declares Ralf Schulz of the Institute of Environmental sciences in Landau.
which according to previous studies of the Institute of Environmental sciences in Landau are capable of reducing pesticide exposure up to 70 per cent.
The list of ecological political and ethical arguments for why we should safeguard biodiversity is long and all the arguments are sound.
Encouraging ecologists to think bigthis study has shown that the time has come to think big Frode à degaard says.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences.
Now researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular biology and Applied Ecology IME in MÃ nster have located the tobacco plant's very own fountain of youth
However a forest contributes more ecosystem services than timber production such as biological diversity carbon storage and berries.
Many people have suggested that high diversity of tree species has a favorable impact on processes in the ecosystem
or ecosystem service at a time says Lars Gamfeldt from University of Gothenburg who directed the new study.
By examining the role played by the occurrence of diverse tree species for six different ecosystem services (tree growth carbon storage berry production food for wildlife occurrence of dead wood
The study also investigated the relationship between the various ecosystem services. For example high tree growth appears to be negatively related to the production of both berries and food for wildlife and to the occurrence of dead wood.
Sometimes you have to consider trade-offs between different ecosystem services says Jon Moen from Ume㥠University.
and nature conservation stand to gain by promoting a greater variety of tree types thereby providing more diverse ecosystem services says Jan Bengtsson from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
The findings were published January 8 in Restoration Ecology the peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Ecological Restoration.
and early 1900s contends Marc Abrams professor of forest ecology and physiology. Moreover Abrams noted
in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. Over the last 50 years most environmental science has focused on the impact of climate change.
In some systems however climate change impacts have not been as profound as in others. This includes the forest composition of the eastern U s. To determine how forest tree species have responded to changes in disturbance regimes temperature
Many ecological phenomena combine to direct vegetation trends over time with climate and disturbance playing prominent roles said Nowacki who received his Ph d under Abrams.
and give ecologists a glimpse into what climate change could mean for the marsh's future.
That's important information for ecologists and wildlife officials who manage the marsh as well as for future efforts to build humanmade salt marshes.
It's really the engineer of its ecosystem. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by San diego State university.
#How beavers have affected ecosystem at Voyageurs National Parkfelling trees building dams and creating ponds--beavers have a unique ability to alter the landscape in ways that are beneficial to other organisms according to South dakota State university professor Carol Johnston of the natural resource management department.
That's why they are known as a keystone species. The ecologist received a two-year National Science Foundation grant for more than $143000 to compile a book based on her previous NSF-funded research on how beavers have affected the ecosystem at Voyageurs national park near
and biofuels too by providing information for land managers farmers conservationists and policy makers as the bioenergy industry ramps up particularly in Wisconsin and the central U s as bioenergy production demand increases we should pay attention to the ecological consequences
Environmental flows for ecosystem services in rivers natural and novellast spring the Colorado river reached its delta for the first time in 16 years flowing into Pacific ocean at the Gulf of california after wetting 70 miles of long-dry channels through the Sonoran Desert.
Now ecologists wait to see how the short drink of water will affect the parched landscape.
Environmental flows for natural hybrid and novel riverine ecosystems in a changing worldthere are two primary ways to achieve environmental flows of water necessary to sustain river ecosystems write Mike Acreman
of the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and colleagues in a review published this month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment:
controlled releases like the recent experiment on the Colorado that are designed with specific objectives for ecology
and ecosystem services in mind and hands-off policies that minimize or reverse alterations to the natural flow of the river.
For rivers like the Colorado already much altered and bearing heavy demands from many different user groups a designer approach is more practical than attempting to return the river closer to its natural pre-development state say the authors.
Designers work to create a functional ecosystem or support ecosystem services under current conditions rather than recreate a historical ecosystem.
Achieving ecological objectives requires planning beyond minimum flows and indicator species to encompass seasonal floods
and slack flows and a holistic look at the plants fish fungi birds and other life inhabiting the river its banks and its marshes.
when ecosystems can capitalize on the flow lest water releases do more harm than good.
and get the maximum value from ecosystem services river systems need to fluctuate in natural rhythms of volume velocity
As nonnative species land development and climate change remodel river ecosystems it is no longer easy to define what is natural for river systems.
But heavily used regulated and altered rivers have ecological value. The future of freshwater biodiversity is linked inextricably to land
The above story is provided based on materials by Ecological Society of America. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
If they can find ways to adapt as it appears these coral have they can continue to survive as part of an invaluable piece of this world's intricate ecological puzzle.
and entire ecosystems can be threatened. But in our research we turn the argument on its head
At the present time humankind utilises 40 per cent of the production from land-based ecosystems
whereas only 1 per cent of the seas'ecosystems are utilised currently. Unfortunately this percentage at present consists largely of ruthless exploitation;
To estimate the additional carbon emissions at the forest edges the UFZ scientists developed a new approach that integrates the results from remote sensing ecology and forest modelling.
However this effect should urgently be taken into account the ecologist demands. The UFZ scientists'results are also interesting for practical aspects in climate protection policy.
For the first time this examination shows a methodical way in which ecological effects in small areas can be used for large-scale environmental assessments.
Additionally Prof Guan has published recently research in Environmental science & Technology which shows China's growing economy has caused also serious stresses on the country's freshwater both in terms of consumption and pollution.
and other tiny creatures to the structure of grasslands and the valuable ecosystem services they provide.
During a 3-year study researchers found that removing these small animals from the soil of a replicated Scottish sheep meadow altered the plant species that grew in the ecosystem reduced overall productivity
The results reflect the long-term ecological impacts of land use changes such as the conversion of forests to agricultural land researchers say.
and carbon to cycle in ecosystems but there was little evidence that human-induced loss of these animals has effects at the level of the whole ecosystem on services such as agricultural yield said Mark Bradford an Associate professor at the Yale
But when we ran it out through 500 days we did actually find huge changes in the ecosystem processes including productivity of the plants Bradford says.
These findings emphasize how interconnected the belowground and aboveground components of ecosystems are and that different ecosystem processes respond in different ways to the management of grasslands said Stephen Wood'11 M. E. Sc. a doctoral student at Columbia University
and and co-author of the study. In this case the loss of soil animal diversity eventually changed the dominant plant species in the meadow ecosystems
and then in turn the productivity of these grasslands and how they responded to agricultural management Bradford said.
Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science and University of Vermont have developed a new tool to overcome a major challenge of predicting how organisms may respond to climate change.
migrate adapt or go extinct said lead author Matt Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Appalachian Laboratory.
The study Ecological genomics meets community-level modeling of biodiversity: mapping the genomic landscape of current and future environmental adaptation was published by Matthew Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science and Steven Keller of the University of Vermont.
It appeared in the October 1 issue of Ecology Letters. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Maryland Center for Environmental science.
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