Bücher der Reihe Ecological Studies

Landscape pattern is generated by a variety of processes, including disturbances. The complex relationship between landscape pattern and disturbance is the subject of this book. Important features include: hypotheses about the spread of disturbance and the effects of scale changes in landscape studies;

Mediterranean-type ecosystems have provided ecologists with some of the most scientifically-rewarding opportunities to formulate and evaluate hypotheses about large and small-scale ecological phenomena.

The boreal forests of Canada are no more immune to man's intervention than the tropical rain forests of Africa, and the day is rapidly approaching when natural forest ecosystems, undisturbed by man, will be found only as remnants in national parks and other protected areas.

No other disjunct pieces of land present such striking similarities as the widely sepa 1 rated regions with a mediterranean type of climate, that is, the territories fringing the Mediterranean Sea, California, Central Chile and the southernmost strips of South Mrica and Australia.

Exploring mediterranean-type ecosystems - the Mediterranean Basin, California, Chile, Australia, and South Africa - this volume addresses the question whether biological diversity plays a significant role in the functioning of natural ecosystems, and to what extent that diversity can be reduced without causing system malfunction.

Although biologists have directed much attention to estimating the extent and causes of species losses, the consequences for ecosystem functioning have been little studied.

these include discussion and evaluation of methods for measuring productivity and regional production, current findings on tropical productivity, and models of primary productivity.

A challenging problem for them is to understand the differences between glycophytes, plants growing in a non-saline environment and halophytes, plants which normally grow in salt marshes, in sea water or in saline soils.

The term Fennoscandia is used to denote Finland and the Scandinavian peninsula, which comprises Norway and Sweden and sometimes also neigh bouring districts of the USSR.

I have thus written for the pleasure derived from depicting, perhaps at times as something of an impressionist, a fascinating biotic region, a captivating land, a collection of interesting ecological problems, environmental relationships to be discerned in part, perhaps understood to some small degree, perhaps one day to be modeled mathematically.

This book provides a unique perspective on the destruction - both natural and human-caused - of coral reef ecosystems. Reconstructing the ecological history of coral reefs, the authors evaluate whether recent dramatic changes are novel events or part of a long-term trend or cycle.

The second is political: be cause of the precarious status of the sea otter population in coastal California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced, in June 1984, a proposal to establish a new population of sea otters at San Nicolas Island, off southern California.

Since the late 1960s the Indonesian state of East Kalimantan has witnessed a marked increase in the impact of human activities chiefly commercial logging and agricultural exploitation.

However, what we believe to be the more significant concepts concerning the processes by which alkalinity may be developed in acid soil solutions, and by which acid deposition may contrib ute to the loss of this alkalinity, were the result of this collaboration.

Aerial photography has revealed the striking, widespread phenomenon of repeating patterns of vegetation in more arid areas of the world. Various chapters discuss the role of modeling in answering questions about the origins and complex processes of banded landscapes.

The public's attitude toward air pollution in the United States evolved substantially during the 1960s. This concern was heightened by press reports of high elevation spruce-fir forest declines in the Adirondack and Appalachian Mountains and the decline and death of sugar maples in the northeastern United States and Canada.

Five years of research carried out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Services' Northern Global Change Program, contributing to our understanding of the effects of multiples stresses on forest ecosystems over multiple spatial and temporal scales.

In the early 1980s there were several published reports of recent, unexplained increases in mortality of red spruce in the Adirondack Mountains and the northern Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.

The global change program will call for coordinated measure ments on a global scale of those interactive physical and biological pro cesses that regulate the earth system. The task, however, is not only to document global change, which will be an enormous job, but also to understand the significance of these changes to the biosphere.

Sources and sinks of CO associated with land use can be 2 significant determinants of the rate and magnitude of atmospheric CO change. Thus, land-use change and associated biological 2 processes become important elements in assessments of future atmospheric CO 2 increase;

During the last decade, forest decline has become increasingly apparent. It covers transport and deposition of air pollutants, the direct effects of pollutants on above-ground plant parts, the responses of soil to acid rain, and the changing nutrient availability, and the accompanying effects on plant metabolism and growth.

Emissions of gaseous air pollutants have increased in the last years in spite of increased controls and concern for air quality.

Considerable efforts, however, are now being made in the Alps and other mountains of the globe to increase the high-altitude forested area through reforestation, to raise depressed timberlines, and to restore remaining protection forests using suit able silvicultural methods to their full protective value.

In a very real sense, much of North American physiological plant ecol ogy began in the Basin and Range and has been researched there over the last four decades.

Ecologists are increasingly being drawn into the task of addressing problems of environmental degradation. In doing so, the robustness of the science becomes increasingly important, and the problem of extrapolating the results of research conducted within what is usually a relatively limited geographical scope is increasingly highlighted.

REMMERT Small populations are very often discussed, but there seems to be no general overview touching all the self-evident but norma,lly simply neglected problems connected with small populations.

For long-term studies, the holological approach has special advantages, since the general patterns and tentative hypotheses that are first worked out help direct attention to the components of the system which need to be studied in greater detail.

The comparative study of mediterranean type ecosystems has gained considerable momentum during the past two decades. Naveh (l967) also did comparative studies focusing on grassland types that occur in the mediterranean climatic zones of Califor nia and IsraeL About this same time, independent studies by Mooney and Dunn (1970 a,b) and Mooney et al.

It is the policy of the federal Canadian Forestry Service to sponsor research initiatives from the private sector that are judged to be pertinent to its mandate and offer particular promise towards the optimal management of Canadian forest resources.

But each specific, quantitative case study, and each research area conserved (with additional hard work) for further study by future generations, fits into Jenny's coherent world view.