scholarly journals Trait-based approaches to conservation physiology: forecasting environmental change risks from the bottom up

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1596) ◽  
pp. 1615-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven L. Chown
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Vegetation Change ◽  
Net Primary Productivity ◽  
Trait Variation ◽  
Conservation Physiology ◽  
Physiological Variation ◽  
New Information ◽  
Safety Margins ◽  
Ecological Implications ◽  
Human Use

Trait-based approaches have long been a feature of physiology and of ecology. While the latter fields drifted apart in the twentieth century, they are converging owing at least partly to growing similarities in their trait-based approaches, which have much to offer conservation biology. The convergence of spatially explicit approaches to understanding trait variation and its ecological implications, such as encapsulated in community assembly and macrophysiology, provides a significant illustration of the similarity of these areas. Both adopt trait-based informatics approaches which are not only providing fundamental biological insights, but are also delivering new information on how environmental change is affecting diversity and how such change may perhaps be mitigated. Such trait-based conservation physiology is illustrated here for each of the major environmental change drivers, specifically: the consequences of overexploitation for body size and physiological variation; the impacts of vegetation change on thermal safety margins; the consequences of changing net primary productivity and human use thereof for physiological variation and ecosystem functioning; the impacts of rising temperatures on water loss in ectotherms; how hemisphere-related variation in traits may affect responses to changing rainfall regimes and pollution; and how trait-based approaches may enable interactions between climate change and biological invasions to be elucidated.

scholarly journals The response of Arctic vegetation and soils following an unusually severe tundra fire

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1624) ◽  
pp. 20120490 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Syndonia Bret-Harte ◽  
Michelle C. Mack ◽  
Gaius R. Shaver ◽  
Diane C. Huebner ◽  
Miriam Johnston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Nitrogen ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Vegetation Change ◽  
Nitrogen Availability ◽  
Net Primary Productivity ◽  
Plant Biomass ◽  
Vascular Plant ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Soil Nitrogen Availability ◽  
Tussock Tundra

Fire causes dramatic short-term changes in vegetation and ecosystem function, and may promote rapid vegetation change by creating recruitment opportunities. Climate warming likely will increase the frequency of wildfire in the Arctic, where it is not common now. In 2007, the unusually severe Anaktuvuk River fire burned 1039 km 2 of tundra on Alaska's North Slope. Four years later, we harvested plant biomass and soils across a gradient of burn severity, to assess recovery. In burned areas, above-ground net primary productivity of vascular plants equalled that in unburned areas, though total live biomass was less. Graminoid biomass had recovered to unburned levels, but shrubs had not. Virtually all vascular plant biomass had resprouted from surviving underground parts; no non-native species were seen. However, bryophytes were mostly disturbance-adapted species, and non-vascular biomass had recovered less than vascular plant biomass. Soil nitrogen availability did not differ between burned and unburned sites. Graminoids showed allocation changes consistent with nitrogen stress. These patterns are similar to those seen following other, smaller tundra fires. Soil nitrogen limitation and the persistence of resprouters will likely lead to recovery of mixed shrub–sedge tussock tundra, unless permafrost thaws, as climate warms, more extensively than has yet occurred.

Missing Links? Business History and Environmental Change

2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Berghoff ◽  
Mathias Mutz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Business History ◽  
Ecological Implications

AbstractBusiness and the natural environment, economy and ecology, are commonly perceived as being irreconcilable opposites. This article evaluates the variables of this opposition and asks for differentiated concepts from business and environmental history. In doing so it analyzes the existing literature in both subdisciplines and looks at why they have been relatively isolated from each other. The authors advocate approaches that integrate business and environmental history and take ecological implications of business as serious as the commercial implications of dealing with nature.

scholarly journals Pattern and process of vegetation change (succession) on two northern New Zealand island volcanoes

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 45-48
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Clarkson ◽  
Beverley R. Clarkson ◽  
James O. Juvik
Keyword(s):  
Vegetation Change ◽  
Light Availability ◽  
Patch Dynamics ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Vegetation Succession ◽  
Disturbance History ◽  
Pattern And Process ◽  
Island Species ◽  
New Information ◽  
Volcanic Islands

Pattern and process of vegetation change (succession) were compared on two northern North Island volcanoes: Whakaari (White Island) and Rangitoto Island where the endemic woody tree Metrosideros excelsa is the primary colonizer of raw volcanic substrates. Quantitative data from our previous publications (see References) and the references therein illustrate sequences of vegetation succession following significant volcanic eruptions. New information on Rangitoto Island M. excelsa patch dynamics and updated vascular species statistics for Whakaari have also been included. We also draw on supporting data from M. excelsa forest on the mainland and long-inactive volcanic islands in the Bay of Plenty, to provide a context for understanding the vegetation dynamics on Whakaari and Rangitoto Island. Species facilitation, light availability, humidity, substrate and disturbance history are all key determinants of vegetation succession across these volcanic landscapes.

Degradation Debates and Data Deficiencies: The Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania

Africa ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Brockington ◽  
Katherine Homewood
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Scale Change ◽  
Physical Data ◽  
Game Reserve ◽  
Human Use

AbstractThe Mkomazi Game Reserve is contested by people who wish to use its resources and by conservationists who have argued that the reserve should be set aside for wildlife. Underpinning the conservationist case is the argument that people are harmful to the reserve's environment. Former residents of the reserve, notably pastoralists, argue that human use of the reserve did not cause its degradation. The debate is characterised by a lack of data extraordinary in view of the assertions made. An earlier paper set out the contrasting views and defined the data that would be needed to test them. This paper assesses what data there are, and whether it is possible to evaluate the extent to which people caused environmental change at Mkomazi. Using physical data and comments about the environment made by observers it is argued that no firm conclusions can be drawn about small-scale change but that there are indications of large-scale resilience. As a result of this uncertainty the article goes on to consider the extent to which there can ever be clarity about environmental change at Mkomazi as a philosophical contention or as a researchable issue.

scholarly journals Functional roles and redundancy of demersal Barents Sea fish: Ecological implications of environmental change

PLoS ONE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. e0207451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Aune ◽  
Michaela M. Aschan ◽  
Michael Greenacre ◽  
Andrey V. Dolgov ◽  
Maria Fossheim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Barents Sea ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Ecological Implications ◽  
Sea Fish

scholarly journals Environmental Reconstructions in the Upper Tana region, Kenya

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Lazarus Kinyua Ngari
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Vegetation Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Livestock Grazing ◽  
Plant Succession ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
The Past

This article sets out to unravel aspects of environmental changes in the Upper Tana during the second millennium AD. This aspect has not been adequately addressed in the Upper Tana. This makes it clear that a lacuna exists in the study of communities of the Upper Tana and the way they interact with their environment in the past and present times. The objective of this article is to evaluate the relationship between human activities and environmental change in the Upper Tana from AD 1000 to 1950. It is hypothesized that the advent of iron technology and its attendant economic activities led to the depletion of indigenous forests and the general environmental degradation. The article has employed archaeological, ethnographic, oral and historical methodologies to gather data on vegetation change in the Upper Tana and other related regions.  The article, argues that livestock grazing, iron smelting, slush and burn agriculture, and the clearing of forests for housing are key contributors to vegetation change in the Upper Tana.  Results from oral reconstruction of the past vegetation of the area, and using the plant succession theory, shows that the lowland area of the Upper Tana is actually savanna with scattered trees probably inhabited by grazers. It is posited that the above factors, together with persistent droughts have altered the vegetation cover of the area.  What we have today is colonization of less desirable stunted growth. The theory advanced here is that the vegetation change has been a result of human activities.  Overwhelmingly, results the study that the researcher carried out, showed that the causes of these changes have been socio-economically associated with the expansion of agricultural communities into the area; rather than through climatic factors. Colonisation and other forces of modernistion have also contributed to the underlying problem. The article concludes that anthropogenetic factors have greatly contributed to environmental change in the upper Tana. Certainly, environmental change is a global phenomenon that has elicited research interests due to its negative impacts on human population. It is recommended that knowledge of environmental change in the past should be used to extrapolate modern environmental challenges affecting African ecosystems.

scholarly journals Avoiding Alzheimer’s disease: The important causative role of divalent copper ingestion

2019 ◽  
Vol 244 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J Brewer
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Copper Toxicity ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Causative Role ◽  
Divalent Copper ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Information

In this review, we point out that developed countries are undergoing an epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease, not shared by undeveloped countries. We also point out that this epidemic is new, developing during the 20th century. This suggests that an environmental change occurring in the 20th century in developed countries is causing the epidemic. The author hypothesizes that the environmental change causing the epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease is ingestion of divalent copper. The hypothesis is based on data indicating that food copper is primarily monovalent copper, and humans evolved safe ways of channeling monovalent copper, but not divalent copper. Humans were not exposed to divalent copper until the 20th century, due to the use of copper plumbing and supplement pills containing copper, and that exposure, which occurs in developed countries, does not occur in undeveloped countries. Data in support of the hypothesis show that tiny amounts of divalent copper added to drinking water of Alzheimer’s disease animal models greatly enhance Alzheimer’s disease, and ingestion of copper (which is always divalent copper)-containing supplement pills by humans is quite toxic to cognition. Impact statement The work described in this review is very important to scientists working on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) because it reveals a cause for the explosive epidemic of this disease. It is also important to the public because it provides a method to avoid this newly revealed cause, and thereby avoid AD. The field is advanced because this review reveals new information about the mechanism of AD pathogenesis, namely copper, and specifically divalent copper, toxicity is important. New information about divalent copper toxicity in the brain affecting cognition is revealed. The field is impacted strongly because, in view of the frustrations that have occurred in treatment developed, now most AD can be prevented. This means the suffering of the patient, the prolonged and difficult care required by caregivers, and the enormous expenditures for this one disease, can now be avoided.

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