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The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of scientists founded in 1915 to:
- promote ecological science by improving communication among ecologists;
- raise the public’s level of awareness of the importance of ecological science;
- increase the resources available for the conduct of ecological science; and
- ensure the appropriate use of ecological science in environmental decision making by enhancing communication between the ecological community and policy-makers.
Ecology is the scientific discipline that is concerned with the relationships between organisms and their past, present, and future environments. These relationships include physiological responses of individuals, structure and dynamics of populations, interactions among species, organization of biological communities, and processing of energy and matter in ecosystems.
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Displaying 26 - 30 of 47Two decades of destruction in Southeast Asia's peat swamp forests
We used landâcover maps and active fire detection based on satellite imagery to evaluate the rates and spatial distribution of peatland deforestation in Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2010. Over this time period, the proportion of forest cover in the peatlands of Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo fell from 77% to 36%. After two decades of extensive deforestation (31 000 km²; 4.9% yrâ»Â¹) strongly associated with fire activity, Sumatra has been left with just 28% of its historical forested peatlands.
Nature reserves as catalysts for landscape change
Scientists have called repeatedly for a broader conservation agenda that emphasizes not only protected areas but also the landscapes in which those areas are embedded. We describe key advances in the science and practice of engaging private landowners in biodiversity conservation and propose a conceptual model for integrating conservation management on reserves and privately owned lands. The overall goal of our model is to blur the distinction between land management on reserves and the surrounding landscapes in a way that fosters widespread implementation of conservation practices.
Recognizing tradeâoffs in multiâobjective land management
As natural resource management and conservation goals expand and evolve, practitioners and policy makers are increasingly seeking options that optimize benefits among multiple, often contradictory objectives. Here, we describe a simple approach for quantifying the consequences of alternative management options in terms of benefits and tradeâoffs among multiple objectives.
alternative approach for quantifying climate regulation by ecosystems
Ecosystems provide multiple benefits to people, including climate regulation. Previous efforts to quantify this ecosystem service have been either largely conceptual or based on complex atmospheric models. Here, we review previous research on this topic and propose a new and simple analytical approach for estimating the physical regulation of climate by ecosystems. The proposed metric estimates how landâcover change affects the loading of heat and moisture into the atmosphere, while also accounting for the relative contribution of windâtransported heat and moisture.
Spider, bee, and bird communities in cities are shaped by environmental control and high stochasticity
Spatially organized distribution patterns of species and communities are shaped by both autogenic processes (neutral mechanism theory) and exogenous processes (niche theory). In the latter, environmental variables that are themselves spatially organized induce spatial structure in the response variables. The relative importance of these processes has not yet been investigated in urban habitats.