Terrestrial ecosystems in changing environments

Description

Predicting how terrestrial ecosystems might respond in the future to large-scale human-generated changes is a major challenge for ecologists. In Terrestrial Ecosystems in Changing Environments, Herman H. Shugart describes the fundamental ecological concepts, theoretical developments, and quantitative analyses involved in understanding the responses of natural systems to change. The key ecological concepts described include the ecosystem paradigm, niche theory, vegetation/climate relationships, landscape ecology and ecological modeling. A variety of ecological models are presented, and their applications in predicting responses to change are considered. The challenge of producing ecological models capable of predicting long-term and large-area ecosystem dynamics is reviewed and several examples are provided. Finally, some of the exciting new findings regarding terrestrial landscapes and their feedback with their climatic setting are discussed in the context of human land use and global change. Annotation Published: April 2014. Changes in the environment are omnipresent; how terrestrial ecosystems respond to the changes and what role the ecosystems play in the processes of environmental change are among the most important questions that ecologists have tried to solve in the past few decades. Shugart describes fundamental ecological principles across a wide area of spatial-temporal scales and ecological modeling approaches involved in solving ecological puzzles. Truly believing that ecology has progressed from the descriptive to the quantitative and is able "to reconstruct the response of terrestrial ecosystems to past change and to predict responses to future changes," he focuses on various ecological models and how these models quantitatively illustrate ecological principles and predict responses of ecological systems. He specially emphasizes the importance of spatial-temporal scales imbedded in ecological concepts and their impacts on ecological predictions. The book is well written and explains the concepts and models with vivid examples and few equations which many students and ecologists with limited mathematics backgrounds will appreciate. Graduates; faculty. P. P. Mou; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University--Choice Review.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Cambridge studies in ecology