Latest Systems ecology Stories

A team from the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) are focusing their research on the study of the ecology of rivers. The person in charge is Mr Jesús Pozo. For more than twenty years this team has been trying to identify links between the ecology and functioning of rivers and the surrounding terrestrial environment because, when all is said and done, rivers are like the excretory apparatus of the continents, just like the kidney is to...

Human activity is increasing the supply of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to stream systems all over the world. The conventional wisdom"”bolstered by earlier research"”has held that these additional nutrients cause an increase in production all along the food chain, from the tiniest organisms up to the largest predators. A long-term, ecosystem-scale study by a team of University of Georgia researchers, however, has thrown this assumption into question.The researchers"”a...

A new UN report claims that by investing billions into saving biodiversity and ecosystems, groups could stand to earn trillions.The report showed that world leaders must come together to ensure the safety of threatened species and ecosystems, or they will have to pay the price later."Recognizing and rewarding the value delivered to society by the natural environment must become a policy priority," said Pavan Sukhdev, lead author of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)...

Researchers are building the environmental equivalent of the ASX200 as a means of monitoring the health of Australian marine ecosystems.The state of an ecosystem can be understood by measuring the right ecological characteristics, just as the ASX200 index shows the state of the Australian stock market by following 200 selected stocks.CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship scientist Dr Keith Hayes, one of the leaders of the project, says the difficult part is selecting which characteristics to...

Economists, assigning values to 'ecosystem services,' report staggering totals and rates of return on investmentExperts concluding the global DIVERSITAS biodiversity conference today in Cape Town described preliminary research revealing jaw-dropping dollar values of the "ecosystem services" of biomes like forests and coral reefs "“ including food, pollution treatment and climate regulation.Undertaken to help societies make better-informed choices, the economic research shows a single...

NOAA and Norwegian researchers recently completed a comparative analysis of marine ecosystems in the North Atlantic and North Pacific to see what factors support fisheries production, leading to new insights that could improve fishery management plans and the ecosystems.Known as MENU, for Marine Ecosystems of Norway and the U.S., the collaborative project involved scientists at the NOAA Fisheries Service's Northeast Fisheries Science Center and Alaska Fisheries Science Center and colleagues...

U.S. scientists say human impacts and environmental factors are changing the northwest Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center shows fish in U.S. waters from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border have moved away from their traditional, long-time habitats during the past four decades because of fundamental changes in the regional ecosystem. NOAA's 2009 Ecosystem Status Report also notes the need to manage the...

Fish in U.S. waters from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border have moved away from their traditional, long-time habitats over the past four decades because of fundamental changes in the regional ecosystem, according to a new report by NOAA researchers.The 2009 Ecosystem Status Report also points out the need to manage the waters off the northeastern coast of the United States as a whole rather than as a series of separate and unrelated components.Known as the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf...

Research co-authored by Bournemouth University (BU) Professor Adrian Newton and published in the leading journal Science this week shows that ecological restoration in areas of environmental degradation can help reverse global biodiversity losses, as well as promoting recovery of ecosystem services.However the research also showed that measures of biodiversity and ecosystem services are higher in pristine land, freshwater and marine systems than in restored systems.Examples of ecosystem...

 A business is more likely to "over-comply" with environmental regulations if its senior management believes in protecting the environment and that it makes financial sense in the long term, according to a new study by an economist at Oregon State University.The study, published online in the Journal of Environmental Management and accepted for publication in its print version, examined why some firms violate environmental regulatory standards while others exceed them. It used...