As we know, oceans cover 71% of earths surface and contain roughly 99% of living space on the planet. Consequently, humanity as a race is much more dependent on them than many realize. We take an incomprehensible amount of resources from the world's oceans, pervert their various ecological services for human interests, and in return, offer nothing back … [Read more...]
Is Adaptive Management the Key to Effective Water Management Policy?
With climate change and global warming becoming an ever more apparent threat to environmental and ecological management systems institutions have in place, adaptive management may now be more relevant than ever. As temperatures and uncertainties continue to increase due to unstable climate and socio-economic strife, natural resources have begun to dwindle, decrease in quality, … [Read more...]
Reflections: Why Placing Value on Biodiversity is a Necessary Evil
As the Cardinale paper discusses, biodiversity has now become one of the hottest topics in the scientific field. Recent decades of research and focus on the topic has provided substantial information as to how healthy diversity within an ecosystem ultimately benefits the overall environment's functioning, the residents within it, and even ecosystems that lie adjacent or in … [Read more...]
Ecological Concepts: Species-Area Relationships
Species-Area relationships can be defined as the belief or approach that any number of biological species observed within any area, ecosystem,or region indicates a positive function of that area. These relationships are typically depicted on richness graphs that display the concentrations of species within a certain region across selected parameters. This process can also be … [Read more...]
Ecological Concepts: Equilibrium and Non-equilibrium
Equilibrium and non-equilibrium concepts refers to the ideas and theories surrounding the interactions, regulation, and balances between various organisms within nature. There are both equilibrium and non-equilibrium states of nature. Non-equilibrium states of nature for example can be defined as a situation in where competitive exclusion is prevented in an ecological community … [Read more...]