The 21 April issue of Science magazine has a nice special feature on
Ecosystem Earth with four review articles and some related items. If you
don't have free access to the full articles, you can probably get copies
from the authors.
Introduction to special issue
Science 21 Apr 2017:
Ecosystem Earth
1. Sacha Vignieri,
2. Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
An ecosystem consists of communities of interacting species and the
physical environment on which they depend. Although it is well accepted
that Earth consists of many different ecosystems, human societies much
less readily recognize that Earth itself is an ecosystem, dependent on
interacting species and consisting of finite resources. As the human
population has grown and increasingly dominated available resources,
“ecosystem Earth” has begun to show increasing signs of stress. Loss of
biodiversity, environmental degradation, and conflict over resources
among the dominant species are typical signs that a biological system is
nearing a state change, which could range from collapse of the dominant
species, to development of alternative biological communities, to
collapse of the entire system. In this special issue, we identify our
impacts on ecosystem Earth, seek to understand the barriers to change,
and explore potential solutions. Decades of research on ecosystem
dynamics can help to guide our thinking about a sustainable future.
Bottom-up reductions in human population growth and resource
consumption, changes to how we think about our place in the system, and
a willingness to prioritize persistence of the other species within our
biological community will lead to a healthier planetary ecosystem. It is
essential that humanity begins to better appreciate our role as just one
part of a large and interdependent biological community. Our ability to
dominate the planet's resources makes us directly responsible for
determining the future of the ecosystem on which we, and all other forms
of life, depend.
--
Dr. David W. Inouye
Professor Emeritus
Department of Biology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-4415
ino...@umd.edu
Principal Investigator
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory
PO Box 519
Crested Butte, CO 81224
