The evolution of Mediterranean landscapes during the Holocene has been increasingly governed by the complex interactions of water and human land use. Different land-use practices change the amount of water flowing across the surface and infiltrating the soil, and change water's ability to move surface sediments. Conversely, water amplifies the impacts of human land use and extends the ecologica...

The role of niche specialization and narrowing in the evolution and extinction of the ichthyosaurs has been widely discussed in the literature. However, previous studies have concentrated on a qualitative discussion of these variables only. Here, we use the recently developed approach of quantitative ecospace modelling to provide a high-resolution quantitative examination of the changes in diet...

Energy flow drives the complex systems to evolve. The allometric scaling as the universal energy flow pattern has been found in different scales of ecological systems. It reflects the general power law relationship between flow and store. The underlying mechanisms of energy flow patterns are explained as the branching transportation networks which can be regarded as the result of systematic opt...

The processes in natural systems and the patterns that result from them occur in ecological space and time. To study natural systems and to understand the functional processes that are related to them, we need to identify the relevant spatial and temporal scales at which these occur. While the spatial and temporal dimensions of ecological phenomena have always been inherent in the conceptual fr...

Two of the key objectives of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) are: 1) to protect and enhance the status of aquatic ecosystems (and terrestrial ecosystems and wetlands directly dependent on aquatic ecosystems) and 2) to provide for sufficient supply of good quality surface water and groundwater as needed for sustainable, balanced and equitable water use. These requirements, together ...