BACKGROUND Coastal landscapes are being transformed as a consequence of the increasing demand for infrastructures to sustain residential, commercial and tourist activities. Thus, intertidal and shallow marine habitats are largely being replaced by a variety of artificial substrata (e.g. breakwaters, seawalls, jetties). Understanding the ecological functioning of these artificial habitats is key...

24 25 It has been suggested that climate change will lead to increased environmental 26 fluctuations, which will undoubtedly have evolutionary consequences for all biota. For 27 instance, fluctuations can directly increase the risk of invasions of alien species into 28 new areas, as these species have repeatedly been proposed to benefit from disturbances. 29 At the same time increased environme...

The ability to achieve ecological sustainability and the sustainable development of marine and estuarine ecosystems constitutes a complex major challenge and depends on many driving forces, often conflicting with each other. In particular, there are three major drivers: (a) the search for human well-being, health and safety, (b) the maintenance of ecological sustainability and environmental equ...

In a work of Just, Miller, Scheepers and Szeptycki it was asked whether certain diagonalization properties for sequences of open covers are provably closed under taking finite or countable unions. In a recent work, Scheepers proved that one of the properties in question is closed under taking countable unions. After surveying the known results, we show that none of the remaining classes is prov...

Biological legacies left by natural disturbances provide ecological functions throughout forest stand development, but their influences on processes of ecological succession are not completely understood. We investigated the successional role of one type of biological legacy: remnant old-growth trees persisting in mature Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas-fir) forests in the U.S. Pacific Northwest....

BACKGROUND The term resilience describes stress-response patterns of subjects across scientific disciplines. In ecology, advances have been made to clearly distinguish resilience definitions based on underlying mechanistic assumptions. Engineering resilience (rebound) is used for describing the ability of subjects to recover from adverse conditions (disturbances), and is the rate of recovery. I...

This paper is a work-in-progress account of ideas and propositions about resilience in socialecological systems. It articulates our understanding of how these complex systems change and what determines their ability to absorb disturbances in either their ecological or their social domains. We call them “propositions” because, although they are useful in helping us understand and compare differe...

It is widely held that humankind's destructive tendencies when exploiting natural resources leads to irreparable harm to the environment. Yet, this thinking runs counter to evidence that many ecological systems damaged by severe natural environmental disturbances (e.g., hurricanes) can restore themselves via processes of natural recovery. The emerging field of restoration ecology is capitalizin...