We use bird distributions in non-forested coastal wetlands of the Great Lakes to illustrate a new, conceptually explicit method for developing biotic indicators. The procedure applies a probabilistic framework to derive an index that best “fits” an observed assemblage of species, based on preliminary information about species’ responses to human environmental disturbance. Among 215 coastal wetl...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate potential statistical relationships between black tea consumption and key health indicators in the world. The research question is: Does tea consumption is correlated with one or more epidemiological indicators? DESIGN Ecological study using a systematic data-mining approach in which the unit of the analysis is a population of one country. ...

The challenges of managing natural resources of protected areas not only come from the inside of the protected boundaries, but also from the surrounding territories because most of protected lands are open systems that face threats from adjacent areas. The lands of such open systems alter water quality and flow regimes, increase the likelihood of invasive plant and animal range expansions, redu...

In this study, we assessed the effect of a diverse ownership structure with different management strategies within and between owner categories in long-term projections of economic, ecological and social forest sustainability indicators, representing important ecosystem services, for two contrasting Swedish municipalities. This was done by comparing two scenarios: one where the diversity of man...

A methodology for assessing the sustainability of hydrogen production using solid fuels is introduced, in which three sustainability dimensions (ecological, sociological and technological) are considered along with ten indicators for each dimension. Values for each indicator are assigned on a 10-point scale based on a high of 1 and a low of 0, depending on the characteristic of the criteria ass...

The recent decline in the condition of coral reef communities worldwide has fueled the need to develop innovative assessment tools to document coral abundance and distribution rapidly and effectively. While most monitoring programs rely primarily on data collected in situ by trained divers, digital photographs and video are used increasingly to extract ecological indicators, provide a permanent...

The Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (ANZECC Guidelines) provide default national guideline values for a wide range of indicators of relevance to the protection of the ecological condition of natural waters. However, the ANZECC Guidelines also place a strong emphasis on the need to develop more locally relevant guidelines. Using a structured framework, th...

Acknowledging ecological interactions, such as predation, is key to an ecosystem approach to fisheries. Trophodynamic indicators are needed to measure the strength of the interactions between the different living components, and of structural ecosystem changes resulting from exploitation. We review trophodynamic indicators derived from models, as well as from emergent patterns such as trophic c...