Plant functional traits are viewed as key to predicting important ecosystem and community properties across resource gradients within and among biogeographic regions. Vegetation dynamics and ecosystem processes, such as aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), are increasingly being modeled as a function of the quantitative traits of species, which are used as proxies for photosynthetic rat...

INTRODUCTION Forest soils are entities within themselves, selforganized and highly resilient over time. The transfer of energy bound in carbon (C) molecules drives the organization and functions of this biological system (Fisher and Binkley, 2000; Paul and Clark, 1996). Photosynthetic organisms reduce atmospheric C and store energy from solar radiation in the formation of complex C molecules. T...

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In this paper we consider a microscopic model of a simple ecosystem. The basic ingredients of this model are individuals, and both the phenotypic and genotypic levels are taken in account. The model is based on a long range cellular automaton (CA); introducing simple interactions between the individuals, we get some of the complex collective behaviors observed in a real ecosystem. Since our fit...

This paper updates a general framework for the study of social-ecological systems that was initially proposed in “A Diagnostic Approach for Going Beyond Panaceas” (Ostrom 2007). This SES framework has inspired much of the specific research reported on elsewhere in this special issue. The initial changes introduced in this paper have emerged from continuing interactions among a growing network o...

This chapter reviews, from a quantitative perspective, estimates and models of planktonic and benthic respiration in lakes, as derived from bottle and core incubations. Using data gleaned from the literature, empiricalmodels of planktonic andbenthic respiration are presented inwhich respiration is shown todepend primarily on lake trophic conditions and, secondarily, on temperature and other fac...

This paper links development-induced urbanization strategies to changes in land use and associated impacts on rural communities and agro-ecosystems in a selected rural area of China. Energy, monetary and human time variables as well as information on environmental pressures, have been combined to obtain indicators that are useful to compare the metabolism of different patterns of land use from ...

As nonindigenous species continue to displace native species and disrupt ecosystems, understanding the degree to which native species richness affects the vulnerability of communities to nonindigenous species invasions has grown in importance. Native and exotic species diversity are often positively correlated in large-scale observational studies, but negatively correlated in small-scale experi...

Previously we are discussing the main systems of the water quality classification [1] that based on the Ecosystem model of [2]. The major point of this approach is the amplitude of the water variables that covered of all possible parameters for surface and technical waters, as well as the amplitude of variables in which the aquatic ecosystem can survive. Considering that water quality assessmen...