Nitrogen remains a ubiquitous pollutant in surface and groundwater throughout the United States, despite 30 years of pollution control efforts. A detailed multicompartment N balance for the Central Arizona-Phoenix ecosystem is used to illustrate how an ecosystem-level approach can be used to develop improved N management strategies. The N balance is used to demonstrate how nitrate in pumped gro...

Over the past 10 years there has been increasing criticism of management decisions that are based on single-species approaches and a call for the implementation of ecosystem approaches. The major criticism of singlespecies models is that they cannot predict changes in community structure. Unfortunately, our experience in modeling the Bering Sea shows that these same criticisms can also be level...

The PNAS 100th Anniversary Special Feature on natural capital and ecosystem services highlights a range of opportunities and challenges to operationalize these concepts to strengthen environmental governance (1). However, the issue’s focus is largely on the role these concepts play in ex ante decisionmaking, and overlooks their role in informing courtroom liability suits for ex post environment...

Burrow-dwelling rodents are often considered ecosystem engineer species in arid environments. They create distinct habitat patches by building burrows: they move large amounts of soil, mix soil layers and change properties locally. Our aim was to explore the role Steppe Marmot as an shaping plant composition diversity steppes. First, we made a literature search gather information on engineering...

The possible dynamics of an ecosystem with three interconnected patches among which one population can migrate are investigated, paying attention to the consequences that possible disruption in the communicating paths can cause.

This paper describes a method for estimating surfaces from stereo images. A single pair of stereo images can yield surface reconstruction for only a small volume of space. Since the scene may be large, images are obtained dynamically using different camera configurations through the control of focus and camera vergence. For smooth objects, this results in the reconstruction of surface patches t...

The invasion of Spartina alterniflora significantly affected the local ecosystem of Western Pacific Ocean where Moerella iridescens lives. Five patches with different invasion stages of S. alterniflora were selected and the influence on distribution of M. iridescens was studied on the coast of Wenzhou Bay, China in 2007. The aggregated distribution pattern was proved by using Taylor&#39s power ...