Welcome to Ecosystem Guide
Ecosystem Disruption Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
Achieving Balance In Ecosystems: A Trapeze Act?
from:According to strict theory, balance in an ecosystem would be reached when the various populations in the system are neither increasing nor decreasing but holding steady because the various parts of the ecosystem keep each other in perfect balance.
In a coral reef ecosystem, for example, this might look as follows: (1) Coral reef absorbs nutrients directly from the water and from plankton swimming past the reef; (2) small parrotfish feed on the coral reef; and (3) larger fish, such as snappers and barracuda, feed on the smaller fish like the parrotfish. Here is where the theory breaks down, however, because if the coral reef is not growing and expanding its territory, it is considered unhealthy or dying. Similarly, as the reef itself expands, it is able to support more and more animals in categories (2) and (3) respectively—meaning that none of the populations is actually stable, but rather growing. In reality, then, balance in an ecosystem is a dynamic, changing thing which generally implies a gradual growth of the populations within the ecosystem.
But when we talk about balance in ecosystems, it not only refers to balance within the ecosystem, but also to balance between ecosystems. To wit: no ecosystem exists in a vacuum. Each ecosystem has other systems butting up against it, intersecting it, and often intermeshing with it. To continue the example from above, a coral reef is located in water, putting it in close proximity to a marine ecosystem (or more than one), where there may be even larger fish, sharks, and other animals. In this situation, balance between ecosystems means that the sharks don't eat all the parrotfish, nor do the fish living on the coral reef suddenly migrate out to the marine ecosystem.
On the other hand, Andrewatha and Birch proposed the idea in their 1954 "The Distribution and bundance of animals" that balance in ecosystems is actually impossible. Because they observed that territorial behavior, rather than a check in food supply, limited population numbers, they viewed the flux in population size as part of normal behavior patterns rather than part of an ecosystem response. Although this view is probably extreme, it illustrates the truth that a static population is not possible in the real world.
Seen from a global perspective, balance in the world ecosystem depends upon balance between ecosystems in the world. Such is the subject of many current headlines about climate change, overfishing, and the like. Yet it is important to keep perspective that neither has the world's ecosystem remained stagnant over time; populations have increased, decreased, and even gone extinct, entirely independent of human involvement. The question becomes, then: To what extent human involvement has changed the balance in ecosystems beyond what it would have been without any human interference? The answer, right now, is anybody's guess.
Ecosystem Disruption News
Pine Barrens invaders likely to disrupt ecology
PEMBERTON TOWNSHIP — Invasive insects like gypsy moth caterpillars and the southern pine beetle could pose more disruption to New Jersey Pinelands ecosystem than even forest fires, according to new research from the U.S. Forest Service.
Read more...Kickstarted: my conversation with Kickstarter founder Perry Chen
Kickstarter is not just a startup-- it's part of an important shift away from the industrial manufacturing era & toward the maker economy. In this wide-ranging interview, founder Perry Chen talks about ...
Read more...Kickstarted: my conversation with Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen
Kickstarter is not just a startup-- it's part of an important shift away from the industrial manufacturing era & toward the maker economy. In this wide-ranging interview, founder Perry Chen talks about ...
Read more...Rise of Humans 2 Million Years Ago Doomed Large Carnivores
Lions are one of just six carnivores that remain in East Africa today, compared with more than 15 species that shared the landscape before the dawn of Homo. Image: Kate Wong The impact of Homo sapiens on the environment over the past few hundred years has been so profound that some scientists term this chapter of Earth s history the Anthropocene . But humans may have begun wreaking ecological ...
Read more...Disassembling Android Part 2: Who Wields the Blowtorch?
This is Part Two of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. "Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August . He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one ...
Read more...Cable Veterans Fawaz, Bell, Buckley, Kassas and Ispahani Form Sarepta Advisors to Address Changing Media and ...
BOSTON, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sarepta Advisors, a new global advisory firm focused on providing strategic, technological and operational solutions to the media and communications industry has launched ...
Read more...Nvidia Reveals Kai, the Blueprint for a $199, Kindle Fire-Killing Tablet
Nvidia has packed a quad-core processor into a very inexpensive Android tablet. At an annual meeting for company investors, Nvidia VP Rob Csonger unveiled Kai, a $199 Android tablet reference design powered by the company's quad-core Tegra 3 chip.
Read more...Hadoop software market to hit $812.8 million in 2016, says IDC
IDC put the Hadoop-MapReduce ecosystem market at $77 million in 2011. That'll change in a hurry.
Read more...