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The Biology of Disturbed Habitats provides the first global synthesis of the biology of disturbed habitats and offers readers both the conceptual underpinnings and practical advice required to comprehend and address the unprecedented environmental challenges facing humans. Every habitat on earth has been impacted by natural disturbances such as volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, fires, floods, and droughts. Humans have contributed many additional disturbances such as mining, urbanization, forestry, agriculture, fishing, and recreation. These anthropogenic disturbances modify and often exacerbate the effects of the natural disturbances. Together, they result in the abrupt loss of biomass or ecosystem structure and function to create denuded surfaces where novel mixtures of native and non-native microbes, plants, and animals establish, grow, and die.
The Biology of Disturbed Habitats examines both natural and anthropogenic disturbances in aquatic and terrestrial habitats. It explores how nutrients and productivity are altered in the disturbed habitats, the effects of disturbance on biodiversity, and the spatial and temporal dynamics of organisms that colonize disturbed habitats. The Biology of Disturbed Habitats also addresses how to manage disturbances through appropriate conservation and restoration measures, and discusses how climate change and overpopulation now represent the most challenging disturbances at a global scale.
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Terrestrial habitats
Chapter 3 Aquatic habitats
Chapter 4 Anthropogenic habitats
Chapter 5 Ecosystem processes
Chapter 6 Biodiversity and invasive species
Chapter 7 Spatial patterns
Chapter 8 Temporal dynamics
Chapter 9 Management
Chapter 10 Global concerns and future scenarios
Glossary
References
Index
Lawrence R. Walker is a professor of plant ecology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research focuses on the mechanisms that drive plant succession after natural and anthropogenic disturbances including cyclones, volcanoes, landslides, mine tailings, and abandoned roads. These disturbances are located in tropical, temperate, boreal, and arctic biomes. He also studies the management of disturbances through restoration. Walker emphasizes comparisons across environmental gradients and many different types of disturbances, searching for useful generalizations about disturbance ecology, succession, and restoration. He has over 115 scientific publications, including seven books, has won several research awards, is co-editor of a book series, and is an ISI highly cited researcher.
"Walker does an excellent job bringing together the many elements of modern disturbance ecology."
– Bulletin of the British Ecological Society
"In The Biology of Disturbed Habitats, readers will find a pithy but well-balanced review of the relevant research on ecological theory"
– Lee E. Frelich, BioScience
