Arid lands management: toward ecological sustainability

Abstract

'As living systems change, so research priorities and decisions about resource management must change and adapt. By relating various kinds of ecological systems to the question of sustainability in arid lands, Arid Lands Management offers new directions for both research and management. The earth's surface currently is undergoing massive land-use changes as a component of human-accelerated environmental change. Loss of biodiversity, invasion of exotic species, global climate change, toxification of the biosphere, and stratospheric ozone depletion are the consequences of land-use changes that lead to a deterioration of vital resources. Fragile arid and semi-arid ecosystems are particularly vulnerable.Arid Lands Management gathers the insights and expertise of an international consortium of scientists to assess the current status of ecological sciences and arid lands ecology. This volume provides an overview of the arid and semi-arid land situation in three major arid systems: the Negev of Israel, the Sonoran-Chiuahuan deserts of North America, and the arid lands of Australia. Contributors provide a framework for understanding ecological sustainability, assess progress toward it, and outline essential principles of arid lands management.They suggest promising areas of research as well as management approaches that take account of interactions among three ecological criteria or levels of organization: population, community, and ecosystem. They also address the implications for these criteria of human-induced local and global environmental changes and investigate how to expand the conventional definition of sustainability - the use of resources by humans with the intention of protecting those resources for future populations of humans - to encompass also the reliance of other organisms on these resources.