The Earth in transition: patterns and processes of biotic impoverishment

Abstract

Preface Acknowledgements List of contributors Part I. Global Change and the Patterns of Impoverishment: 1. The earth under stress: a transition to climatic instability raises questions about patterns of impoverishment George M. Woodwell 2. The experimental impoverishment of natural communities: effects of ionizing radiation on plant communities, 1961-1976 George M. Woodwell and Richard A. Houghton 3. Air pollution and temperate forests: creeping degradation F. Herbert Bormann 4. The long-term effects of air pollutants on lichen communities in Europe and North America D. L. Hawksworth 5. Biotic impoverishment in Northern Peatlands Eville Gorham 6. Climatic change and the survival of forest species Margaret Bryan Davis 7. The atmosphere and the future of the biosphere: points of interactive disturbance Michael Oppenheimer Part II. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Forests: 8. The restoration of Nonsuch Island as a living museum of Bermuda's precolonial terrestrial biome David B. Wingate 9. Patterns of impoverishment in natural communities: case history studies in forest ecosystems - New Zealand A. F. Mark and G. D. McSweeney 10. Changes in the eucalypt forests of Australia as a result of human disturbance R. L. Specht 11. Impoverishment in Pacific Island forests Dieter Mueller-Dombois 12. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia Philip M. Fearnside 13. Incentives for sustainable forest management Robert Repetto Part III. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Woodlands, Grasslands and Tundra: 14. Changes in the Mediterranean vegetation of Israel in response to human habitation and land use Zev Naveh and Pua Kutiel 15. Bromus tectorum, a biotic cause of ecosystem impoverishment in the Great Basin W. D. Billings 16. Detecting early signs of regional air-pollution injury to coastal sage scrub Walter E. Westman 17. Arctic ecosystems: patterns of change in response to disturbance L. C. Bliss Part IV. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Aquatic and Emergent Ecosystems Section A. Marine Systems: 18. Changes in a Red Sea coral community structure: a long-term case history study Y. Loya 19. Are deep-sea communities resilient? J. Frederick Grassle, Nancy J. Maciolek and James A. Blake 20. Species dominance-diversity patterns in Oceanic communities John A. McGowan Section B. Freshwater Systems: 21. Natural and anthropogenically imposed limitations to biotic richness in fresh waters David W. Schindler 22. Human impacts on the South Florida Wetlands: the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp William A. Niering 23. The impoverishment of aquatic communities by Smelter activities near Sudbury, Canada N. D. Yan and P. M. Welbourn 24. Biotic impoverishment: effects of anthropogenic stress John Cairns Jr and James R. Pratt Part V. Conclusion: Steps Toward a World that Runs Itself: 25. Steps toward sustainability J. Gustave Speth 26. A reaction from a multitude Donella H. Meadows Name index Subject index.