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"Long-term monitoring programs are fundamental to understanding the natural environment and managing major environmental problems. Yet they are often done very poorly and ineffectively. This second edition of the highly acclaimed Effective Ecological Monitoring describes what makes monitoring programs successful and how to ensure that long-term monitoring studies persist. The book has been fully revised and updated but remains concise, illustrating key aspects of effective monitoring with case studies and examples. It includes new sections comparing surveillance-based and question-based monitoring, analysing environmental observation networks, and provides examples of adaptive monitoring. Based on the authors' 80 years of collective experience in running long-term research and monitoring programs, Effective Ecological Monitoring is a valuable resource for the natural resource management, ecological and environmental science and policy communities."--Page 4 of cover

A beautifully illustrated overview and synthesis of how scientists have used a living forest as an experimental laboratory for more than 50 years For more than 50 years, the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire has been one of the most intensely studied landscapes on earth. This book highlights many of the important ecological findings amassed during the long-term research conducted there, and considers their regional, national, and global implications. Richard T. Holmes and Gene E. Likens, active members of the research team at Hubbard Brook since its beginnings, explain the scientific processes employed in the forest-turned-laboratory. They describe such important findings as the discovery of acid rain, ecological effects of forest management practices, and the causes of population change in forest birds, as well as how disturbance events, pests and pathogens, and a changing climate affect forest and associated aquatic ecosystems. The authors show how such long-term, place-based ecological studies are relevant for informing many national, regional, and local environmental issues, such as air pollution, water quality, ecosystem management, and conservation

In this thoroughly updated third edition, the authors have provided a series of carefully designed and tested field and laboratory exercises that represent the full scope of limnology. In using this text, students will gain a solid foundation in this complex, multidisciplinary field of ecology as they explore the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of standing and running waters. Limnological Analyses, Third Edition illustrates accepted standard methods as well as modern metabolic and experimental approaches and their research applications. Each exercise is preceded by an introductory section and concludes with questions for students as well as suggestions for further reading. As a textbook, Limnological Analyses, Third Edition is a highly structured, concise presentation with a research-oriented approach that openly invites active participation by students

Integrated regional models are conceptual and mathematical models that describe the physical environment, biological interactions, human decision-making, and human impact on the environment. Efforts are now being made to integrate regional models from the physical, biological and social sciences in order to respond to diverse environmental problems. This volume explores the latest research developments on processes operating at a variety of scales, including regions, and how scientists can combine their efforts to develop models linking biological, physical, and human systems. Data requirements for successful integrated regional models are identified and discussed. Chapters also consider methodological questions, such as whether to integrate disciplinary approaches at the beginning or the end of the modelling process, and whether integrated regional models should focus on specific regions or specific problems. The information in this volume will enable the reader to view problems such as coastal zone management, atmospheric pollution, non-point source pollution, commodity production in forested areas, and urban expansion in a broad, conceptual context. Researchers and graduate students in ecology, biology, geography and geology will benefit from this innovative approach to contemporary environmental problems

We introduce a new representation of coupled solute and water age dynamics at the catchment scale, which shows how the contributions of young runoff waters can be directly referenced to observed water quality patterns. The methodology stems from recent trends in hydrologic transport that acknowledge the dynamic nature of streamflow age and explores the use of water age fractions as an alternative to the mean age. The approach uses a travel time-based transport model to compute the fractions of streamflow that are younger than some thresholds (e.g., younger than a few weeks) and compares them to observed solute concentration patterns. The method is here validated with data from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest during spring 2008, where we show that the presence of water younger than roughly 2 weeks, tracked using a hydrologic transport model and deuterium measurements, mimics the variation in dissolved silicon concentrations. Our approach suggests that an age-discharge relationship can be coupled to classic concentration-discharge relationship, to identify the links between transport timescales and solute concentration. Our results highlight that the younger streamflow components can be crucial for determining water quality variations and for characterizing the dominant hydrologic transport dynamics. ; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; NSF EARNational Science Foundation (NSF) [1014507]; NSF LTER DEB [1114804]; ENAC School; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne ; ENAC School, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; NSF EAR, Grant/Award Number: 1014507; NSF LTER DEB, Grant/Award Number: 1114804 ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

Factors driving freshwater salinization syndrome (FSS) influence the severity of impacts and chances for recovery. We hypothesize that spread of FSS across ecosystems is a function of interactions among five state factors: human activities, geology, flowpaths, climate, and time. (1) Human activities drive pulsed or chronic inputs of salt ions and mobilization of chemical contaminants. (2) Geology drives rates of erosion, weathering, ion exchange, and acidification-alkalinization. (3) Flowpaths drive salinization and contaminant mobilization along hydrologic cycles. (4) Climate drives rising water temperatures, salt stress, and evaporative concentration of ions and saltwater intrusion. (5) Time influences consequences, thresholds, and potentials for ecosystem recovery. We hypothesize that state factors advance FSS in distinct stages, which eventually contribute to failures in systems-level functions (supporting drinking water, crops, biodiversity, infrastructure, etc.). We present future research directions for protecting freshwaters at risk based on five state factors and stages from diagnosis to prognosis to cure. ; This work was supported by: National Science Foundation GCR 2021089, Maryland Sea Grant SA75281870W, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, Pooled Monitoring Initiative, and its funding partners, and the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments contract 21-001. ; Published version

Quantitative models are crucial to almost every area of ecosystem science. They provide a logical structure that guides and informs empirical observations of ecosystem processes. They play a particularly crucial role in synthesizing and integrating our understanding of the immense diversity of ecosystem structure and function. Increasingly, models are being called on to predict the effects of human actions on natural ecosystems. Despite the widespread use of models, there exists intense debate within the field over a wide range of practical and philosophical issues pertaining to quantitative modeling. This book--which grew out of a gathering of leading experts at the ninth Cary Conference--explores those issues. The book opens with an overview of the status and role of modeling in ecosystem science, including perspectives on the long-running debate over the appropriate level of complexity in models. This is followed by eight chapters that address the critical issue of evaluating ecosystem models, including methods of addressing uncertainty. Next come several case studies of the role of models in environmental policy and management. A section on the future of modeling in ecosystem science focuses on increasing the use of modeling in undergraduate education and the modeling skills of professionals within the field. The benefits and limitations of predictive (versus observational) models are also considered in detail. Written by stellar contributors, this book grants access to the state of the art and science of ecosystem modeling