Ecological Analysis of Disturbance and Disturbance Intensity Estimates for Rainwater Harvesting

Soil disturbance resulting from stump harvesting

Criticality and disturbance in spatial ecological systems.

Classical criticality describes sudden changes in the state of a system when underlying processes change slightly. At this transition, patchiness develops which lacks a characteristic or dominant spatial scale. Thus, criticality lies at the interface of two important subjects in ecology, threshold behavior and patchiness. Most ecological examples of criticality involve processes of disturbance ...

Ecological Impacts of Energy-Wood Harvests: Lessons from Whole-Tree Harvesting and Natural Disturbance

Recent interest in using forest residues and small-diameter material for biofuels is generating a renewed focus on harvesting impacts and forest sustainability. The rich legacy of research from whole-tree harvesting studies can be examined in light of this interest. Although this research largely focused on consequences for forest productivity, in particular carbon and nutrient pools, it also h...

Diversity-disturbance relationships: frequency and intensity interact.

An influential ecological theory, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH), predicts that intermediate levels of disturbance will maximize species diversity. Empirical studies, however, have described a wide variety of diversity-disturbance relationships (DDRs). Using experimental populations of microbes, we show that the form of the DDR depends on an interaction between disturbance freque...

Visually Determined Soil Disturbance Classes Used as Indices of Forest Harvesting Disturbance

Visual estimates of soil and site disturbances are used by foresters, soil scientists, logging supervisors . and machinery operators to minimize harvest dis turbances to forest s i tes , to evaIuate compliance with forestry Best Management Pract ices (BMPs), and to determine the need for ameliorative pract ices such as tnechanical s i te preparat ion. Al though visual est imates are commonly us...