The assessment of ecosystem service functions is one of the focused area in modern ecological and environmental research. As a typical shallow macrophytic lake in China, Nansi Lake is selected as the study area. Based the indicator system and assessment models established in this research, the ecosystem service functions of Nansi Lake are assessed. The results show that the ecosystem service fu...

We constructed a Lotka–Volterra-like competition model to study the role of environmental generalists in maintaining ecosystem function under a range of species richnesses and environmental conditions. Ecosystem function was quantified as community biomass, proportion of initial species that coexist through time, and resilience and resistance to perturbation. Generalist and specialist species w...

Quantifying the ecological patterns of loss of ecosystem function in extreme drought is important to understand the carbon exchange between the land and atmosphere. Rain-use efficiency [RUE; gross primary production (GPP)/precipitation] acts as a typical indicator of ecosystem function. In this study, a novel method based on maximum rain-use efficiency (RUEmax) was developed to detect losses of...

The ever increasing pile-up of electronic waste in dumping sites, especially in developing countries such as China, Pakistan, India and several African countries, might have caused a significant alteration in the microbial community of the contaminated sites. This change in the microbial population may have significant impact to the soil ecology function. The major pollutants of electronic wast...

In this paper, the concept and connotation of urban green space and ecosystem service were expatiated, and the research advance in ecosystem service of urban green space was reviewed. The studies of ecosystem service of urban green space in overseas were focused on improving the quality of urban environment, maintaining biodiversity, providing amenity values, and ecosystem management; while in ...

Seafloor biodiversity is a key mediator of ecosystem functioning, but its role is often excluded from global budgets or simplified to black boxes in models. New techniques allow quantification of the behavior of animals living below the sediment surface and assessment of the ecosystem consequences of complex interactions, yielding a better understanding of the role of seafloor animals in affect...

The promotion of human health must be embedded in the wider pursuit of ecosystem health. Interventions will be impaired if ecosystem-linked determinants of health are not taken into account. In the extreme case, if ecosystems lose their capacity for renewal, society will lose life support services. Essential features of ecosystem health are the capacity to maintain integrity and to achieve reas...

A global study to estimate the ecosystem service value of specific coastal ecosystems is developed. Specific variables are identified and used to develop a global multivariate regression function that supports the identification of important drivers of the value of ecosystem service of coastal protection around the world, and the Caribbean is examined in detail. Variables hypothesized to affect...

Disturbance-mediated species loss has prompted research considering how ecosystem functions are changed when biota is impaired. However, there is still limited empirical evidence from natural environments evaluating the direct and indirect (i.e. via biota) effects of disturbance on ecosystem functioning. Oxygen deficiency is a widespread threat to coastal and estuarine communities. While the ne...