Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
their surrounding environments. Ecotonal regions are important for our understand-
ing of evolutionary (such as speciation, divergence with gene flow, and adaptation)
and ecological processes shaping biodiversity (e.g., response of populations to
fluctuating environments). They may enable us to better predict the responses of
populations to environmental change and to further identify previously neglected
biodiversity hotspots valuable for biodiversity research and conservation.
Future Directions
Research on the effect of ecotones on biodiversity is an important future direction in
the face of global change, including land-use and climate change. Because ecotones
are areas where shifts in environmental conditions occur in space and time, they
may serve as useful indicators of environmental change and of the response of
ecosystems to shifts in climate. The degree of effectiveness of ecotones as early
predictors of the impacts of change and the ways that ecological communities and
systems respond to change may be an important future direction. Ecotones can
sustain unique forms or species that are less abundant or do not occur elsewhere. In
addition, studies suggest that ecotones are areas where some populations are
diverging to new species in the face of gene flow (across the ecotone). It is
important to examine the generality of these patterns and processes in different
regions, spatial and temporal scales, and groups.
Another future direction is the application of multi-disciplinary approaches from
other fields of science in studying and quantifying ecotones. For example, much
work has been done in physics on transitions between states (liquid-solid etc.),
which could be applied to work on environmental transitions ecotones. More work
on the interactions between native and alien species and the role of ecotones in
these interactions should be done to examine the hypothesis that ecotones are
barriers to invasion between communities. The importance of ecotones to the
generation and conservation of biodiversity, especially in the face of global climate
and other environmental changes is an area of potential research and conservation
investment that should further be explored and studied. The role of ecotones in
promoting sustainability and its emerging science is an open area, which should be
further explored in future work.
Bibliography
Primary Literature
1. Agnew CT, Chappell A (2000) Drought in the Sahel. Geo J 48:299-311
2. Allen CD, Breshears DD (1998) Drought-induced shift of a forest-woodland ecotone: rapid
landscape response to climate variation. Proc Natl Acad Sci 95:14839-14842
3. Applied Sciences Directorate
https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/
. Accessed Nov 2006
4. Brooks TM (2001) Prioritizing hotspots, representing transitions. Trends Ecol Evol 16:673
