Information-Modeling Technology for the Environmental Monitoring - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 52

con biodi-

versity in South Asia, Far East, and Japan performed by the Institute for Global
Environmental Strategies (IGES) and in which estimates of the rates of forests

rmed by the data of the structural analysis of the forest ecosystems '

'
degradation are given (Inoue and Isozaki 2003). As Austin et al. (2004) have
shown, the sporadic nature of water availability in arid and deserted territories is the
cause of great shifts in the C/N ratio and, hence, considerable heterogeneities in the
biogeochemical cycles of these territories.
From estimates of Stoll-Kleemann and O Riordan (2004), about 70 % of land

surface are anthropogenically affected causing changes in biodiversity thousands
times faster than it takes place naturally. Global biodiversity cannot be maintained
without changing the strategy of human behaviour in the sphere of the environ-
mental protection. Therefore, one should expect a crisis in biodiversity, unless the
international cooperation on its protection becomes effective.
Global scales of variability of the biogeochemical cycles of many elements
raises a problem of control of the state of water ecosystems not only with local
sources of pollution taken into account, but also, and to a greater extent, distant
transports of chemical matter and biological pollutions. Input of various substances
to water ecosystems leads to a degradation of

'

fish populations and a change in
sanitary conditions for population in adjacent regions. The ways of penetration of
undesired substances to water ecosystems are diverse, including river and shore
runs-off as basic highways of pollutants propagation. Therefore, protection of water
ecosystems under present-day conditions of globalization requires technologies and
systems to control additional fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus which provide a
minimum of the oxygen balance violation and preserve natural trends of the living
elements biomass. As Fourie et al. (2004) noted, it is especially important for water

ecosystems in many regions of Africa, where only the atmosphere is an external
source of additional biogenic elements.
Inland water ecosystems are divided into fresh-water and salted ecosystems. The
simplest scheme of life organization in these ecosystems consists in interactions of
living elements with abiotic components (penetration of light, water currents, dis-
solved nutrient concentrations, and suspended solids). The producers supply O 2 to
the aquatic systems through photosynthesis. This O 2 is then used by the producers,
consumers and decomposers through aerobic respiration. The CO 2 enters an aquatic
system from the atmosphere and through aerobic respiration by producers, con-
sumers, and decomposers and it

'

s removed by photosynthesizing producers. The
concentration of oxygen in water depends on the amount of pollutants entering the
ecosystem. These pollutants, depending on their type, can affect directly the aquatic
organisms and indirectly through the process of eutrophication. As a result, the
input of pollutants to the water ecosystemleads to a change of its role in the gas
exchange with the atmosphere.
There are not less than 1,500 substances as pollutants in freshwater ecosystems.
Among them are the following:

'