An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309288487
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
As the Gulf of Mexico recovers from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, natural resource managers face the challenge of understanding the impacts of the spill and setting priorities for restoration work. The full value of losses resulting from the spill cannot be captured, however, without consideration of changes in ecosystem services--the benefits delivered to society through natural processes. An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico discusses the benefits and challenges associated with using an ecosystem services approach to damage assessment, describing potential impacts of response technologies, exploring the role of resilience, and offering suggestions for areas of future research. This report illustrates how this approach might be applied to coastal wetlands, fisheries, marine mammals, and the deep sea -- each of which provide key ecosystem services in the Gulf -- and identifies substantial differences among these case studies. The report also discusses the suite of technologies used in the spill response, including burning, skimming, and chemical dispersants, and their possible long-term impacts on ecosystem services.

An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309288487
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
As the Gulf of Mexico recovers from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, natural resource managers face the challenge of understanding the impacts of the spill and setting priorities for restoration work. The full value of losses resulting from the spill cannot be captured, however, without consideration of changes in ecosystem services--the benefits delivered to society through natural processes. An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico discusses the benefits and challenges associated with using an ecosystem services approach to damage assessment, describing potential impacts of response technologies, exploring the role of resilience, and offering suggestions for areas of future research. This report illustrates how this approach might be applied to coastal wetlands, fisheries, marine mammals, and the deep sea -- each of which provide key ecosystem services in the Gulf -- and identifies substantial differences among these case studies. The report also discusses the suite of technologies used in the spill response, including burning, skimming, and chemical dispersants, and their possible long-term impacts on ecosystem services.

Foundations of Ecological Resilience

Foundations of Ecological Resilience PDF Author: Lance H. Gunderson
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610911334
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book

Book Description
Ecological resilience provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how complex systems adapt to and recover from localized disturbances like hurricanes, fires, pest outbreaks, and floods, as well as large-scale perturbations such as climate change. Ecologists have developed resilience theory over the past three decades in an effort to explain surprising and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems. Resilience theory is especially important to environmental scientists for its role in underpinning adaptive management approaches to ecosystem and resource management. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is a collection of the most important articles on the subject of ecological resilience—those writings that have defined and developed basic concepts in the field and help explain its importance and meaning for scientists and researchers. The book’s three sections cover articles that have shaped or defined the concepts and theories of resilience, including key papers that broke new conceptual ground and contributed novel ideas to the field; examples that demonstrate ecological resilience in a range of ecosystems; and articles that present practical methods for understanding and managing nonlinear ecosystem dynamics. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is an important contribution to our collective understanding of resilience and an invaluable resource for students and scholars in ecology, wildlife ecology, conservation biology, sustainability, environmental science, public policy, and related fields.

Resilience in Ecology and Health

Resilience in Ecology and Health PDF Author: Gerard Magill
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527536947
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583

Get Book

Book Description
This edited book is a collection of essays addressing emerging concerns and pivotal problems about our planet’s environment and ecology. The contributions gathered here highlight the inter-relation of topics and expertise, connecting resilience with ecology, health, biotechnology and generational challenges. The book concludes with an ethical analysis of the multiple and over-lapping challenges that require urgent attention and long-term resolution. The book is written for scholars and students in a variety of disciplines and fields that deal with sustainability.

Engineering Within Ecological Constraints

Engineering Within Ecological Constraints PDF Author: National Academy of Engineering
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030917645X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book

Book Description
Engineering within Ecological Constraints presents a rare dialogue between engineers and environmental scientists as they consider the many technical as well as social and legal challenges of ecologically sensitive engineering. The volume looks at the concepts of scale, resilience, and chaos as they apply to the points where the ecological life support system of nature interacts with the technological life support system created by humankind. Among the questions addressed are: What are the implications of differences between ecological and engineering concepts of efficiency and stability? How can engineering solutions to immediate problems be made compatible with long-term ecological concerns? How can we transfer ecological principles to economic systems? The book also includes important case studies on such topics as water management in southern Florida and California and oil exploration in rain forests. From its conceptual discussions to the practical experience reflected in case studies, this volume will be important to policymakers, practitioners, researchers, educators, and students in the fields of engineering, environmental science, and environmental policy.

Climate Change and Health

Climate Change and Health PDF Author: Walter Leal Filho
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319246607
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book

Book Description
A major objective of this volume is to create and share knowledge about the socio-economic, political and cultural dimensions of climate change. The authors analyze the effects of climate change on the social and environmental determinants of the health and well-being of communities (i.e. poverty, clean air, safe drinking water, food supplies) and on extreme events such as floods and hurricanes. The book covers topics such as the social and political dimensions of the ebola response, inequalities in urban migrant communities, as well as water-related health effects of climate change. The contributors recommend political and social-cultural strategies for mitigate, adapt and prevent the impacts of climate change to human and environmental health. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners interested in new methods and tools to reduce risks and to increase health resilience to climate change.

Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design

Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design PDF Author: S.T.A. Pickett
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400753411
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book

Book Description
The contributors to this volume propose strategies of urgent and vital importance that aim to make today’s urban environments more resilient. Resilience, the ability of complex systems to adapt to changing conditions, is a key frontier in ecological research and is especially relevant in creative urban design, as urban areas exemplify complex systems. With something approaching half of the world’s population now residing in coastal urban zones, many of which are vulnerable both to floods originating inland and rising sea levels, making urban areas more robust in the face of environmental threats must be a policy ambition of the highest priority. The complexity of urban areas results from their spatial heterogeneity, their intertwined material and energy fluxes, and the integration of social and natural processes. All of these features can be altered by intentional planning and design. The complex, integrated suite of urban structures and processes together affect the adaptive resilience of urban systems, but also presupposes that planners can intervene in positive ways. As examples accumulate of linkage between sustainability and building/landscape design, such as the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park and Toronto’s Lower Don River area, this book unites the ideas, data, and insights of ecologists and related scientists with those of urban designers. It aims to integrate a formerly atomized dialog to help both disciplines promote urban resilience.

Resilience Thinking

Resilience Thinking PDF Author: Brian Walker
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597266221
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.

Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change PDF Author: Melissa R. Marselle
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030023184
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 494

Get Book

Book Description
This open access book identifies and discusses biodiversity’s contribution to physical, mental and spiritual health and wellbeing. Furthermore, the book identifies the implications of this relationship for nature conservation, public health, landscape architecture and urban planning – and considers the opportunities of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. This transdisciplinary book will attract a wide audience interested in biodiversity, ecology, resource management, public health, psychology, urban planning, and landscape architecture. The emphasis is on multiple human health benefits from biodiversity - in particular with respect to the increasing challenge of climate change. This makes the book unique to other books that focus either on biodiversity and physical health or natural environments and mental wellbeing. The book is written as a definitive ‘go-to’ book for those who are new to the field of biodiversity and health.

The Social Ecology of Resilience

The Social Ecology of Resilience PDF Author: Michael Ungar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781461405863
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Get Book

Book Description
More than two decades after Michael Rutter (1987) published his summary of protective processes associated with resilience, researchers continue to report definitional ambiguity in how to define and operationalize positive development under adversity. The problem has been partially the result of a dominant view of resilience as something individuals have, rather than as a process that families, schools,communities and governments facilitate. Because resilience is related to the presence of social risk factors, there is a need for an ecological interpretation of the construct that acknowledges the importance of people’s interactions with their environments. The Social Ecology of Resilience provides evidence for this ecological understanding of resilience in ways that help to resolve both definition and measurement problems.

Integrating Public and Ecosystem Health Systems to Foster Resilience: A Workshop to Identify Research to Bridge the Knowledge-To-Action Gap: Proceedin

Integrating Public and Ecosystem Health Systems to Foster Resilience: A Workshop to Identify Research to Bridge the Knowledge-To-Action Gap: Proceedin PDF Author: National Academies Of Sciences Engineeri
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 9780309700511
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Ecosystems form the foundation upon which society can survive and thrive, providing food, water, air, materials, and recreation. These connections between people and their environments are under stress from human-driven climate change, pollution, resource exploitation, and other actions that may have implications for public health. The integral connection between nature and human health is recognized and has been explored through different bodies of work; however, because of the breadth of this issue, many implications regarding public health are not well characterized. This has created a gap in understanding the interconnections between public health and ecosystem health systems and how ecosystem resiliency may affect public health. To inform the development of a research agenda aimed at bridging the knowledge-to-action gap related to integrating public and ecological health to foster resilience, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop across three days that brought together interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners from the public health, natural resource management, and environmental protection communities to exchange knowledge, discuss critical gaps in understanding and practice, and identify promising research that could support the development of domestic and international policy and practice. Day 1 of the workshop, held on September 19, 2022, addressed the following question: What has been learned about how to integrate public health and nature into research, policy, and practice to foster resilience? Days 2 and 3, held on September 29 and 30, 2022, explored advancement opportunities in transdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship to improve integration of public health and nature and inform policy and practice and opportunities to bridge the knowledge-to-action gap with strategies to translate knowledge into policy and practice. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop.