Spatial Heterogeneity and the Importance of Patchiness in Marine Metapopulations

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Release : 2001
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Spatial Heterogeneity and the Importance of Patchiness in Marine Metapopulations - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Spatial Heterogeneity and the Importance of Patchiness in Marine Metapopulations write by Jeffery Aaron Rank. This book was released on 2001. Spatial Heterogeneity and the Importance of Patchiness in Marine Metapopulations available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.

Marine Metapopulations

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Release : 2010-07-20
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 712/5 ( reviews)

Marine Metapopulations - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Marine Metapopulations write by Jacob P. Kritzer. This book was released on 2010-07-20. Marine Metapopulations available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Technological improvements have greatly increased the ability of marine scientists to collect and analyze data over large spatial scales, and the resultant insights attainable from interpreting those data vastly increase understanding of poplation dynamics, evolution and biogeography. Marine Metapopulations provides a synthesis of existing information and understanding, and frames the most important future directions and issues. First book to systematically apply metapopulation theory directly to marine systems Contributions from leading international ecologists and fisheries biologists Perspectives on a broad array of marine organisms and ecosystems, from coastal estuaries to shallow reefs to deep-sea hydrothermal vents Critical science for improved management of marine resources Paves the way for future research on large-scale spatial ecology of marine systems

Spatial Models of Metapopulations and Benthic Communities in Patchy Environments

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Release : 2000
Genre : Benthos
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Spatial Models of Metapopulations and Benthic Communities in Patchy Environments - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Spatial Models of Metapopulations and Benthic Communities in Patchy Environments write by Mark Forrest Hill. This book was released on 2000. Spatial Models of Metapopulations and Benthic Communities in Patchy Environments available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The distribution of organisms in space has important consequences for the function and structure of ecological systems. Such distributions are often referred to as patchy, and a patch-based approach to modeling ecosystem dynamics has become a major research focus. These models have been used to explore a wide range of questions concerning population, metapopulation, community, and landscape ecology, in both terrestrial and aquatic systems. In this dissertation I develop and analyze a series of spatial models to study the dynamics of metapopulations and marine benthic communities in patchy environments. All the models have the form of a discrete-time Markov chain, and assume that the landscape is composed of discrete patches, each of which is in one of a number of possible states. The state of a patch is determined by the presence of an individual of a given species, a local population, or a group of species, depending on the spatial scale of the model. The research is organized into two main parts as follows. In the first part, I present an analysis of the effects of habitat destruction on metapopulation persistence. Theoretical studies have already shown that a metapopulation goes extinct when the fraction of suitable patches in the landscape falls below a critical threshold (the so called extinction threshold). This result has become a paradigm in conservation biology and several models have been developed to calculate extinction thresholds for endangered species. These models, however, generally do not take into account the spatial arrangement of habitat destruction, or the actual size of the landscape. To investigate how the spatial structure of habitat destruction affects persistence, I compare the behavior of two models: a spatially implicit patch-occupancy model (which recreates the extinction patterns found in other models) and a spatially explicit cellular automaton (CA) model. In the CA, I use fractal arrangements of suitable and unsuitable patches to simulate habitat destruction and show that the extinction threshold depends on the fractal dimension of the landscape. To investigate how habitat destruction affects persistence in finite landscapes, I develop and analyze a chain-binomial metapopulation (CBM) model. This model predicts the expected extinction time of a metapopulation as a function of the number of patches in the landscape and the number of those patches that are suitable for the population. The CBM model shows that the expected time to extinction decreases greater than exponentially as suitable patches are destroyed. I also describe a statistical method for estimating parameters for the CBM model in order to evaluate metapopulation viability in real landscapes. In the second part, I develop and analyze a series of Markov chain models for a rocky subtidal community in the Gulf of Maine. Data for the model comes from ten permanent quadrats (located on Ammen Rock Pinnacle at 30 meters depth) monitored over an 8-year period (1986-1994). I first parameterize a linear (homogenous) Markov chain model from the data set and analyze it using an array of novel techniques, including a compression algorithm to classify species into functional groups, a set of measures from stochastic process theory to characterize successional patterns, sensitivity analyses to predict how changes in various ecological processes effect community composition, and a method for simulating species removal to identify keystone species. I then explore the effects of time and space on successional patterns using log-linear analysis, and show that transition probabilities vary significantly across small spatial scales and over yearly time intervals. I examine the implications of these findings for predicting equilibrium species abundances and for characterizing the transient dynamics of the community. Finally, I develop a nonlinear Markov chain for the rocky subtidal community. The model is parameterized using maximum likelihood methods to estimate density-dependent transition probabilities. I analyze the best fitting models to study the effects of nonlinear species interactions on community dynamics, and to identify multiple stable states in the subtidal system.

Patch Dynamics

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Release : 2012-12-06
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 559/5 ( reviews)

Patch Dynamics - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Patch Dynamics write by Simon A. Levin. This book was released on 2012-12-06. Patch Dynamics available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. From the preface by Joel E. Cohen: "A century from now humanity will live in a managed - or mismanaged - global garden. We are debating the need to preserve tropical forests. Farming of the sea is providing an increasing part of our fish supply. We are beginning to control atmospheric emissions. In 100 years, we shall use novel farming practices and genetic engineering of bacteria to manipulate the methane production of rice fields. The continental shelf will be providing food, energy, possibly even living space. To make such intensive management possible will require massive improvements in data collection and analysis, and especially in our concepts. A century hence we will live on a wired earth: the oceans and the crust of the earth will receive the same comprehensive monitoring now devoted to weather. As the peoples of currently developing countries increase their levels of wealth, the need for global management will become irresistible as impatience with the accidents of nature and intolerance of mismanagement of the environment - especially of living resources - grow. Our control of physical perturbations and chemical inputs to the environment will be judged by the consequences to living organisms and biological communities. How can we obtain the factual and theoretical foundation needed to move from our present, fragmented knowledge and limited abilities to a managed, global garden?" This problem was addressed in the lectures and workshops of a summer school on patch dynamics at Cornell University. The school emphasized the analysis and interpretation of spatial patterns in terrestrial and marine environments. This book contains the course material of this school, combining general reviews with specific applications.

Spatial Pattern in Plankton Communities

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Release : 1978-01-11
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 575/5 ( reviews)

Spatial Pattern in Plankton Communities - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Spatial Pattern in Plankton Communities write by John H. Steele. This book was released on 1978-01-11. Spatial Pattern in Plankton Communities available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The planning for the conference held at Erice, Sicily, in November 1977, began with discussions among oceanographers from several countries on the need to consider the special problems and the recent results in the study of plankton "patchiness. " An approach to the Marine Sciences Panel of the NATO Science Committee resulted in a planning grant to determine the probable content and participation in such a meeting. The planning group consisted of B. Battaglia (Padua), G. E. B. Kullenberg (Copenhagen), A. Okubo (New York), T. Platt (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and J. H. Steele (Aberdeen). The group met in Aberdeen, Scotland, in September 1976. The proposal for a NATO School on the subject of "Spatial Pattern in Plankton Communities" was accepted by the Marine Science Panel and it was agreed that it be held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice. The Centre began in 1963 with an International School of Subnuclear Physics and has since developed to include courses in many other subjects which cover various fields of basic and applied research. The original aim of the . Centre was to create, in Italy, a cultural forum of high scientific standard which would allow young research workers to appreciate problems currently of major interest in various fields of research.