Ecesis allows you to: Optimize the efficiency of human resources Proactively identify and manage risk Understand and communicate legal and other requirements Gain control of your data through centralized management of equipment and compliance-related information Efficiently distribute and track tasks throughout your workplace Quickly demonstrate compliance with regulations and industry standards Continually improve through structured inspection and internal auditing programs Go paperless!
Your Name. Your Message. Please Enter Mystery. Connect With Us. Enter Your Name. In this case, anthropogenic disturbances would result in new selection pressures that favor accelerated evolution and a different assemblage of species. As novel conditions become more prevalent in a world dominated by human activity, ecological and evolutionary processes such as succession and evolution accelerate and lead to novel solutions and novelty in ecosystems with resilience to novel disturbance regimes Radeloff and others Odum suggested that systems that incorporate disordering energies into their functioning had an evolutionary advantage over those that did not.
The mechanisms would be through evolution and adaptation, and the strategy is consistent with field observations of adaptation to disturbances at all scales of biotic organization.
An example would be mangrove adaptations to salinity stress, at the cost of reduced plant diversity in mangrove ecosystems.
Overcoming the disordering energy has an unavoidable energy cost, but adaptation to salinity and the positive contribution of subsidizing energy sources such as tides allow for mangrove ecosystem organization and growth. Ecologists have identified innumerable adaptations to disturbance forces for example, evolution of carbon cycling traits in the Anthropocene, Monroe and others These adaptations exert their influence across all levels of biotic organization from the cellular to ecosystems and include physiological processes, life-history characteristics, community physiognomy, and rates of processes.
The development of the ecosystem concept culminated with Evans who recognized the ecosystem as the basic functional unit in ecology. For example, his definition of the ecosystem eliminated the problem of delimiting the biotic boundaries or defining the size of ecosystems. Ecosystems are open functional systems without limitation of size or geographic boundaries, whose artificial boundaries are established by the investigator, who must account for energy, matter, and organism fluxes across them.
As SETS are ecosystems, they are subject to the same biophysical laws and constraints that regulate all ecosystems. However, the presence of humans and institutions within SETS adds complexity to its structure and functioning, including the normative ideals of people as well as their capacity to expand and concentrate additional sources of energy and resources to purposefully direct the SETS in particular directions, including its ecological sector.
A focus on the nature and effects of extreme disturbance events on SETS is as good as any for beginning the required transdisciplinary dialogue. Ecologists are challenged by SETS because they are required to join forces with social scientists and technologists to properly understand and manage the intertwined landscapes under human control, landscapes that have been shown to be highly vulnerable to extreme disturbance events Markolf and others Energy analysis partially overcomes the limitation identified by White regarding the comparison of different types of disturbances by using a common and objective unit the joule to evaluate the magnitude or intensity of disturbances and the cost to ecosystems of overcoming disturbances.
Odum calculated the energy of one kind required to produce another and expressed all energy flows in solar equivalents. For example, a joule of wood production by one hectare of spruce forest requires 3, joules of solar energy to produce; thus, the wood has an EMERGY value of 3, solar emjoules per joule produced.
I compared the power and total energy dose of different types of extreme disturbance events using uncorrected joules. Energy analysis can be applied to anthropogenic as well as non-anthropogenic systems, thus allowing the comparison of the responses to an extreme disturbance event by a SETS. A resilience focus, and resilience thinking, transcends ecological systems to also include SETS Redman A second conceptual innovation is the adaptive cycle Holling and Gunderson The third theoretical advancement in the development of the resiliency idea is the development of panarchy theory.
Panarchy, or wholeness, is a way of thinking about systems and their interactions across multiple scales of space and time Holling and others The panarchy idea builds on the hierarchical nature of all the systems in the universe, which is usually visualized as a bottom-up form of organization from subatomic particles to galaxies.
Panarchy recognizes that systems respond to both bottom-up and top-down influences, with a nested and interconnected organization of adaptive cycles operating at different scales of time and space Westley Odum noted that events such as hurricanes or volcanic activity are part of planetary functioning involved with feedbacks at that scale, that is, redistributing heat and stabilizing climate in the case of hurricanes, and global biogeochemical cycles for volcanic activity.
Such planetary processes become extreme disturbance events for systems organized at a smaller spatial scale such as affected landscapes or forests. This observation reveals the coupling of processes taking place at different levels of the hierarchical or panarchical organization of matter and systems within the planet. Processes or events with positive contributions to the functioning at one scale of organization may acutely or chronically disturb systems at smaller scales of organization, driving affected systems to invest resources for reorganization, acclimation, and adaptation.
The persistence of a system in spite of absorbing changes to its state and driving variables and parameters is a measure of its resilience and the speed of return to pre-disturbance conditions is its stability Holling To paraphrase the title of the paper by Carpenter and others , many statements about resilience assume that all components of an ecosystem are equally resilient to a variety of forces when in fact each component and attribute of an ecosystem has a particular level of resilience to different disturbance forces that need to be specified when speaking about resilience.
This type of analysis was instrumental in leading to the unpacking of disturbance events and relating each disturbance force to particular locations within the affected ecosystem Peters and others Resilience thinking also provides the theoretical basis for the development of policies that integrate conservation with novelty in social-ecological systems Chapin and others Puerto Rico is an example of an insular SETS that is highly dependent on outside sources of energy, materials, and technology.
This dependency, plus its history of response to past extreme disturbance events, makes the Puerto Rico SETS a vulnerable one to extreme disturbance events.
The immediate effects of individual forces on sectors of the SETS. The consequences of the immediate effects to SETS functioning. The longer-term temporal effects of extreme events on SETS with attention to how sequential extreme disturbance events set in motion whole trajectories of response that define the history of the country including its economy, landscapes, and ecological systems. The human mortality was 4, people, believed to be an underestimate, with one-third of the mortality attributed to delayed or interrupted health care Kishore and others Post-hurricane human migration was also substantial.
This energy dose is the equivalent of the energy released by the explosion of 55 megatons of TNT over Puerto Rico. The wind power of these events was not distributed uniformly over the landscape due to their weakening during the 24 hours that the island was exposed to hurricane-strength winds and to the effects of island topography and aspect on wind power. As a result, more energy was dissipated on the southeastern and northern coastal zone and less on the southwest of the island Van Beusekom and others Most of central Puerto Rico received to mm of rainfall during those three days.
The higher probability rainfalls were associated with the leeward aspects of the central mountains and the coastal karst alluvial plains. The lowest probability rainfall was associated with the windward aspects of the central mountain range, and the northeastern and northwestern sectors of the Island.
Peak discharge of the major insular rivers ranged from 0. These historic peak discharges transported millions of cubic meters of sediments at rates that were 6. More energy was dissipated moving rocks, debris, and sediments than knocking down infrastructure and trees. Also, the duration component of a disturbance force affects the ultimate energy load, or stress dose, on system components.
For example, the power associated with economic losses was low relative to the power of physical forces affecting SETS. However, the dose of economic losses was several orders of magnitude higher than their power and approached the dose of area-weighted wind.
However, the solar energy load, construed as a positive force for SETS, had the same order of magnitude over an annual cycle as the disturbance forces had over three days. Table 3 and the text have more details. Wind power had significant effects on canopy cover, standing forest biomass, vegetation greenness, and ecosystem processes such as mass and nutrient fluxes and also significantly damaged the gray constructed infrastructure of the Island Lugo Vegetation throughout the island was defoliated and the island acquired a brown color that contrasted with the greenness before the hurricanes Hu and Smith Preliminary results from a Forest Inventory and Analysis systematic insular survey show that tree mortality increased from dry 3.
Winds also knocked down most electrical transmission lines and electricity poles, which affected power transmission and all activities that depended on electricity, including most traffic lights. Roads and trails were cluttered with downed wood and solid wastes.
Excessive rainfall caused historic floods and over 40, landslides in Puerto Rico Bessette-Kirton and others This discrepancy in the area of individual landslides can probably be attributed to the granodiorite intrusions prevailing in the El Yunque quadrangle and the varied geological formations prevailing in the Central Mountains of Puerto Rico.
In both studies, the granodiorite formation had a higher density of landslides than adjacent volcanic formations. Regardless of the area of landslides, roads and bridges were left impassable, isolating whole towns and communities. The structure of some coral reef communities was flattened, and dead corals were transported to beaches where they piled up. Most beaches, particularly in west-northwest, northcentral, and southeastern portions of the Island, lost elevation and had variable width changes Barreto Orta and others Like in similar events in Australia, the direction of waves was as important as their height Harley and others Ocean surge flooded coastal wetlands and resulted on massive tree mortality when ocean waters trapped inland were slow to recede.
Ocean incursions on communities coupled with flood waters affected the contents inside structures and in many cases also destroyed vulnerable human dwellings. This isolation affected the flow of goods, services, and fuels, resulting in the depression of its economy and disruptions in the social order.
For example, floods and landslides isolated communities and interrupted transportation and the capacity of the government to communicate and assist stranded communities. Also, insular communications, the electric power grid, and transportation systems all ceased to function as a result of wind effects and their built-in vulnerabilities. These failures had a high multiplier effect on other sectors of the SETS as the economy of the Island nearly reached a standstill.
Winds dispersed organisms within the forest sector, which also experienced a massive transfer of canopy biomass to the forest floor. These events altered the long-term carbon and nutrient cycles of watersheds Lugo Excessive rains exposed weaknesses in canalized streams and rivers when run-off exceeded canal designed criteria and flooded communities protected from floods of greater frequency than those associated with this extreme event.
The outcome for SETS on the coastal zone was particularly challenging given the massive accumulation of rubble on the shoreline, where removal is expensive and beyond the capacity of government to remove it. The hurricane collapsed the power system and prevented social attention to water pumping stations.
All machines and functions dependent on electrical power were immobilized. As a result, the water purification and distribution system, and the storm water management system failed because water pumping ceased throughout the Island.
These failures of built infrastructure and management in the social and technological subsystem of SETS affected humans but also the ecological systems, particularly aquatic systems. Levels of water pollution in estuaries and protected areas rose significantly as used waters mixed with pluvial and rain waters. Technological systems failed to monitor these effects because those laboratories responsible for environmental monitoring were not functioning.
Similarly, air pollution monitoring and the tsunami alert system also failed to operate post-hurricane. Laboratories and equipment were not functional, and humans could not gain access to their workstations. The loss of canopy and leaf cover in urban vegetation affected the social-technological system by increasing the air temperature and lowering the relative humidity in the city.
The loss of vegetation due to winds, coupled to exposed soils due to poor land use, and the magnitude of the event, affected the water and sediment cycles of the island, which in turn affected costal systems, including coral reefs Miller and others The lack of electric power and its multiple effects on the functioning of a SETS that was fully dependent on fossil fuel generation of electricity, coupled with the absence of communications and transportation, paralyzed the functions of the governance of SETS, and it was up to individual human initiative and community action to address the recovery after the hurricane and provide help to the needy.
After the hurricane, native forests can quickly accumulate biomass and restore forest conditions and cycling processes Scatena and others A longer time is required to restore animal population levels after the storm, as the recovery of pre-hurricane population levels varies with the diet and habitat requirement of the species Brokaw and others Extreme events generate novelty in the ecological sector of SETS.
In contrast to the self-organization and self-repair of the ecological systems within SETS, the social and technological infrastructure requires outside attention to be repaired and modified to face the next extreme disturbance event.
This requires allocation of funds, energy, and time, as well as decisions through the governance system of the SETS. The functioning of the social-technological subsystem introduces a lag in the repair process after the extreme event. This lag explains the contrast between the self-repair of the ecological sector and the repair of gray constructed infrastructure Figure 3.
The analysis of the effects of extreme disturbance events on ecological systems such as the explosion of Mount St. Helens demonstrated the importance of legacies to the recovery of the ecological systems of that region Dale and others Legacies are also important to the recovery of tropical forests after hurricanes Lugo and contribute to forest resilience in light of changing disturbance regimes Johnstone and others In social and technological systems, legacies include non-structural components such as knowledge and culture, and include laws, regulations, planning, and adaptive capacity.
Grove and others show how legacies of the s social injustices in Baltimore influence both the present and future sustainability of that SETS. In fact, the need for a restructuring of the economy after each extreme disturbance event suggests that the previous solutions failed.
Extreme disturbance events appear to have steered the structure and functioning of the Puerto Rico SETS not by randomly affecting each subsystem but as a result of whole system response to events Figure 4.
Each sector of the SETS operates as a system with its own organization, functioning, and resilience capacity, that is, each sector has its own adaptive cycle. But they are open systems connected to other components of SETS and subjected to their influence as well as influencing them. Historical panarchies of Puerto Rico in response to extreme category 4 and 5 in the Saffir—Simpson scale hurricane events blue lines. Shown are time series for land cover top and vegetation from to left to right.
Each of these two subsystems has its own adaptive cycle, and they change and reorganize into a different state with another adaptive cycle in response to extreme events. The effect of land cover on vegetation is shown by the small arrowed line. This simplification is based on Figure 7. Soil organic matter concentration is a proxy for soil conditions controlling ecesis of trees The data on soil organic matter concentration are from Weaver and others for novel forests in the s, Roberts and Soil Conservation Service for pastures and agricultural soils in the s to s, and sources quoted in Lugo for mature native forests assumed to reflect soil conditions before deforestation.
More details in the text. This alteration of a landscape that was initially a forested landscape began by the establishing of low-intensity agricultural activity under the Spanish government and evolved into a monoculture of sugarcane after at the end of the nineteenth century when the island was exposed to a category 5 hurricane San Ciriaco and the military invasion by the Army of the United States of America.
After these two extreme disturbance events, the human population abandoned agricultural lands and moved to cities leading to an urbanization process that returned forests to abandoned agricultural lands. Conditions for ecesis following intensive anthropogenic land use were different from those where humans had not deforested and degraded soils. This is illustrated in Figure 4 with values of organic matter concentration at different times through the twentieth century. Most insular forests are now novel forests Lugo and Helmer ; Martinuzzi and others because of human activity.
First, extreme disturbance events are of such power and complexity that they can influence the level and kind of relationship between humans and their environment. As a result, anthropogenic modifications of the environment through their effect on ecesis can dictate the composition of the species assemblages that emerge through succession after extreme disturbance events.
This means that human reaction to extreme disturbance events can influence the structure and species composition of the ecological systems of SETS, which ecologists have studied as if they were disconnected from human activity. Second, the human legacy on novel forests is so strong that even extreme disturbance events such as hurricanes cannot alter the succession trajectory originally impulsed by anthropogenic effects such as eroded soils Thompson and others , ; Uriarte and others Human legacies cannot be ignored when studying and analyzing ecosystems.
Third, it appears that the species composition and functioning of novel forests is tied to economic activity in the social and technological sectors of SETS.
Such interactions observed in the Puerto Rico SETS reflect a well-integrated system of humans and non-humans functioning in the context of periodic extreme disturbance events. These propositions have in common the close nexus between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic forces and their effects on ecosystems; it is no longer possible to analyze one without consideration of the other. Understanding the Anthropocene through the lens of landfill microbiomes.
Front Ecol Environ — Article Google Scholar. State of the beaches in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria Shore Beach — Google Scholar. Stress effects on natural ecosystems. Chichester: Wiley. Landslides triggered by hurricane Maria: assessment of an extreme event in Puerto Rico. GSA Today. Boulder: The Geological Society of America. Book Google Scholar. Principles for building resilience: sustaining ecosystem services in social-ecological systems.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hurricane impacts to tropical and temperate forest landscapes. Ecol Monogr — Belowground response to drought in a tropical forest soil. Population : The group of individuals of a particular species occupying in a unit area. Example: population of Aedes aegypti yellow fever mosquito in an area. Community : A community can be defined as a combination of different populations in an ecosystem.
For example a pond ecosystem may consist of populations of Spirogyra algae Diatoms, Frogs, Fishes and Insects. The community in an ecosystem is NOT stable.
It passes through many developmental stages in definite sequence over a period of time. These developmental stages in most of the cases will be from simple to complex and it is collectively called as community dynamics. The ecological succession is a complex process and it may take thousands of years. Frederic Clements in for the first time proposed the sequential phases of an ecological succession. The process of succession is completed through a series of sequential steps as given below:.
Nudation 2. Invasion 3. Competition and Co-action 4. Reaction 5. Centralize your equipment inventory, PCB testing schedules and data collection as well as record inspections and track disposal information. Stay organized and in compliance with streamlined and intuitive management of recurring obligations and one-time action items. Efficiently establish employee training requirements, create engaging computer-based training and track employee training status.
Maintain waste profiles, containers, accumulation areas, inspections and shipments. Maintain sample location and collection data and import, verify and trend lab results. Unable to determine whether stormwater permits were in place.
Unable to produce documentation of SPCC, stormwater, and air quality inspections. After After implementing Ecesis this client was able to: Readily access all well pad and equipment information. Click a button to generate regulatory documentation, reports and plans. Quickly compile regulatory reports.
0コメント