Coastal Wetlands of the World
Rating: David B Scott, Jennifer Frail-Gauthier and Petra J Mudies. 2014. Coastal Wetlands of the World: Geology, Ecology, Distribution and Applications. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 1 107 62825 0 Coastal wetlands (read – salt marshes and mangroves) have been neglected, or worse, for decades. They are seen as something stopping a clear view of the sea or making it difficult to dredge a harbour or any number of other excuses rather than see them for the value they possess. […]
How are we doing Ecology?
A couple of things have conspired to turn me away from a review and towards the reflection of a blog post! The first was the receipt of a potential review text titled “How to do Ecology” (Karban and Huntzinger, 2006); the rest comes from our BES Bulletin and following a few leads from the website. For some reason, the text date didn’t become clear until I started because I normally only look at the most recent publications; the upside was […]
The Rise of the Science Citizen
“Citizen science is creating excitement throughout the ecological world” Serendipity strikes again! Just as I was completing some work for students on systems models so an email arrives inviting me to participate in a programme of “lagoon” (read freshwater areas, this is Australia!) studies. The proponents (a local university research team) want to investigate how people interact with nature. That was easy to complete, so we are going along in a few weeks time. Returning home I get the latest […]
Shark!
I think it would be safe to say there’s been something of a shark frenzy over here in Australia in the past few weeks. Headlines like this surface every now and again and are always worth a few column cm (or whatever the digital equivalent is). The trouble is, they lead on to a set of predictable responses, from both sides of the conservation fence, and I’m not sure that this actually helps understanding or safety. Let’s look at the […]
Multiple Stable States in Natural Ecosystems
Rating: Peter Petraitis. 2013. Multiple Stable States in Natural Ecosystems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978 0 19 956934 2 One of the more pressing issues we face when considering wicked problems like global climate change is the likely fate of ecosystems. Common amongst the general comments are the ideas of “tipping points” – a set of conditions “beyond” which there will be a change of ecosystem state that cannot be reversed. This might seem “reasonable” but it depends on your […]
Ocean Health Index
Ocean Health Index – This is a project run by a large group of very well-known US scientists attempting to put a simple data set together to show how the oceans are faring.
Where to from here?
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been considering careers policies in my institution or perhaps it’s because I’ve been trawling through a recent issue of the BES bulletin but it strikes me that there’s a considerable amount of material out there but also a few gaps. On the plus side, the amount of information for graduates is considerable. We can start with the BES’s own career guides, move on to the excellent guide from a raft of biological societies called “Next Steps” […]
And you say it’s what?
Over the years, one of the most crucial but difficult skills has been species identification. OK, difficult for me but I’m guessing , possibly, others! It might be because I came to ecology via earth sciences (rocks and fossils no issue, living material, more difficult!). Looking through the BES bulletins, I found a common thread. How do we accurately identify species in the field and, probably as an adjunct, but I’d argue needs a higher profile, how do we support […]
Vegetation Ecology
Rating: Eddy van der Maarel and Janet Franklin. eds. 2013. Vegetation Ecology. 2e. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978 1 4443 3889 8. Of course, the study of vegetation in ecology is one of the oldest parts of the discipline, as vegetation science is in many allied disciplines e.g. biogeography (although one of the first discrete texts was published only in 1974!). Nominally concerned with plant cover and the relationships with the environment, vegetation science has grown considerably as a discipline in recent […]
Novel Ecosystems
Rating: Richard J Hobbs, Eric S Higgs and Carol M Hall (eds). 2013. Novel Ecosystems – Intervening in the new ecological world order. Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978 1 1183 5422 3 It’s not every day that you get to see a new perspective in a subject but this text might well be one such case. The central argument is that since we can’t “win” in some areas because invasive species have taken over then we might as well learn to […]
