Comparative ecological research and representative natural areas
In the last few years, international cooperation in the ecological sciences has tended to focus on site-specific or complementary rather than comparative projects. The time is now right for boosting comparative ecology. Such research can help ecology mature into a science more capable of prediction in time and extrapolation in space, as well as providing a sounder scientific underpinning for conservation. Three principal types of ingredients for comparative studies are proposed: first, an improved theoretical basis for planning for such studies, with two suggested approaches bases on the "fixing" either of phylogenetic stock (the gradient approache) or of environmental variables in disjunct geographical areas (the ecological analogues approach); second, typologies of comparable research areas; and third, representative sties for long-term research. Biosphere reserves have an important long-term contribution to make to different types of comparative study, in providing ecologists with representative control areas which can be compared with manipulated or distrubed sites. The design and implementation of such research should figure prominentley in the follow-up of the Minsk Congress.
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | biblioteca |
| Published: |
URSS
1984
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| Subjects: | AREAS SILVESTRES REPRESENTATIVAS, |
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