Summary

Meeting today's environmental challenges requires a new way of thinking about the intricate dependencies between humans and nature. Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation provides students and other readers with a basic understanding of the fundamental principles of ecological science and their applications, offering an essential overview of the way ecology can be used to devise strategies to conserve the health and functioning of ecosystems.



The book begins by exploring the need for ecological science in understanding current environmental issues and briefly discussing what ecology is and isn't. Subsequent chapters address critical issues in conservation and show how ecological science can be applied to them. The book explores questions such as:

* What is the role of ecological science in decision making?

* What factors govern the assembly of ecosystems and determine their response to various stressors?

* How does Earth's climate system function and determine the distribution of life on Earth?

* What factors control the size of populations?

* How does fragmentation of the landscape affect the persistence of species on the landscape?

* How does biological diversity influence ecosystem processes?

Choice Review

This book aims to be an introduction to fundamental principles of ecological sciences for readers not familiar with ecology as a scientific discipline. Schmitz (Yale) expresses his hope that readers will gain appreciation for the interconnectedness of ecosystems. The book is divided into 10 chapters exploring the need for and foundations of ecological sciences; climate; biodiversity (including factors determining abundance of rare or abundant species); and spatial and temporal interactions of species and their ecosystem services. The book ends with chapters on protection of biodiversity and ecosystem function using a science-based conservation ethic. In the second half readers will find some of the fascination of biodiversity the author tries to convey. This work fails entirely to draw unfamiliar readers into the subject due to the mathematical development of basic ecological principles at the beginning of the book. In addition, the text is extremely dense and difficult to read, even for well-informed readers. Ecology and ecosystem conservation is too brief, too complex, and thus too confusing to become an introduction to ecological sciences. Summing Up: Not recommended. B. Blossey Cornell University