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THE DYNAMIC REGIME CONCEPT FOR ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT AND RESTORATION
Citation:
Mayer*,A.L., A. AND M. Rietkerk. THE DYNAMIC REGIME CONCEPT FOR ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT AND RESTORATION. T. M. Beardsley (ed.), BIOSCIENCE. American Institute of Biological Sciences, MCLEAN, VA, 54(11):1013-1020, (2004).
Description:
Dynamic regimes of ecosystems are multidimensional basis of attraction, characterized by particular species communities and ecosystems processes. Ecosystem patterns and processes rarely respond linerarly to disturbances, and the nonlinear cynamic regime concept offers a more realistic construct for understanding ecosystems. Dynamic regimes, and shifts between them, have been reported for a diversity of ecosystem types (e.g., terrestrial, marine, aquatic), at a variety of scales (e.g., small lakes to the global climate). Ecosystem regimes are hightly scale-dependent and may be obvious at one scale, but not at another. Regimes may be maintained by internal relationships and feedbacks between species, while large scale external forces (such as global weather patterns) may overcome these internal relationships and feedbacks between species, while large scale external forces (such as global weather patterns) may overcome these internal influences and trigger shifts to alternative regimes. The dynamic regime concept is commonly used in ecosystem management, restoration and sustainability efforts, where the concept has been termed "state-and-transition", "threshold", or "alternative stable state" models.