Resistance and Resilience of Pond and Stream Ecosystems to Toxicant Stress: Project Summary

摘要

This project will evaluate hypotheses concerning the resistance and resilience of aquatic ecosystems exposed to toxic chemicals. Our goals are to develop diagnostic criteria for ecosystem classification and to improve existing methods of ecological risk estimation. The development of models that predict ecosystem level effects requires quantifying the relationships between the underlying control structure of ecosystems (patterns of energy and material flux) and the contributions of thos structures to ecosystem resistance and resilience. We address these problems through an integration of manipulative experiments, multidimensional state space analysis, and ecosystem modeling. These studies will quantify the underlying rate structure in pond and stream systems (including, production, herbivory, nutrient uptake and recycling) and will measure changes in their structures in response to perturbations by toxicants. (ERA citation 12:037838)