Download or read book The Ecology of Fynbos written by Richard M. Cowling and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's Cape Floristic Region includes approximately 8,500 plant species. Most of this biodiversity is concentrated in fynbos, a fire-prone shrubland occurring on the sandy, infertile soils which predominate in this region.This book reviews a decade of rigorous research into the biogeography, ecology and management of fynbos, carried out under the auspices of the Fynbos Biome Project.
Download or read book Fynbos written by Nicky Allsopp and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's fynbos region has intrigued biologists for centuries. It has achieved iconic status as a locus of megadiversity and therefore a place to study the ecological underpinnings of massive evolutionary radiations. Researchers have made great advances over the past two decades in unravelling the complexities of fynbos ecology and evolution, and the region has contributed significant insights into the adaptive radiations of large lineages, conservation science, pollination biology, invasive plant biology, and palaeoanthropology. Lessons from the fynbos offer much of value for understanding the origin, maintenance, and conservation of diversity anywhere in the world. This book provides the first synthesis of the field for 20 years, bringing together the latest ecological and evolutionary research on the South African global biodiversity hotspots of the Greater Cape Floristic Region - the iconic fynbos and succulent karoo. It explores the historical and modern physical and biological environment of this region, the circumstances and processes which have fostered its remarkable biodiversity, and the role this diversity has played in the emergence of modern humans. It also discusses the challenges of contemporary management and conservation of the region's biodiversity in the face of accelerating global change.
Download or read book Fynbos written by Karen J. Esler and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fynbos region is one of the most spectacularly diverse places on Earth. This is not an idle statement. When one considers the diversity of insects, freshwater and marine species also associated with the Cape, this hotspot is arguably the hottest of all.
Download or read book Fynbos Ecology written by Cooperative Scientific Programmes (South Africa) and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Vegetation of Southern Africa written by R. M. Cowling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive illustrated guide to plant science and ecology of southern African vegetation.
Download or read book A Description of Major Vegetation Categories in and Adjacent to the Fynbos Biome written by Eugene John Moll and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fire in South African Mountain Fynbos written by Brian W. van Wilgen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecologists are increasingly being drawn into the task of addressing problems of environmental degradation. They are expected to find solutions that will lead to sustainable resource use throughout the world. In doing so, the robustness of the science becomes increasingly important, and the problem of extrapolating the results of research conducted within what is usually a relatively limited geographical scope is increasingly highlighted. One approach to developing a globally robust ecology involves more or less formal intercontinental comparative studies, usually focused on the question of ecological convergence. These studies are directed at testing the prediction that similar physical and other environmental factors in different parts of the world, through their selective influences, will give rise to ecosystems which share com mon structural and functional features. Should this be true, the predictive power of ecology developed within such a framework should be sufficient to solve similar problems elsewhere in such biomes. There is a long history of such an approach in mediterranean type ecosystems, documented in a series of volumes and their accompanying scientific papers beginning with that of Di Castri and Mooney (1973).
Download or read book Mediterranean Type Ecosystems written by F.J. Kruger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of ecological convergence underlies the biogeographers' maps of world biome-types. It also determines the degree to which ecological principles, derived from research on particular populations, communities or ecosystems, are generally valid, and hence also to what extent resource management principles are general. To quote Di Castri and Mooney (1973): "In effect, in order to assess the transfer of technology, it is essential to know to what extent information acquired from studying one particular ecosystem is applicable to another ecosystem of the same type but situated in a different location. " The five relatively small, isolated, mediterranean-climate zones of the earth, each with its distinct fauna and flora, have provided the ideal testing grounds for this theory. A heritage of precisely focused ecosystems research has resulted, beginning with the international comparative analyses conducted by Specht (l969a, b) but with antecedents in earlier studies in South Australia (Specht and Rayson 1957, Specht 1973). Cody and Mooney (1978) reviewed the information available at the time for the four zones excepting Australia and concluded that the arrays of strategy-types to be found among the different biotas were so similar that they could be explained only in terms of the convergence hypothesis; nevertheless, evident differences in community organization and dynamics, especially phenol ogy, required closer study of resource availability and resource-use patterns to better explain relations between form and function overall, and to assess the degree of convergence at higher levels of organization than the population.
Download or read book The Ecology of Place written by Ian Billick and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecologists can spend a lifetime researching a small patch of the earth, studying the interactions between organisms and the environment, and exploring the roles those interactions play in determining distribution, abundance, and evolutionary change. With so few ecologists and so many systems to study, generalizations are essential. But how do you extrapolate knowledge about a well-studied area and apply it elsewhere? Through a range of original essays written by eminent ecologists and naturalists, The Ecology of Place explores how place-focused research yields exportable general knowledge as well as practical local knowledge, and how society can facilitate ecological understanding by investing in field sites, place-centered databases, interdisciplinary collaborations, and field-oriented education programs that emphasize natural history. This unique patchwork of case-study narratives, philosophical musings, and historical analyses is tied together with commentaries from editors Ian Billick and Mary Price that develop and synthesize common threads. The result is a unique volume rich with all-too-rare insights into how science is actually done, as told by scientists themselves.
Download or read book Plant animal interactions in Mediterranean type ecosystems written by Margarita Arianoutsou-Faraggitaki and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sixth International Conference on Mediterranean Climate ecosystems was held at Maleme (Crete), Greece, from September 23 to September 27, 1991. This conference had as its theme 'Plant-Animal Interactions in Mediterranean-type Ecosystems'. Most of the papers presented to that meeting have already been published (see Thanos, C.A. ed., 1992, Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Mediterranean Climate Ecosystems, Athens, 389 pp.). These 57 papers were all necessarily short. But the theme of plant-animal interactions was considered by the Organizing Committee to be so important to a fundamental understanding of the ecology of Mediterranean-climate ecosystems and to an enhanced management ·of those systems that various international research scientists were invited to prepare longer contributions on major aspects of the overall theme. The Book that follows represents the result of those invitations. All five regions of Mediterranean climate are represented - Chile, California, southern Australia and the Cape Province of South Africa, as well as the Mediterranean Basin itself.
Download or read book A Bibliography of Fynbos Ecology written by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (South Africa) and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Fynbos Year written by Michael Fraser and published by New Africa Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The southern and south-western Cape, which has a richer plant life than that of the whole British Isles, forms one of the major floral kingdoms of the world, and is home to a wide variety of birds, mammals, reptiles and insects. Liz McMahon's illustrations are complemented by Michael Fraser's text.
Download or read book The Biodiversity of African Plants written by Xander van der Maesen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of the XIVth AETFAT Congress, 22-27 August 1994, Wageningen, the Netherlands
Download or read book Ecosystems of Disturbed Ground written by L.R. Walker and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1999-12-17 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the human population inexorably grows, its cumulative impact on the Earth's resources is hard to ignore. The ability of the Earth to support more humans is dependent on the ability of humans to manage natural resources wisely. Because disturbance alters resource levels, effective management requires understanding of the ecology of disturbance. This book is the first to take a global approach to the description of both natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes that physically impact the ground. Natural disturbances such as erosion, volcanoes, wind, herbivory, flooding and drought plus anthropogenic disturbances such as foresty, grazing, mining, urbanization and military actions are considered. Both disturbance impacts and the biotic recovery are addressed as well as the interactions of different types of disturbance. Other chapters cover processes that are important to the understanding of disturbance of all types including soil processes, nutrient cycles, primary productivity, succession, animal behaviour and competition. Humans react to disturbances by avoiding, exacerbating, or restoring them or by passing environmental legislation. All of these issues are covered in this book.Managers need better predictive models and robust data-collections that help determine both site-specfic and generalized responses to disturbance. Multiple disturbances have a complex effect on both physical and biotic processes as they interact. This book provides a wealth of detail about the process of disturbance and recovery as well as a synthesis of the current state of knowledge about disturbance theory, with extensive documentation.
Download or read book A Bibliography of Fynbos Ecology written by P. T. Manders and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ecology of Fire written by Robert J. Whelan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-08-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wildfires kill many animals, but are populations of animals affected? How do animals survive the passage of fire? Why do some tree species survive and others die in a fire? Do frequent fires cause changes in plant community composition? Answering questions such as these requires an understanding of the ecological effects of fire. Aimed at senior undergraduate students, researchers, foresters and other land managers, Dr Whelan's book examines the changes wrought by fires with reference to general ecological theory. The impacts of fires on individual organisms, populations and communities are examined separately, and emphasis is placed on the importance of fire regime. Each chapter includes a listing of 'outstanding questions' that identify gaps in current knowledge. The book finishes by summarising the major aspects of ecology that are of particular relevance to management of fires - both protection against wildfires and deliberate use of fire.
Download or read book Plant Functional Types written by Thomas Michael Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-05-13 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes approaches and methods for grouping species with similar characteristics into functional types in ways which maximise our potential to predict accurately the responses of real vegetation with real species diversity.
