Ecological Experiments

Ecological research and the way that ecologists use statistics continues to change rapidly. This second edition of the best-selling Design and Analysis of Ecological Experiments leads these trends with an update of this now-standard reference book, with a discussion of the latest developments in experimental ecology and statistical practice. The goal of this volume is to encourage the correct use of some of the more well known statistical techniques and to make some of the less well known but potentially very useful techniques available. Chapters from the first edition have been substantially revised and new chapters have been added. Readers are introduced to statistical techniques that may be unfamiliar to many ecologists, including power analysis, logistic regression, randomization tests and empirical Bayesian analysis. In addition, a strong foundation is laid in more established statistical techniques in ecology including exploratory data analysis, spatial statistics, path analysis and meta-analysis. Each technique is presented in the context of resolving an ecological issue. Anyone from graduate students to established research ecologists will find a great deal of new practical and useful information in this current edition.

First published in 1996, this book is a logical and consistent approach to experimental design using statistical principles.

Ecological Experiments stresses the importance to ecology of field experiments, where variables are manipulated in order to collect data on specific hypotheses, as opposed to the more passive observational method. The book begins by introducing a series of ecological questions that can be addressed experimentally for example, what is the significance of competition among species? The minimal requirements of experimental design that must be met are then introduced, together with examples of good and poor experiments from the ecological literature and a consideration of the trade-offs that may be forced on the experimenter by field conditions. All ecologists, and especially students beginning their careers in field study, will find in this text a good introduction to the experimental foundation of ecology.

Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to "the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time." To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.

Presents step-by-step instructions for ecological experiments.

The need to understand and address large-scale environmental problems that are difficult to study in controlled environments—issues ranging from climate change to overfishing to invasive species—is driving the field of ecology in new and important directions. Observation and Ecology documents that transformation, exploring how scientists and researchers are expanding their methodological toolbox to incorporate an array of new and reexamined observational approaches—from traditional ecological knowledge to animal-borne sensors to genomic and remote-sensing technologies—to track, study, and understand current environmental problems and their implications. The authors paint a clear picture of what observational approaches to ecology are and where they fit in the context of ecological science. They consider the full range of observational abilities we have available to us and explore the challenges and practical difficulties of using a primarily observational approach to achieve scientific understanding. They also show how observations can be a bridge from ecological science to education, environmental policy, and resource management. Observations in ecology can play a key role in understanding our changing planet and the consequences of human activities on ecological processes. This book will serve as an important resource for future scientists and conservation leaders who are seeking a more holistic and applicable approach to ecological science.

Experimentation is a dominant approach in contemporary ecological research, pervading studies at all levels of biological organization and across diverse taxa and habitats. Experimental Ecology assembles an eminent group of ecologists who synthesize insights from these varied sources into a cogent statement about experimentalism as an analytical paradigm, placing experimentation within the larger framework of ecological investigation. The book discusses diverse experimental approaches ranging from laboratory microcosms to manipulation of entire ecosystem, illustrating the myriad ways experiments strengthen ecological inference. Experimental ecologists critique their science to move the field forward on all fronts: from better designs, to better links between experiments and theory, to more realism in experiments targeted at specific systems and questions.

The Handbook provides a supporting guide to key aspects and applications of landscape ecology to underpin its research and teaching. A wide range of contributions written by expert researchers in the field summarize the latest knowledge on landscape ecology theory and concepts, landscape processes, methods and tools, and emerging frontiers. Landscape ecology is an interdisciplinary and holistic discipline, and this is reflected in the chapters contained in this Handbook. Authors from varying disciplinary backgrounds tackle key concepts such as landscape structure and function, scale and connectivity; landscape processes such as disturbance, flows, and fragmentation; methods such as remote sensing and mapping, fieldwork, pattern analysis, modelling, and participation and engagement in landscape planning; and emerging frontiers such as ecosystem services, landscape approaches to biodiversity conservation, and climate change. Each chapter provides a blend of the latest scientific understanding of its focal topics along with considerations and examples of their application from around the world. An invaluable guide to the concepts, methods, and applications of landscape ecology, this book will be an important reference text for a wide range of students and academics in ecology, geography, biology, and interdisciplinary environmental studies.

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures: Challenges and Opportunities reveals how environmental research infrastructures (RIs) provide new valuable insights on ecological processes that cannot be realized by more traditional short-term funding cycles and are integral to understand our changing world. This book bonds the latest state-of-the-science knowledge on environmental RIs, the challenges in creating them, their place in addressing scientific frontiers, and the new perspectives they bear. Each chapter is thoughtfully invested with fresh viewpoints from the environmental RI vantage as the authors explore and explain many topics such as the rationale and challenges in global change, field and modeling platforms, new tools, challenges in data management, distilling information into knowledge, and new developments in large-scale RIs. This work serves an advantageous guide for academics and practitioners alike who aim to deepen their knowledge in the field of science and project management, and logistics operations.

Ecologists are increasingly tackling difficult issues like global change, loss of biodiversity and sustainability of ecosystem services. These and related topics are enormously challenging, requiring unprecedented multidisciplinary collaboration and rapid synthesis of large amounts of diverse data into information and ultimately knowledge. New sensors, computers, data collection and storage devices and analytical and statistical methods provide a powerful tool kit to support analyses, graphics and visualizations that were unthinkable even a few years ago. New and increased emphasis on accessibility, management, processing and sharing of high-quality, well-maintained and understandable data represents a significant change in how scientists view and treat data. These issues are complex and despite their importance, are typically not addressed in database, ecological and statistical textbooks. This book addresses these issues, providing a much needed resource for those involved in designing and implementing ecological research, as well as students who are entering the environmental sciences. Chapters focus on the design of ecological studies, data management principles, scientific databases, data quality assurance, data documentation, archiving ecological data and information and processing data into information and knowledge. The book stops short of a detailed treatment of data analysis, but does provide pointers to the relevant literature in graphics, statistics and knowledge discovery. The central thesis of the book is that high quality data management systems are critical for addressing future environmental challenges. This requires a new approach to how we conduct ecological research, that views data as a resource and promotes stewardship, recycling and sharing of data. Ecological Data will be particularly useful to those ecologists and information specialists that actively design, manage and analyze environmental databases. However, it will also benefit a wider audience of scientists and students in the ecological and environmental sciences.