Abstract
Ecosystem health has attracted considerable attention from different disciplines in recent years. However, it still remains a disputed issue whether to focus on its general concept or on operational practice. As a result, these disputations have caused confusion and limited further research in the field of ecosystem health. In this paper, we attempt to introduce a new perspective to the concept of ecosystem health. With the aid of modern statistical methodology, such as factor analysis and normal distribution theory, we provide a conceptual approach to the quantitative assessment of ecosystem health and our method could be applied to various categories of ecosystems.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Christensen S, Van Thi D. 2008. Catch rates as indicators of ecosystem health and exploitation status in the shrimp fishery in the South China sea Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management, 11: 212–224.
Costanza R, Norton BG, Haskell BD. 1992. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Managemen, Island Press, 269pp.
Ehrenfeld D. 1993. Ecosystem health. Orion, 12: 12–15.
Gatto M. 1995. Sustainability -is it a well-defined concept Ecological Applications, 5: 1181–1183.
Hutton J. 1788. Theory of the earth (2007, Released), NuVision Publications, LLC, 80pp.
Karr JR. 1981. Assessment of biotic integrity using fish communities. Fisheries, 6: 21–27.
Kimura M. 1968. Evolutionary rate at molecular level. Nature 217: 624–626.
Leopold A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, Oxford University Press, 228pp.
Levin SA. 1995. Scale and sustainability: A population and community perspective. pp. 103–114. In (M. Munasinghe and W. Shearer, eds.) Defining and Measuring Sustainability: The Biogeophysical Foundations. The United Nations University, New York: The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Mageau MT, Costanza R, Ulanowicz RE. 1998. Quantifying the trends expected in developing ecosystems. Ecological Modelling, 112: 1–22.
Rapport DJ. 1989. What constitutes ecosystem health? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 33: 120–132.
Rapport DJ. 1998. Ecosystem health as an ecotone. Ecosystem Health, 4: 1–2.
Rapport DJ, Costanza R, McMichael AJ. 1998. Assessing ecosystem health. Trends In Ecology & Evolution, 13: 397–402.
Rapport DJ, Regier HA, Hutchinson TC. 1985. Ecosystem behavior under stress. The American Naturalist, 125: 617–640.
Rapport DJ, Thorpe C, Regier HA. 1979. Ecosystem medicine. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 60: 180–182.
Rapport DJ, Lasley BL, Rolston DE, Nielsen NO, Qualset CO, Damania AB. 2003. Managing for healthy ecosystems, CRC Press. 1056pp.
Stephens C, Parkes MW, Chang H. 2007. Indigenous perspectives on ecosystem sustainability and health. Ecohealth, 4: 369–370.
Ulanowicz RE. 1980. An hypothesis on the development of natural communities Journal of Theoretical Biology, 85: 223–245.
Venkiteswaran JJ, Schiff SL, Wassenaar LI, 2008. Aquatic metabolism and ecosystem health assessment using dissolved O-2 stable isotope diel curves Ecological Applications, 18: 965–982.
Wu JG. 1999. Hierarchy and scaling: extrapolating information along a scaling ladder Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 25: 367–380.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Foundation project: This work was supported by National Key Technology R&D program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No.2007BAB23C03) and its sub-project of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No.2007BAB23C03-01)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, Ht., Gu, Cj., Liang, T. et al. A new perspective of ecosystem health. Journal of Forestry Research 22, 127–132 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-011-0138-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-011-0138-z