This is a challenging new approach to understanding ecological systems especially in urban and urbanised areas. Synthesising current ideas and approaches the book develops an historic context to ecological fusion and recombinant or hybrid ecosystems. With massive climate change and other environmental fluxes, this volume provides insight into consequences for future ecologies. Invasive and non-native or alien species are spreading, often aggressively around the globe. However, much current thinking in ecology and nature conservation fails to accommodate the consequences of changing environmental conditions and fusion of both species and ecological communities. Whether or not conservationists accept ecological change, factors such as urbanisation and globalisation combine with climate and other changes to trigger new hybrid communities and ecologies. Embedding this approach into current ecological thinking this book presents an overview of ideas set in the exemplar case study area of the British Isles. However, the approaches, ideas and conclusions presented here will find application in ecosystem studies and in nature conservation around the world.

Unique synthesis of ideas on recombinant and hybrid ecologies and communities Case studies and examples of ecological fusion and processes Predictive models of future ecologies with nature conservation applications Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Tomasz Samojlik is an environmental historian pursuing the goal of retracing the history of anthropogenic and natural forest changes in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including Poland's Biäowie a Primeval Forest. He has a MSc in European studies from University of Marie Curie-Sk odowska in Lublin and a PhD in biological sciences from Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His current research topics encompass (1) the history of exploitation and protection of BPF in the 19th century, (2) fire history of BPF, (3) past eco-cultural landscapes in the royal forests of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and their bio-cultural heritage, (4) man-wildlife interactions in the historical context. His work combines archival studies and archaeological excavations (in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw), with the analyses of the human impact on past forest ecosystems. Anastasia Fedotova is a senior researcher at St. Petersburg's Branch of Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests incorporate (1) scientific knowledge in the rationalization of agriculture and forestry, (2) environmental history, (3) history of the life and earth sciences: plant ecology, applied botany, agricultural entomology, forest ecology, and soil science in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Professor Ian D. Rotherham is the author of over 400 academic papers, popular and professional articles, books and book chapters, as well as 300 consultancy studies and reports, and over 300 newspaper features. He has broadcast on radio and television in Britain, the USA and in Europe, and writes regular columns for local and regional newspapers and has a regular BBC Radio Sheffield phone-in. He works and researches environmental, historical and tourism issues around the world, and chaos national and international meetings and committees. Along with his core ecological research, his pioneering work on the perceptions and history of alien and exotic species has been widely acclaimed. His research on landscape history has led to a ground breaking handbook on ancient woodland heritage, and a series of books on wetland loss and the history of peat and peat cutting. Prof. Piotr Daszkiewicz, dr habil. in biology and professor in humanities at the Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, for many years connected with the Natural History Museum in Paris, currently working at Agence Française pour la Biodiversité combines his biological and historical background in his research. His studies embrace a wide variety of topics, from the history of natural sciences, through history of research in Biäowie a Primeval Forest and studies on European bison, history of natural collections and museums all around the world, to topics focusing on current and past Polish-French scientific collaboration. For many years, he published articles in "Kultura", the most important Polish emigration journal edited by Jerzy Giedroyc.

Klappentext

This book addresses critical issues of changing ecology and ecosystems consequent on urbanisation, globalisation, climate change, and human cultural influences. Human-induced and natural climate changes and globalisation accelerate hybridisation; anthropogenic influences causing disturbance, nutrient enrichment, habitat replacement (formation and destruction), and global dispersal of species. The ecological processes driving changes are 'natural' mechanisms of ecological successions and changes, and of species and ecosystem hybridisation or adaptation. Today species mix at rates unprecedented in biodiversity evolution history; with the 'Anthropocene', the latest great evolutionary epoch, nature adapts to a new canvas and changed template.

The dramatic and largely unrecognised consequence is hybridisation of both species and ecology. Whilst this process is most easily observed and recognised in increasing urban environments, it occurs more widely, in forestry and agricultural landscapes. With new environmental conditions forged plants, animals and fungi move and mix, beyond natural distributions and limits; old and new, native and exotic, enmeshed in recombinant communities and hybrid ecosystems. Here, and especially in the rapidly expanding urban heartlands of this new ecology, native and alien jostle for position forming novel interactions and dependencies.

This challenging new approach to understanding ecological systems especially in urban and urbanised areas synthesises current ideas. The book develops an historic context to ecological fusion and recombinant or hybrid ecosystems. Invasive and non-native or alien species spread, often aggressively around the globe. Current thinking in ecology and nature conservation fails to accommodate the consequences of changing environmental conditions and fusion of species and ecological communities. Urbanisation and globalisation combine with climate and other changes to trigger new hybrid communities and ecologies. Embedding this approach into current ecological thinking this book presents an overview of ideas set in the exemplar case study area of the British Isles. However, the approaches, ideas and conclusions will find application in ecosystem studies and in nature conservation around the world.

Inhalt

1. An introduction to the concept of recombinant ecology.- 2. An historical perspective of ecological hybridisation.- 3. The impacts of urbanisation.- 4. The impacts of globalisation & cultural severance.- 5. Climate change & ecological hybridisation.- 6. Future nature & the consequences of recombination.