An ecoregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. In theory, biodiversity or conservation ecoregions are relatively large areas of land or water where the probability of encountering different species and communities at any given point remains relatively constant, within an acceptable range of variation . Ecoregions are also known as "ecozones", although that term may also refer to biogeographic realms.
Ecoinformatics, or ecological informatics, is the science of information in ecology and environmental science. It integrates environmental and information sciences to define entities and natural processes with language common to both humans and computers. However, this is a rapidly developing area in ecology and there are alternative perspectives on what constitutes ecoinformatics.
The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) was built by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) on the basis of a 10-Year Implementation Plan running from 2005 to 2015. GEOSS seeks to connect the producers of environmental data and decision-support tools with the end users of these products, with the aim of enhancing the relevance of Earth observations to global issues. GEOSS aims to produce a global public infrastructure that generates comprehensive, near-real-time environmental data, information and analyses for a wide range of users. The Secretariat Director of Geoss is Barbara Ryan.
The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network consists of a group of over 1800 scientists and students studying ecological processes over extended temporal and spatial scales. Twenty-eight LTER sites cover a diverse set of ecosystems. It is part of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER). The LTER Program was established in 1980 and is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Data from LTER sites is publicly available in the Environmental Data Initiative repository and findable through DataONE search.
The University of Georgia Marine Institute (UGAMI) is a nearshore ecological and geological research station located on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia in the United States. This island lies between the Atlantic Ocean and a pristine salt marsh. A ferry takes passengers from Meridian to Sapelo Island. The Island has fewer than 100 full-time residents. The Institute was created in 1953 and is currently a unit of the University of Georgia's Office of Research. The Institute is 280 miles southeast of the University of Georgia's main campus in Athens. UGAMI is world-renowned for its research on coastal marine and estuarine ecosystems.
The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS) Initiative, brainchild of environment policy researcher Remi Chandran, is an environmental governance project developed for assisting in monitoring the effectiveness of enforcement and compliance of wildlife law at a national level. The purpose of WEMS initiative is to monitor trafficking and illegal wildlife crime through a joint effort carried out by United Nations bodies, national governments, private industries, civil society and research institutions, by building a common data collection and reporting mechanism at a national level. The project plans to bring together various national institutions to a common information sharing platform and thereby building the capacity of the states to manage knowledge on wildlife crime trends and threat assessments. The compiled data will be then analyzed and selected non nominal information will be made available online through the WEMS website. WEMS will also help in providing analysed information electronically to all the national enforcement agencies and international policy makers including Interpol and CITES Secretariat. Selected information will be shared with the public for bringing awareness about wildlife Crime. The WEMS initiative works by bringing together Customs, Police, and Forest to a common information sharing mechanism within the national government and this will improve inter agency cooperation in tackling environmental crime holistically. Research and analysis of the crime data will be carried out through a designated national research Institute which will also carry out policy analysis identifying the trends and reasons for non compliance. It will also attempt to analyse the legal decisions on wildlife crimes from data obtained from local courts and will be able to identify weakness in legislation if any. Apart from this, the carriers involved in the illegal trade will also be recorded.
The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System will provide the platform for our enforcement agencies to collect and share information on the trends and patterns of wildlife crime. Moreover, the cross-border nature of wild life crime underscores the need to enhance cooperation among our governments and to pool financial and human resources. I am confident that these measures will go a long way in enhancing our capacity to protect our wildlife resources.
The Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research (VCR/LTER) project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The VCR/LTER project's research activities focus on the mosaic of transitions and steady-state systems that comprise the barrier-island/lagoon/mainland landscape of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Research is conducted in mainland marshes, the lagoon system behind the barrier islands, and on the islands themselves, particularly Hog Island. The VCR/LTER began operation in 1987. It initially focused on geophysical controls on coastal ecosystems. In 1992-1994 it broadened that focus to address the concept of ecological state change, which was linked in 1994-2000 to relationships between free surfaces. More recent work (2000-2006), added a hypsometric perspective, which provides an alternate way of examining ecological patterns on the coastal landscape. It makes extensive use of the Virginia Coast Reserve of The Nature Conservancy.
Harvard Forest is an ecological research area of 4,000 acres (16 km2) owned and managed by Harvard University and located in Petersham, Massachusetts. The property, in operation since 1907, includes one of North America's oldest managed forests, educational and research facilities, a museum, and recreation trails. Harvard Forest is open to the public.
Trout Lake is in Vilas County, Wisconsin, near the towns of Boulder Junction and Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin. With a surface area of 6.208 sq mi (16.079 km2) and a volume of 0.058 cu mi (0.240 km3), Trout Lake is one of the largest lakes in Vilas County. It has 16.1 mi (25.9 km) of shoreline, a large portion of which is undeveloped. There are also seven islands within the lake: Miller Island, Zimmerman Island, Haunted Island, Easter Island, Fisk Island, Chocolate Drop Island, and an unnamed island. It is a dimictic oligotrophic lake that supports a large number of sport fish, which has made it a popular angling destination.
Environmental informatics is the science of information applied to environmental science. As such, it provides the information processing and communication infrastructure to the interdisciplinary field of environmental sciences aiming at data, information and knowledge integration, the application of computational intelligence to environmental data as well as the identification of environmental impacts of information technology. The UK Natural Environment Research Council defines environmental informatics as the "research and system development focusing on the environmental sciences relating to the creation, collection, storage, processing, modelling, interpretation, display and dissemination of data and information." Kostas Karatzas defined environmental informatics as the "creation of a new 'knowledge-paradigm' towards serving environmental management needs." Karatzas argued further that environmental informatics "is an integrator of science, methods and techniques and not just the result of using information and software technology methods and tools for serving environmental engineering needs."
The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) is South Africa's government agency responsible for the promotion and development of aeronautics and aerospace space research. It fosters cooperation in space-related activities and research in space science, seeks to advance scientific engineering through human capital, as well as the peaceful use of outer space, and supports the creation of an environment conducive to the industrial development of space technologies within the framework of national government.
DataONE is a network of interoperable data repositories facilitating data sharing, data discovery, and open science. Originally supported by $21.2 million in funding from the US National Science Foundation as one of the initial DataNet programs in 2009, funding was renewed in 2014 through 2020 with an additional $15 million. DataONE helps preserve, access, use, and reuse of multi-discipline scientific data through the construction of primary cyberinfrastructure and an education and outreach program. DataONE provides scientific data archiving for ecological and environmental data produced by scientists. DataONE's goal is to preserve and provide access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national data. Users include scientists, ecosystem managers, policy makers, students, educators, librarians, and the public.
The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, commonly referred to as Andrews Forest, is located near Blue River, Oregon, United States, and is managed cooperatively by the United States Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and the Willamette National Forest. It was one of only 610 UNESCO International Biosphere Reserves, until being withdrawn from the program as of June 14, 2017, and a Long Term Ecological Research site. It is situated in the middle of the Western Cascades.
The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is an organisation tasked with research and dissemination of information on biodiversity, and legally mandated to contribute to the management of the country's biodiversity resources.
Deborah K. Steinberg is an American Antarctic biological oceanographer who works on interdisciplinary oceanographic research programs. Steinberg's research focuses on the role that zooplankton play in marine food webs and the global carbon cycle, and how these small drifting animals are affected by changes in climate.
Sharon J. Hall is an ecosystem ecologist and associate professor at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on ecosystem ecology and the ways that human activity interacts with the environment.
Sally Archibald is a South African scientist and Professor at the University of Witwatersrand. Her research primarily focuses on savanna ecosystems within the context of global climate change as well as the exploration of fire ecology and earth-system feedbacks. Archibald was the recipient of the 2012 Mercer Award for her co-authorship of the paper "Tree cover in sub-Saharan Africa: Rainfall and fire constrain forest and savanna as alternative stable states".
SeaKeys is a large collaborative marine biodiversity project funded through the Foundational Biodiversity Information Program in South Africa. The purpose of the project is to collect and distribute genetic, species and ecosystem information relating to marine biodiversity in southern Africa, which may be used to support informed decision-making about the marine environment.
Anne E. Giblin is a marine biologist who researches the cycling of elements nitrogen, sulfur, iron and phosphorus. She is a Senior Scientist and Acting Director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Lab.
The Biodiversity of South Africa is the variety of living organisms within the boundaries of South Africa and its exclusive economic zone. South Africa is a region of high biodiversity in the terrestrial and marine realms. The country is ranked sixth out of the world's seventeen megadiverse countries, and is rated among the top 10 for plant species diversity and third for marine endemism.
