无机质谱书籍推荐：Stable Isotopes as Indicators of Ecological Change

书籍推荐 · 发表于 2017-6-10 23:09:20

The twentieth century experienced environmental changes that appear to be unprecedented in their rate and magnitude during the Earth’s history. As human influences on the environment continue through the twenty-first century, alterations to the functions and services that
ecosystems provide to society are expected to accelerate. Land use and land cover change, atmospheric change, and losses of or transformations to ecosystem biodiversity have and will continue to have both predictable and unpredictable impacts on the environments microbes, plants and animals depend on. These effects will be further exacerbated by the deposition of pollutants caused by increased urbanization and industrialization. During the past century or more, the types of environmental changes cited above have been paralleled by changes in the isotopic composition of a wide variety of substrates in the environment. Stable isotope data obtained from the analysis of such substrates therefore serves as important recorder, indicator, or tracer of change. The stable isotope composition of animal and plant tissues, soil organic matter, the carbonates of teeth, corals, soils, and sediments, as well as in water sources moving through the hydrosphere and the atmosphere have all recorded diverse changes to modern environments. Many of these isotope records demonstrate nonlinear, threshold responses to change that would be difficult or impossible to detect using other methods. Stable isotope data can therefore serve as a tool for long-term monitoring of environmental change as well as an indicator of the types of ecological changes that could be used to predict future transformations to a wide range of Earth systems (physical, chemical, and/or biological).
Considerable progress has been made in the past two decades toward understanding the processes that lead to isotopic variation in a diversity of different materials, many with biological origins that allow a more reliable interpretation of the environmental record. Based on short-term records (10–200
t years), we now have the foundations to test, validate, and refine our current understanding of this isotopic information. In addition, we possess abundant archives and inventories of various sample types in museum specimens, bands in sediment cores, and from rings sampled from wood or carbonates that could serve as isotope records of change over timescales from centuries to millennia. These archives also hold the potential to reveal how ecosystems have responded to environmental and biotic fluctuations in the past. Such records could serve modeling efforts aimed at predicting how the terrestrial ecosystems might respond to the ongoing rapid alterations and enhance the prognostic power of new models to evaluate future scenarios involving the ongoing anthropogenic impacts.
This special volume contains chapters that are the result of an international conference-workshop entitled ‘‘Isotopes as Tracers of Ecological Change’’ held in Tomar, Portugal, March 13–25, 2006 (see the meeting logo below; artwork by So′nia Tenreiro).
The goal of this special volume is to draw together a wide range of perspectives and data that speak directly to the issues of ecological change using stable isotope samples. The information presented in each of the chapters originates from a range of biological and geochemical sources and from research fields within biological, climatological, and physical disciplines covering timescales from days to centuries. This special volume therefore highlights where isotope data can detect, record, trace and help to interpret environmental change.
The volume highlights examples from talks, poster presentations, and discussions that occurred at the conference-workshop and emphasize how isotope data are demonstrating changes in processes we can see in ecological time at different spatial scales. A diverse suite of authors with equally broad expertise provides conceptual frameworks for using stable isotopes to reconstruct ecological change and then present supporting data derived from soils, sediments, plants, animals, water, specific
compounds, carbonates, and gases that each clearly demonstrate modifications and transformation to a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic systems at scales relevant to ecologists. While each chapter examines and discusses case studies and ongoing investigations, they also ‘‘draw the map’’ and define where new research directions exist or are needed that will facilitate a deeper understanding about how alterations to ecosystems have occurred. The chapters and their authors provide an international perspective as well and so many of the chapter discussions highlight possible research initiatives both within and across national boundaries. This special volume also marks the final workshop of the first 5-year phase of the BASIN and SIBAE coordinated networks. No other volume has ever been produced on this particular topic that we know of.
As we organized the meeting that lead to the chapters contained in this volume we considered several elements we wanted to include. The volume’s audience could be researchers, scientists, and educated laypeople interested in environmental change. The topics discussed touch on the disciplines of biology, ecology, climatology, geology, paleontology, oceanography, and atmospheric science and cover timescales from hours to days, to centuries. One goal for the volume is to try and achieve broad appeal for students, researchers, and agency staff who desire to read the latest findings. As mentioned, our authors are the leading researchers in the field largely from universities, research institutes, and government agencies.

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