Measuring the health of the Chesapeake Bay: toward integration and prediction.

摘要: The health of an ecosystem is a function its vigor (useful productivity), organization (complexity interspecific interactions), and resilience (ability to maintain itself in the face disturbance). Chesapeake Bay has deteriorated largely as result nutrient overenrichment, concomitant reduction light availability, loss habitats that provide complexity. This resulted less vigorous producer valuable fish shellfish, diverse well organized, more susceptible slower recover from disturbances. It not clear degraded directly threatens human health; fact sanitation reductions loadings potentially toxic substances have reduced risks recent decades. On other hand, recently observed outbreaks toxin-producing dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida could be pose risk. Monitoring environmental conditions, health, critically important adaptive management Bay. Although this monitoring produced very useful information, can effective if it addressed multiple uses resulting applied new technologies, were effectively integrated across media, among resources, over space time scales, with modeling research.