The_Multifaceted_Aspects_Of_Ecosystem_Integrity

The Multifaceted Aspects Of Ecosystem Integrity How much, or rather how little, redundancy can we afford to lose without pushing the system to the edge of some irreversible and catastrophic change' This is the central question evaluated in this article. Giulio A. De Leo and Simon Levin article looks at the different aspects one must explore to value ecosystem integrity and health. To evaluate ecosystems health and integrity one must look at “links among biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and resilience; and to stress and distinguish the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbance” according to De Leo and Levin. The authors’ state instead of focusing on a single species we should take a holistic look at ecosystems. De Leo and Levin use an example of the American chestnut and how the introduction of blight eliminated it from the North American forest. Once the chestnuts were wiped out another species took its place in the canopy and the forest did not experience any significant productivity change. De Leo and Levin argue that the loss of diversity weakens the forest to adapt to catastrophic changes on longer time scales. This is one aspect of ecosystems integrity. They are stating that many aspects should be taken into consideration ecosystems, species, levin, leo, de, value, integrity, one, ecosystem, economic, biodiversity, loss, aspects, must, look, evaluating, write, take, system, stress, should, redundancy, question, place, mismanaging, holistic, forest, disturbance, complexity, change, assigning, about, tilman, say, rich