ERS 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Aneuploidy, Genetic Drift, Outbreeding Depression

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Environment and Resource Studies
• Course: ERS 211
• Professor: Steve Murphy

Document Summary

Defining restoration ecology: restoration: lends itself to the notion of a return to some past condition. Taking degraded ecosystems and restoring their ecological function and structure. The level or state of function and structure is what is hard to determine. Goals or endpoints are probably less important to determine than the impacts themselves. Ecological restoration: the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed: restored ecosystems have the following 9 attributes. Contains a characteristic assemblage of the species that occur in the reference ecosystem and that provide appropriate community structure. Apparently functions normally for its ecological stage of development, and signs of dysfunction are absent. Consists of indigenous species to the greatest practicable extent. In restored cultural ecosystems, allowances can be made for exotic domesticated species and for non-invasive ruderal (plants that colonize distributed sites) and segetal (typically grow intermixed with crop species) species that presumable co-evolved with them.