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Environmental News - Damaged eco systems will recover quickly if we act now
A new study released by Yale University shows that most polluted or damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a lifetime if societies commit to their cleanup or restoration.
According to an analysis of 240 independent studies by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. “The damages to these ecosystems are pretty serious,” said Oswald Schmitz, an ecology professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and co-author of the meta-analysis with Yale Ph.D. student Holly Jones. “But the message is that if societies choose to become sustainable, ecosystems will recover. It isn’t hopeless.”
The Yale analysis focused on seven ecosystem types, including marine, forest, terrestrial, freshwater and brackish, and addresses recovery from major anthropogenic disturbances: agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, invasive species, logging, mining, oil spills, overfishing, power plants and trawling and from the interactions of those disturbances. Major natural disturbances, including hurricanes and cyclones, are also accounted for in the analysis.
When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years. Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes.
The Yale analysis found that 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 reported a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; and 67 reported no recovery for any variable. However, about 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery.
“We recognize that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate nature to meet its own needs," says Yale PhD student and co-author, Holly Jones. "The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems.”ALSO THIS WEEK:
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