We have entered the Anthropocene – an era when humans are a dominant geological force – and at the same time we have entered an Urban Age. 1 Over half of humanity now lives in towns and cities, and by 2030 that fraction will have increased to 60 %. In other words, in slightly over two decades, from 2010 to 2030, another one and an half billion people will be added to the population of …
In recent years, the Intermountain West (IM West), consisting of the mountains, basins, and plateaus lying between the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, has changed dramatically. What was once a vast open area with barely enough population to qualify for statehood is still open and vast, but sparse settlements have metastasized into cities …
The ecosystems present a great diversity worldwide and use various functionalities according to ecologic regions. In this new context of variability and climatic changes, these ecosystems undergo notable modifications amplified by domestic uses of which it was subjected to. Indeed the ecosystems render diverse services to humanity from their composition and structure but the tolerable levels ar…
The current world biodiversity consists of an inestimable amount of living forms, that at all levels, from genes to biomes, from individuals to populations, from species to communities, are in constant pursuit of the best strategies to react to the natural and anthropic environmental changes. The arrangement of new and dynamic ecosystems balanced by the formation and the vanishing of species, i…