I'm looking for resources that describe any ecosystem in depth. From top to bottom.

I was recently reading about the relationship between kakapo and specific fruit trees, and also about the wild amount of vastly different ecosystems in Madagascar, and I realized I'd really love to read about specific ecosystems. Any ecosystem. This is a super broad question, but if you've ever come across any resource that fits this, and you'd like to share, I'd love to read.

Thank you!

Hi everyone!

I'm currently taking Environmental Studies: Sustainability (ENVS 3991) at Thompson Rivers University.

For my final project, I'm researching urban development and wetland conservation in Churchill Meadows, Mississauga, particularly around the Churchill Meadows Community Centre and Mattamy Sports Park.

I'm hoping to hear from local residents about their experiences and opinions.

I have three quick questions:

1. Do you think enough is being done to protect natural green spaces, wetlands, and wildlife as Churchill Meadows continues to develop?
2. Have you noticed any changes to green spaces, wildlife, flooding, or drainage in the neighbourhood?
3. What would you like the City of Mississauga to prioritize when balancing new development with environmental protection?

Even a short response would be extremely helpful!

With your permission, I may summarize your comments anonymously in my university assignment.

Thank you so much for your time and help! 😊

Sharing from another community.

I'm writing my undergrad dissertation on reptile translocation and very few consultancy's release their reports or statistics, if you are in the UK and have experience or work with a company that has a data set on reptile translocations i would love to talk more!

I wanted some advice from anyone knowledgeable in SDM's. My thesis project is looking at a bacterium in Texas, and we want to make SDM's for current and future maps. We make them through RStudio and MaxEnt. These are usually made with a supercomputer due to the high RAM power needed for the size of Texas and the bioclimatic layers, but we no longer have access.

Is it possible to make maps this big without a supercomputer? I am losing hope because my advisor keeps making me start over, and I want to start writing so I can defend as soon as possible. Any advice or tips would be helpful. Thank you.

I’m applying to PhD programs in ecology this cycle. Every personal statement prompt asks some version of “why do you want to pursue a PhD,” and I keep getting stuck on it. I know what I want to research, but I’m not sure how to explain why a PhD rather than just saying I like the topic.

For those who’ve been through this: how did you answer it? Did you focus on career goals, research questions, or something else? And for anyone who’s read applications, what makes this part convincing vs. generic?

I’ve heard from applicants to last year’s cycle that decisions began coming out the weekend prior to the decision date, and that rejections came out first.

Has anyone heard anything, or applied last year and had a different experience?

So I recently started working for a small urban forestry unit in a small city in California. My Bachelor’s is in ecology, with an emphasis on wildlife conservation - so I very much come from the “plant native as much as possible” side of things (for reducing the possibility of bringing the next invasive into the ecosystem, local sp usually more well-adapted and easier to control w/help of rest of the native ecosystem).
I understand sometimes non-natives are desired because they are pretty &/or resilient (can handle small space to grow, low water, etc.) but for those pretty trees: a) if they’re not tough, they take more care (water, or labor/attention, or fertilizer, whatever) which = more $ b) if they ARE tough, then if they escape out into somewhere outside of the urban landscape (which is quite possible, if not I dare say likely given how much travel happens in cities with cars and people) isn’t it likely they will also grow/spread easily (since they are tough)?

At least with a native plants (which yes, I know can act like invasives) there’s some evolution in the past that generally speaking developed some form of control in the form of predators and/or disease, whereas that is not likely to be the case with a non-native. Or even if local food web does have some organisms that can control the non-native plant populations if they do boom out of control, the control is likely to not be as specific or effective as for the native counterpart.

I came into this program guns blazing wanting to only plant native trees in our city, but was disappointed to see that we are apparently planning to plant a considerable amount of non-natives like ginkgo, Chinese pistache, Eastern redbud, Chinese fringetree, Japanese blueberry, Korean dogwood, strawberry tree. We do buy some natives (various types of oaks, California buckeye for example), but I’d say like 50% of the trees we’re planting are not native.

I was told that part of the reason for this is because local nurseries (we are in inland Mendocino county) often don’t have native plants that we want. OK fine, but the way my supervisor and another arborist in the community were talking made it seem to me like even if we did have all the natives available to us, they would still intentionally order & plant things like ginkgo and Chinese pistache.

That made me confused because why would you plant these non-natives when you now hypothetically have saplings of all the native plants you could ever dream of? Is there really no native plant that can be “good enough” to replace how tough (resilient) and sometimes aesthetically “beautiful” ginkgo and Chinese pistache are? I mean, I assume that is why my supervisor + that arborist said what they did.

Thanks for reading my long, confused pseudo-rant! I would ask my supervisor and I actually did ask the arborist, but we always seem to be in a time crunch and both people have a habit of answering my questions in a sort of non-direct, not very clear way (sort of giving half-answers that imply broad, vague reasons that I can guess probably do have a point but don’t completely explain why), at least when it comes to questions that seem to “confront” their practices this way.

I think I remember hearing a term, a sort of filter, that describes how species range expansion is slowed or prevented. If I understand correctly, this works as a mechanism to maintain balance in the system against the destabilizing effects of invasive plants.

Didn't have any luck searching for it, complicated by too many other similar terms about different things.

Does the daylight saving time still offer any ecological or financial benefit today?

If so, what are the numbers?

Hey, I realized as I’m winding down my engineering degree that I haven’t been honest with myself. I’m not really interested in the field of remediation and civil design. I understand that my degree in some aspects of the “environmental field,” will give me “options.” Especially if i did consulting to some degree,”. However, I realized I want a job where I get to s do research with wildlife management and conservation. This is kinda of my irkling. I feel like as I’ve gotten older I kinda sidelined my dream/ passion to just pick something I’m ehhh okay with. I understand that it’s easy to say this when I currently don’t have real big boy bills to pay. Or when I’m choosing between rent and food etc so a degree with a good ROI is worth it. I’m currently about to finish 85 credit hours of 130 at UGA. And I’m considering my options currently, if a take a plunge to switch. I wanna ask people in the field 3 questions. How long did it take to get your first permanent job in wildlife management and or research? How often did you have to cycle between seasonal jobs to become a competitive candidate in an already competitive field? And what do you currently do now for work in this field?