Flow of Life in the Atmosphere: An Airscape Approach to Understanding Invasive Organisms

As we enter the twenty-first century the ultimate objective of environmental management programs should be to manipulate ecosystems so that they fulfill the needs of humans and at the same time maintain their integrity. In this new ground-breaking work, Scott Isard and Stuart Gage look at the importance of anticipating consequences of the aerial flow of biota as new strategies to understand and manage our environment. A sound understanding of the biological and meteorological interactions that govern the movement of organisms in the atmosphere is a prerequisite to the development of successful management strategies for terrestrial ecosystems. Inflows and outflows of organisms to and from habitats can be as important as birth and death rates in regulating the dynamics of populations. Isard and Gage focus on predicting events that destabilize relationships among organisms and between populations and their environment. This preventive management strategy is based on the premise that the ability to understand and predict dynamics of populations in an ecosystem allows for optimal and integrative use of a wide variety of methods to enhance human resource production and to reduce harmful impacts of diseases and organisms on humans. It is a paradigm that focuses on manipulating ecosystems to maintain the long-term stability of their diverse populations and the interactions among organisms and their environment. In many ecological systems, sudden and dramatic population fluctuations often result from movement of biota from one habitat to another. The design of grand plans to manage ecosystems without concern for the inflow and outflow of organisms associated with those ecosystems could be tragic.

About the Author :
Scott Isard is Professor of Aerobiology Penn State University. He is also Affiliate/Adjunct Professor at Illinois State Water Survey, Illinois Natural History Survey, Dept. Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, and Department of Geography, University of Montreal. Isard is an associate editor of Aerobiologia and co- editor-in-chief of Physical Aerobiology, a new electronic journal. Isard is also a member of executive committees of the International Aerobiology Association and the Pan-American Aerobiology Association. Stuart H. Gage is a world leader in complex biological systems analysis. He was honored with a Michigan State University Distinguished Faculty Award in January, 2005. He is Professor of Entomology at Michigan State University where he is director of the Computational Ecology and Visualization Laboratory. Gage also serves on the USDA North Central Regional Committee on the Movement and Dispersal of Biota and the Regional committee on Agricultural Meteorology. His multidisciplinary research program addresses issues of organism distribution in space and time such as gypsy moth invasion into the Midwest, corn phenology across the United States, and patterns of human development in Michigan and elsewhere. His contributions range from modeling the effects of environmental conditions on pest and natural-enemy ecology to examining atmospheric transport of insects and developing cutting-edge computational methods for predicting biological events. As a result of a unique research collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, he is at the forefront of assessing ecosystem health and predicting future pressures on natural resources. His recent research in environmental acoustics has led to research activities in Australia and New Zealand.