评价生态系统健康的指标

随着世界主要生态系统的急剧恶化,迫切需要开发出可操作的生态系统健康指标,科学掌握生态系统健康状况的变化,以便及时改善生态系统状况,实现自然与人类的可持续发展.综述了生态系统健康定义的历史沿革,回顾了评价生态系统健康的各类指标,并以Costanza的定义为例,指出要评价健康必须从多个尺度对系统的活力、组织和恢复力进行综合测量,进一步介绍了如何根据该定义构建指标体系.最后,以Ulanowicz的信息指标为例,说明如何从系统层面评价生态系统健康,提出了用信息指标评价生态系统健康的潜力.

Indexes of Ecosystem Health Evaluation

Rapid deterioration of the world’s ecosystems has intensified the need for effective environmental monitoring and development of operational indexes of ecosystem health.The indexes are helpful in improving the condition of ecological system and achieving the sustainable development of the nature and humans.For proper choosing the indexes,the change of ecosystem health should be known scientifically.Thus,human could do something to help ecosystem more healthful.In this paper,the definition of the ecosystem health is reviewed,and the indexes of ecological health are illustrated.Afterwards,taking Costanza’s definition as an example,it is pointed out that one should measure health from a multiple scale of the system’s vigor,organization and resilience,and how to constructing health indexes is introduced further according to the definition.Finally,taking Ulanowicz’s information index as an example,how to evaluate ecosystem health from the system’s perspective is showed,and the potential of using information index to evaluate ecosystem health is pointed out.