自然平衡的英文

自然平衡指自然生态系统中生物与环境之间,生物与生物之间相互作用而建立起来的动态平衡联系。下面小编为大家整理的自然平衡的英文，希望对大家有用!

自然平衡的英文

The balance of nature refers to the theory that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium (homeostasis), which is to say that a small change in some particular parameter (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original “point of balance” with the rest of the system. It may apply where populations depend on each other, for example in predator/prey systems, or relationships between herbivores and their food source. It is also sometimes applied to the relationship between the Earth’s ecosystem, the composition of the atmosphere, and the world’s weather.

The Gaia hypothesis suggests that the Earth and its ecology may act as co-ordinate systems in order to maintain the balance of nature.

The concept has been criticized in recent times as being a pseudoscientific fallacy. It was first put into question when a substantial number of studies showed that predator/prey populations display a continuing state of disturbance and fluctuation rather than constancy and balance. It has been proposed by some scientists that ecological communities of plants and animals are inherently unstable, due to substantial idiosyncratic differences in behavior among communities and individuals in them. An aggressive, dominant wolf for example can greatly increase the chances of a pack in securing food, just as the death of a pack leader can lead to the pack’s mass starvation. It is reasoned that any apparent equilibrium is illusory because external factors (such as variations in weather patterns, fires, hurricanes or disease) seldom allow ecological communities to stabilize. Dr. George L. Jacobson Jr., a paleoecologist at the University of Maine stated that according to ancient rock sediments; “there is almost no circumstance one can find where something isn’t changing the system. It’s never allowed to ‘stabilize’, so we might as well not expect ‘balance’ to exist.”

In addition, some populations show chaotic behavior, where the sizes of populations change in a way that may appear random, but is in fact obeying deterministic laws based only on the relationship between a population and its food source. An example of this was shown in an eight year study on small Baltic Sea creatures such as plankton, which were isolated from the rest of the ocean. Each member of the food web was shown to take turns multiplying and declining, even though the scientists kept the outside conditions constant. An article in Journal Nature stated; “Advanced mathematical techniques proved the indisputable presence of chaos in this food web... short-term prediction is possible, but long-term prediction is not.”

Research into climate change has revealed a number of positive feedback mechanisms that could accelerate any global warming rather than reduce it. These include increased water vapor in the atmosphere (acting as a greenhouse gas); release of Carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost; and the decreased ability of warmed oceans to hold carbon dioxide. It is unclear whether negative feedback effects may counter these mechanisms.

Although some conservationist organizations argue that human activity is incompatible with a balanced ecosystem, there are numerous examples in history showing that several modern day habitats originate from human activity: some of Latin America’s rain forests owe their existence to humans planting and transplanting them, while the abundance of grazing animals in the Serengeti plain of Africa is thought by some ecologists to be partly due to human-set fires that created savanna habitats.