This book explores the geography, ecology, and antiquity of 'open ecosystems', which include grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. They occur in climates that can support closed forest ecosystems and often form mosaics with forest patches. With the aid of remote sensing, it is now clear that open ecosystems are a global phenomenon and occur over vast areas in climates that could also support forests. This book goes beyond regional narratives and seeks general explanations for their existence. It develops the theme of open ecosystems as being widespread and ancient, with a distinct biota from that of closed forests. It examines hypotheses for their maintenance in climate zones favouring the development of forests, including fire, vertebrate herbivory, and soils hostile for tree growth. Open Ecosystems: Ecology and Evolution Beyond the Forest Edge provides an accessible introduction for graduate students and researchers of open (non-forested) ecosystem ecology in departments of ecology, geography, and environmental science. It will also be of relevance and use to professional ecologists, biogeographers, and global change biologists requiring a concise, authoritative overview of the topic
Sharing information and knowledge, co-innovating with clients, communities, and competitors and adopting cognitive technology, robo advisors, crowdfunding, and blockchain reflect current socio-economic behaviour. Emerging growth regions in Asia, demographic shifts, intergenerational wealth transfers and increasing regulations are other trends that amplify each other, disrupt the client journey, and affect the entire economy. Moreover, unprecedentedly, new market entrants outside the financial sector, be it Amazon, Apple, Google, or Facebook, are increasingly expanding their scale and scope to offer financial services. Featuring case studies of Chinese business ecosystems, such as Alibaba/Ant Financial, that have transformed from displaying domestic and organic growth to rapid global expansion, this highly readable book gives you glimpses of how banking services are evolving. We break down everything you need to know about the foray of challenger banks into the financial services. You learn how they link health to wealth data and gain advantages through analytical capabilities in the race to attract sophisticated clients with highly personalized experiences. The next level of creating and capturing value for clients and businesses involves platform models embedded in cross-sector ecosystems. Digital platforms are the crucial entry point to global markets, creating value for multiple sides. They leverage self-driving ecosystems that go beyond linear value chains applied in traditional business models as the sources of growth in an interconnected world are collaboration and network effects. The winners will be those who open up and engage themselves in an ecosystem that transcends organizational boundaries and performs without sector borders because every actor contributes to the value constellation of the system. The book provides practitioners and scholars with new insights into open and holistic business models, where competition in future will be between ecosystems rather than at the company level. It encourages leaders to expand their skills and think through the lens of the ecosystem theory while developing compelling strategies to serve the next-generation clients.
Understanding how to sustain the services that ecosystems provide in support of human wellbeing is an active and growing research area. This book provides a state-of-the-art review of current thinking on the links between ecosystem services and poverty alleviation. In part it showcases the key findings of the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme, which has funded over 120 research projects in more than 50 countries since 2010. ESPA’s goal is to ensure that ecosystems are being sustainably managed in a way that contributes to poverty alleviation as well as to inclusive and sustainable growth. As governments across the world map how they will achieve the 17 ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, most of which have poverty alleviation, wellbeing and sustainable environmental management at their heart, ESPA’s findings have never been more timely and relevant. The book synthesises the headline messages and compelling evidence to address the questions at the heart of ecosystems and wellbeing research. The authors, all leading specialists, address the evolving framings and contexts for the work, review the impacts of ongoing drivers of change, present new ways to achieve sustainable wellbeing, equity, diversity, and resilience, and evaluate the potential contributions from conservation projects, payment schemes, and novel governance approaches across scales from local to national and international. The cross-cutting, thematic chapters challenge conventional wisdom in some areas, and validate new methods and approaches for sustainable development in others. The book will provide a rich and important reference source for advanced students, researchers and policy-makers in ecology, environmental studies, ecological economics and sustainable development. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429016295, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa comprehensively explores the challenges and potential solutions to key conservation issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. Easy to read, this lucid and accessible textbook includes fifteen chapters that cover a full range of conservation topics, including threats to biodiversity, environmental laws, and protected areas management, as well as related topics such as sustainability, poverty, and human-wildlife conflict. This rich resource also includes a background discussion of what conservation biology is, a wide range of theoretical approaches to the subject, and concrete examples of conservation practice in specific African contexts. Strategies are outlined to protect biodiversity whilst promoting economic development in the region. Boxes covering specific themes written by scientists who live and work throughout the region are included in each chapter, together with recommended readings and suggested discussion topics. Each chapter also includes an extensive bibliography. Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa provides the most up-to-date study in the field. It is an essential resource, available on-line without charge, for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a handy guide for professionals working to stop the rapid loss of biodiversity in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.
No realm on Earth elicits thoughts of paradise more than the tropics. The tropical marine realm is special in myriad ways and for many reasons from seas of higher latitude, in housing iconic habitats such as coral reefs, snow white beaches, crystal clear waters, mangrove forests, extensive and rich seagrass meadows and expansive river deltas, such as the exemplar, the Amazon. But the tropics also has an even more complex side: tropical waters give rise to cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, and unique oceanographic phenomena including the El Niño- Southern Oscillation which affects global climate patterns. Tropical Marine Ecology documents the structure and function of tropical marine populations, communities, and ecosystems in relation to environmental factors including climate patterns and climate change, and patterns of oceanographic phenomena such as tides and currents and major oceanographic features, as well as chemical and geological drivers. The book focuses on estuarine, coastal, continental shelf and open ocean ecosystems. The first part of the book deals with the climate, physics, geology, and chemistry of the tropical marine environment. The second section focuses on the origins, diversity, biogeography, and the structure and distribution of tropical biota. The third part explores the rates and patterns of primary and secondary production, and their drivers, and the characteristics of pelagic and benthic food webs. The fourth part examines how humans are altering tropical ecosystems via unsustainable fisheries, the decline and loss of habitat and fragmentation, Further, pollution is altering an earth already in the throes of climate change. Tropical Marine Ecology is an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to tropical marine ecology for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students. It is also a rich resource and reference work for researchers and professional managers in marine science.
As software R&D investment increases, the benefits from short feedback cycles using technologies such as continuous deployment, experimentation-based development, and multidisciplinary teams require a fundamentally different strategy and process. This book will cover the three overall challenges that companies are grappling with: speed, data and ecosystems. Speed deals with shortening the cycle time in R&D. Data deals with increasing the use of and benefit from the massive amounts of data that companies collect. Ecosystems address the transition of companies from being internally focused to being ecosystem oriented by analyzing what the company is uniquely good at and where it adds value.
The two-volume set, LNCS 13325 and 13326, are conference proceedings that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2022, held as part of the 24th International Conference, HCI International 2022, which took place during June-July 2022. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 58 papers of DAPI 2022 are organized in topical sections named for each volume: Part I: User Experience and Interaction Design for Smart Ecosystems; Smart Cities, Smart Islands, and Intelligent Urban Living; Smart Artifacts in Smart Environments; and Opportunities and Challenges for the Near Future Smart Environments Part II: Smart Living in Pervasive IoT Ecosystems; Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Education and Learning; Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Well-being and Healthcare; and Smart Creativity and Art.
Possibly the first textbook to present a practically applicable ecosystems theory, Introduction to Systems Ecology helps readers understand how ecosystems work and how they react to disturbances. It demonstrates-with many examples and illustrations-how to apply the theory to explain observations and to make quantitative calculations and predictions
To succeed in the face of disruptive competition, companies will need to harness the power of a wide range of partners who can bring different skills, experience, capacity, and their own networks to the task. With the advent of new technologies, rapidly changing customer needs, and emerging competitors, companies across more and more industries are seeing their time-honored ways of making money under threat. In this book, Arnoud De Meyer and Peter J. Williamson explain how business can meet these challenges by building a large and dynamic ecosystem of partners that reinforce, strengthen, and encourage innovation in the face of ongoing disruption. While traditional companies know how to assemble and manage supply chains, leading the development of a vibrant ecosystem requires a different set of capabilities. Ecosystem Edge illustrates how executives need to leave notions of command and control behind in favor of strategies that will attract partners, stimulate learning, and promote the overall health of the network. To understand the practical steps executives can take to achieve this, the authors focus on eight core examples that cross industries and continents: Alibaba Group, Amazon.com, ARM, athenahealth, Dassault Systèmes S.E., The Guardian, Rolls-Royce, and Thomson Reuters. By following the principles outlined in this book, leaders can learn how to unlock rapid innovation, tap into new and original sources of value, and practice organizational flexibility. As a result, companies can gain the ecosystem edge, a key advantage in responding to the challenges of disruption that business sees all around it today.