Biogeoscience Approach to Ecosystems

Biogeoscience is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that aims to bring together biological and geophysical processes. This book builds an enhanced understanding of ecosystems by focusing on the integrative connections between ecological processes and the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Each chapter provides studies by researchers who have contributed to the biogeoscience synthesis, presenting the latest research on the relationships between ecological processes, such as conservation laws and heat and transport processes, and geophysical processes, such as hillslope, fluvial and aeolian geomorphology, and hydrology. Highlighting the value of biogeoscience as an approach to understand ecosystems, this is an ideal resource for researchers and students in both ecology and the physical sciences.

Edward A. Johnson is Professor of Ecology and Director of the Biogeosciences Institute at the University of Calgary. He has published extensively on the couplings between physical and ecological systems, with a particular focus on the effects of wildfires, hillslope and fluvial geomorphic processes, climate and land use on tree populations. Yvonne E. Martin is Associate Professor in Geography and Associate Director of the Biogeosciences Institute at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on drainage-basin geomorphology and its interconnections with ecology, climatology and hydrology.