2013高中英语阅读素材：People connectivity among ecosystems.docVIP

People connectivity among ecosystems How people influence connectivity among ecosystemsThe world is becoming highly interconnected through the movement of people and transport of goods locally to globally.Among ecologists,there is an increasing realization that these connections can have profound influences on the long-term dynamics of ecological systems.The transport of many types of materials,including gases,minerals and even organisms,can affect natural systems.This movement result in greenlash, which occurs when evironmental changes localized to a small geographic area have far-reaching effects in other areas.For example,a drought in the 1930s caused farmers to abandon their farms across the U.S.Midwest.The absence of crops intensified local soil erosion,leading to powerful dust storms.Large amounts of wind-swept dust traveled across the continent,caousing the infamous Dust Bowl and affecting air qualit,public health and patterms of human settlement throuhout the country.Becouse of increasing globalization,people often inadvertently introduce non-native plants,animals and diseases into new locations.Invasive species and pathogens can create large,expensive problems:the U.S. currently spends over $120 billion per year on measures to prevent and eradicate invasive species.Understanding ecosystem connectivity across a range of scales--from local to regional to continental--will help scientists predict where invasie species are likely to go next.To prevent it from happening,we need to provide information about processes of connetivity among ecosystems that span a vast scale of space and time.Our observations will characterize ecological processes from the genomic to the continental and document changes from seconds to decades.Additionally,long-term studies should include data from social and behavioral science to allow incorporation of human movement patterns into their scientific models,which will lead to more accurate predictions of future ecological chang