Glossary

Adaptive Capacity: The general ability of institutions, systems, and individuals to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences. (source: GreenFacts)

Biodiversity: the totality of genes, species, and ecosystems in a region... Biodiversity can be divided into three hierarchical categories -- genes, species, and ecosystems -- that describe quite different aspects of living systems and that scientists measure in different ways. (Source: World Resources Institute, World Conservation Union, and United Nations Environment Programme, "Global Biodiversity Strategy," 1992)

Coir logs: logs constructed of interwoven coconut fibers that are bound together with biodegradable netting. (source: Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game)

Daylighting (streams): redirection of a stream into an above-ground channel. (source: Wikipedia)

Ecological services or ecosystem services: functions that are of value to humans. These include climate regulation, protection from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, purification of air and water, mitigation of floods and droughts, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, generation and renewal of soil and soil fertility, pollination of crops and natural vegetation, control of agricultural pests, gas regulation, water regulation, water supply, erosion control, purification of air and water, and renewal of soil and soil fertility, gas regulation, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, dispersal of seeds and nutrient movement, and maintenance of the biodiversity from which humanity derives key elements of its agricultural, medicinal and industrial systems. (source: www.eartheconomics.org) (Note: check out the paper What Are Ecosystem Services? in which authors James Boyd and Spencer Banzhaf propose a new definition of the term.)

Paleoecology: a branch of ecology that is concerned with the characteristics of ancient environments and with their relationships to ancient plants and animals (source: Merriam-Webster On Line)

Patch dynamics: a set of concepts and theories that recognizes spatial differentiation in ecosystems and landscapes, and suggests that the spatial pattern is important to how the systems function and change. Each patch can change because of interactions within it and interactions with other patches. Urban systems are known to be socially and economically patchy. We could add ecological understanding to that and develop a view of Baltimore as a changing patchwork of socio-ecological structures and functions - patch dynamics. (Source: Steward Pickett)

Spatial heterogeneity: spatial heterogeneity is a property generally ascribed to a landscape or to a population. It refers to the uneven distribution of various concentrations of each species within an area. A landscape with spatial heterogeneity has a mix of concentrations of multiple species of plants or animals (biological), or of terrain formations (geological), or environmental characteristics (eg. rainfall, temperature, wind) filling its area. A population showing spatial heterogeneity is one where various concentrations of individuals of this species are unevenly distributed across an area; nearly synonymous with "patchily distributed." (source: Wikipedia)