No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Salutation by Dr E. P. Odum To preserve and promote the health of aquatic environments more R and D is needed on means of assessing stress resulting from human activities. The new Journal of Aquatic Ecosystem Health should stimulate work in this area.
The long-term research of David Schindler and others on perturbed lakes has verified the theory that the first signs of stress are seen at the population level when especially sensitive species are affected, but real ill-health comes when ecosystem level functional properties are altered.
I believe there is merit in profile analysis at different levels of organization, since signs of stress will vary in time and place at different levels. For example, a community metabolism profile, a species diversity profile and a lipid profile of microbial biomass would provide an excellent overall view of the health of an ecosystem.
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In 1978 the Governments of Canada and the United States incorporated elements of an ecosystem approach to water management in a revised Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Now, thirteen ( ) years later it is wonderful to see a new Journal of Aquatic Ecosystem Health come into being. The shift from