论文部分内容阅读
The condition of our Earth is changing,and it is changing due to human dominance.We realised that our influence on biota is overwhelming,building up to a mass extinction,the sixth in the history of life on Earth.The later this realisation is turned into action to decrease our fatal influence,the worse are the chances of the survival of the human race.How can we fail? One plausible scenario is that this can happen via the loss of ecological services (also named ecosystem services).These,provided by various organisms are essential,irreplaceable,and we increasingly rely on them.In spite of this,the status of most ecological services is declining (Carpenter et al.,2009).In order to reach this synthetic understanding,even to realise that such large-scale ecological processes existed,we needed several elements of technology,among them satellite technology,computer power,and remote sensing capabilities.Before this,we literally “ could not see the forest”-for we were able only to look at the “trees”-and these smaller elements,disjointed,just did not form a synthetic picture.Today all this is changed.We know what is at risk,and this new knowledge is the reason why any new intervention or technological innovation must now undergo a strict environmental impact assessment.The methods of manipulating genes came onto the scene by about this time,and it is largely due to the ecological ignorance of other biologists that they see various manipulative forces behind the demands of a strict environmental impact audit for this innovation.