This report attempts to achieve Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt's vision of a comprehensive summary of the status and trends of our nation's biological resources. The report describes the major processes and factors affecting biological resources, and it treats regional status and trends. Authors of the chapters and boxes in this two-volume report were drawn from federal and state agencies, universities, and private organizations, reflecting the U.S. Geological Survey's national partnership approach to providing comprehensive, reliable information about our biological resources. Following scientific tradition, each chapter and box was peer-reviewed by anonymous scientific reviewers. | | |
The first seven chapters in Volume 1 describe the major factors affecting biodiversity and biological resource health. The aim of these chapters is to promote an understanding of the reasons for the current conditions of resources and the biological and physical relationships among the different parts of ecosystems. The first chapter, an essay by ecologist Steward Pickett, describes in some detail the natural processes affecting our nation's ecosystems. Other chapters in this section cover subjects such as contaminants, land use, water use, nonindigenous species, climate change, and harvest. Yet other chapters--on disease, tourism, management practices, and even politics, for example--could have been usefully added. This report does not dismiss such factors; it offers chapters on those forces that were judged to represent the most significant ones affecting our biological resources. | | |
The remainder of the chapters in Volume 1 and Volume 2 explore how these natural and human-induced factors have led to the condition or status of regional biological resources; the chapters also provide information on biological resource trends. These chapters are drawn from existing information. Authors were asked to "tell a story" about the regions they describe and to document findings with data. Other than this guideline and a basic outline for the scientists to follow, there were few rules or limitations. Thus, the style in the end product reflects the ideas, the insights, and the great variety of approaches these ecological experts used in each chapter. Their varied emphases also reflect the relative importance of changes occurring in the conditions of biological resources in different geographic areas. The professional insight of these scientists is critically important in the regional chapters because there are so few biological resources for which comprehensive, substantive, scientific status and trends data are available. | | |
Volume 1 ends with a chapter on coastal Louisiana and Volume 2 begins with a chapter on grasslands. At the end of Volume 2, readers will find a glossary, an appendix of scientific and common names for organisms mentioned in the report, and an index to both volumes. | | |
