Talk:Disturbance (ecology)

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Merge
An ecologist's opinion: This value-laden terminology should be revamped. The word "disturbance" connotes a negative result of this phenomenon, particularly in the long-term (i.e. as an ultimate end result). As a scientific (ecological) concept, a more appropriate term would be "perturbation," already used in biology to indicate "an alteration of the function of a biological system, induced by external or internal mechanisms." since the definition of an ecological disturbance, given here, would be analogous to a perturbation in a biological system. This removes the negative implication, as a change in an ecological system may not necessarily be negative (e.g. to measures of biodiversity or primary productivity). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.152.226.154 (talk) 05:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I'am a french "wikipédien". In France (and normally in Europe since the "Bird Directive"), we differentiate the term "perturbation (same word in french)" (anthropogenic or natural "normal" or sub-normal phenomena) and the notion of "dérangement = disturbance" (Disturbance (ecology) in french wikipedia (word to describe the more negative connotation as anthropogenic disturbances retained in the Birds Directive). Two items different and useful seemed clear to me. Sorry if my englis is not so good as I would like. --Lamiot (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Not so sure about the merge. Regardless of whether it's "value-laden terminology", it's widely used...more widely (in my experience) than perturbation. Guettarda (talk) 23:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm redirecting Perturbation (biology), as it is so short that it doesn't add anything. Feel free to create a separate article that has unique content and clearly explains the difference. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me  03:00, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi

I would like to suggest a change in the introduction (changes are formatted bold):

In ecology, a disturbance is a temporary change in average environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem. General alterations in ecosystem conditions including its biological response would be called pertubations and don't necessarily imply negative effects. Disturbances often act quickly and with great effect,... PhilippMontazem (talk) 08:20, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Tropical ecology students project on Gap Dynamics
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Note - I've moved this content to a new article at Gap dynamics Ego White Tray (talk) 20:08, 8 November 2012 (UTC) Disturbance (ecology) Evaluation[edit source]

This article tilted Disturbance (ecology) has good structure, leading with the necessary information to understand what disturbance is, how it comes about and the impacts of disturbance on the ecosystem. There are several subheadings, such as Criteria, Cyclic Disturbance, Compound Disturbance, Species Adapt to Disturbance, and Importance. The Criteria section is a bit vague and only uses one source from a paper which is highly focused on climate change. In the following section Cyclic Disturbance, it provides a clear definition of what a cyclic disturbance is in a broad sense. In this section the article uses several credible sources. Although this section only gives one specific case study about an outbreak of beetles in a pine forest, and the regrowth of the pines; excluding any mention of the rest of the flora and fauna. This seems to be a common theme for the entire article. As the article continues there seems to be a lack of sourced information. In the next sub heading Compound Disturbances, it gives only one very vague example. And the entire section is only two sentences long, lacking quite a bit of content. In the succeeding section titled Species Adapt to Disturbance, you can tell this was written by a different person and unlike the previous sections it provides slightly more cited information from three different sources but, some aspects such as patch exploitation could be more in depth. Although they provide an example of species adapting to disturbance they use the example of trees again in this case a pin cherry, silver maple and sycamore trees, but still fail to provide an example about the rest of the ecosystem. Lastly, this article provides an Importance section which I think is a good way to close this type of article; with the big picture. But, yet again giving an example of fire disturbance on ponderosa pine and douglas fir trees, leaving out the mention of the understory plants. This article, on disturbance (ecology) is a good start but has a lot of work to do. First the text is very choppy and has a language and flow issue, it is easy to tell that this wiki page has been pieced together by several different authors. There is also a lack of content and citing in several of the sections. Specifically, the Criteria and Compound Disturbance sections, which are two sentences each with only one source. There is definitely an opportunity to expand in both sections, by providing examples other than those about trees and fire disturbance. To end on a good note this article is well structured with several subheadings and the coverage was neutral in the way that content was not opinion based and provided a both negative and positive outlook on disturbance and its impact on the environment. Dynomite216 (talk) 21:41, 19 October 2016 (UTC) HH Dynomite216 (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081029182506/http://www.fpb.gov.bc.ca/special/reports/SR32/Lodgepole_Pine_Stand_Structure_25_Years_after_Mountain_Pine_Beetle_Attack.pdf to http://www.fpb.gov.bc.ca/special/reports/SR32/Lodgepole_Pine_Stand_Structure_25_Years_after_Mountain_Pine_Beetle_Attack.pdf

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