Ecosystem Health, Landscape Vulnerability, and Environmental Risk Assessment

ABSTRACT

Ecosystem health is evaluated as an integrated assessment based on ecosystem stability, resilience, and vulnerability concepts. Special emphasis is focused on two dimensions in the ecosystem health concept: a geocentric approach (i.e., considering any impacts or interactions in terms of their effects on natural geosystems or ecosystems) which deals with assessment of natural ecosystems and their disturbance; and an anthropocentric approach, which concerns effects on human beings and human environment. Analysis of the relevant terminology leads to the development of a conceptual framework for ecosystem health. A suggested method of environmental risk assessment is based on ranking and merging into one criterion a series of individual estimates: bioresources abundance, biodiversity, ecosystem stability and resilience, and feedback effects of a disturbed environment on human beings and their activities.