Word: ecosystem
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...environmentalists and sports fishermen watched in horror, a 10-mile lime green plume of death drifted slowly down the river, wiping out most of the ecosystem -- aquatic plants, nymphs, caddis flies, mayflies and at least 100,000 trout. Even more alarming to Californians was that the spill occurred 27 miles upstream of Lake Shasta, the state's largest man-made reservoir...
...state and local statutes. But it concedes that those laws were written with an eye to protecting human populations, not the environment. Chemicals that are explosive, flammable or toxic to humans are classified as very hazardous and handled accordingly. A pesticide like metam sodium, which can destroy an entire ecosystem, is still considered nonhazardous...
...most urgent accommodation must be made when the very integrity of man's habitat -- e.g., atmospheric ozone -- is threatened. When the threat to man is of a lesser order (say, the pollutants from coal- and oil-fired generators that cause death from disease but not fatal damage to the ecosystem), a more modulated accommodation that balances economic against health concerns is in order. But in either case the principle is the same: protect the environment -- because it is man's environment...
Scientists do not know exactly why cholera periodically explodes into epidemics. The bacteria that cause it are part of the aquatic ecosystem, helping to break down dead shellfish. Cholera germs travel up the food chain by attaching themselves to plankton, which are eaten by fish and then by people. Studies by Rita Colwell, professor of microbiology at the University of Maryland, suggest that a plankton bloom, a rapid growth like the one reported off the coast of Peru earlier this year, may help trigger epidemics...
...most serious problem, however, is that T.F.A.P. may be based on a flawed premise. Thomas Fox of the World Resources Institute doubts there is evidence to support the assumption that tropical forests can be harvested and managed without damaging the ecosystem. So little is known about the intricate co- dependencies that tie the myriad species of plants, animals and insects of these forests into a working system that some biologists wonder whether tropical forestry is sustainable at any commercial level...