Liquid nitrogen refrigeration for environmental stress screening

The importance of ecological restoration is evident in the spectrum of social, scientific, and legislative mandates to recover sustainable production of the natural goods and services from ecological systems (Tripp and Herz 1988, Lubohenco and others 1991). We suggest that the purpose of ecological restoration is to provide society with the many sustainable benefits produced by a restored ecosystem more quickly than would be possible under a natural recovery process. Therefore we propose that the goals of ecological restoration necessarily must be extended beyond the traditional goal of returning a to a previously existing natural state (Caims 1988). We suggest the following as a pragmatic definition for ecosystem restoration Ecological restoration includes (1) the identification of ecologically and socially desirable ecosystem values, goods, and services ; (2) identification of the functional and structural elements essential to a self-sustaining system that will provide those values ; and finally, (3) facilitation of ecosystem recovery to a self-sustaining state by manipulation of the physical, biological, chemical and even social elements of the system. Under this definition a restored ecosystem will not necessarily have the same dominant species, species diversity, production rates, or nutrient cycling rates as a similar undisturbed site ; however, essential functional roles will be reestablished so that the restored system is self-sustaining