Theorie in der Oekologie – serie

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are traded as staple crops on the world market. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety gives sovereign rights to each country to implement its own regulatory regime to protect their landscapes and agricultural heritage. Data on the receiving environment for countries in Africa are limited. How would it be possible to maintain the options of agriculture with or without GMO, and organic farming? Decisions require not only lab-testing of crops but also data on the different agricultural structures, field sizes, and socioeconomic conditions. This book presents an introduction into the topic, experiences from biosafety research executed in the EU and most important, insight into small-scale African agriculture that is of highest relevance for food security of a population majority. The data substantiates, that crop purity as a condition to maintain cultivation options and access export markets require highest attention and solutions that still have to be found.

After two successful meetings on the ecological implications of GM-crop cultivation in 2008 and 2010, the authors felt encouraged to carry out a follow-up conference in 2012. GMLS III highlights recent scientific developments in the analysis of risks in the agricultural use of genetically modified plants. While in some countries a GM-based agriculture has been largely established, other regions of the world continue cultivation of conventional varieties only. This acknowledges a persistent reservation of the public towards GMO products. The overall need of an emphasis in independent studies becomes continuously more obvious. Experts from Europe, United States, Ghana and Argentina report their scientific results and experience with ecological, socio-economical and administrative implications.

Mathematical and computational approaches provide powerful tools in the study of problems in population biology and ecosystem science. Recent analytical advances, coupled with the enhanced potential of high-speed computation, have opened up new sights and presented new challenges especially in those fields of ecological theory which met methodological restrictions in the past:For many years scales and hierarchies have been considered an important research topic in ecology. Nevertheless, the prevailing methodological constraints frequently reduced the analysis to conceptual considerations. Conceptual structuring remains to be the primary practical contribution of scale and hierarchy to the development of ecological theory. In this volume we attempt to demonstrate to what extent this is currently changing. The application of models which are capable to represent precisely the relations of different scales and integration levels have made a remarkable progress and let us observe how a wide range of emergent properties can be analysed in the output of ecological models. By linking empirical findings and similar model specifications with the implementation of self-organisation processes on the level of model components, the analytical and synthetic power of modelling can be extended to a new, synergistic level. The contributions of this volume provide background, examples and current results. The volume starts with concept articles, then presents an example of artificial networks, provides papers concerning genetic aspects and ends with articles dealing with botanical features.