Recovery of ecosystems and their components following exposure to pollution

Abstract

Effective environmental management practices reduce anthropogenic chemical impacts in ecosystems and lead to the onset of recovery. Recovery proceeds at different rates and to different extents at each level of biological organization (molecular, cellular, individual, population, community, ecosystem).Consequently, environmental assessments made at one level of organization may not indicate the progress of recovery processes at other levels. The course of recovery of populations and communities is usually monitored using routine ecological procedures. As pollutant exposure often results in residual effects which may influence the subsequent ability of ecosystems and their components to respond to new environmental challenges, it is proposed that a more relevant strategy would be to measure biomarkers to assess recovery at the individual level and below, determine pollution induced community tolerance unanalyzed community composition.