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Elements of Sustainability
Diversity
Productivity
Disturbance
Resilience
Sustainability in Living Ecosystems
Sustainability on Coral Reefs
Why Protect Your Own Reef?
How Reefs Protect the Land
What is Killing the Corals?
Big Fish
Little Fish
Reef Fish Sustainability
Development
Green Reefs
Urban & Village
Crown-of-Thorns
Species on Coral Reefs
What is Coral?
Types of Reefs
Conch
Solar Clams
Solutions Around the World
Research
Marine Parks
Votua MPA's
Fagamalo's MPA
Kehpara MMA's
Just the Microdocs
Big Fish
Building a Coral Reef Lab
Conch
Cement
Crown-of-Thorns
Disturbance
Diversity
Exp. w/ Global Warming
Global Warming Laboratory
Green Reefs
Ground Truthing
How Do Reefs Protect the Land?
Kehpara MMA's
Little Fish
Marine Parks
Productivity
Reef Fish Sustainability
Reef Preservation Strategies
Resilience
Solar Clams
Surviving the Heat
Sustainability
Types of Reefs
Urban & Village
Votua MPA's
What is a Coral?
What's Killing the Coral?
What's Killing the Color?
Why Protect Your Own Reef?
Ecosystems are sustainable when we balance the rates of removal and replacement. Sustainable ecosystems provide resources and services people rely on, such as:
food and other income
maintaining ecosystem health
cultural needs
Technology alone cannot insure this balance; no machine can replace a reef or forest. The best way we know to ensure sustainably is to protect intact ecosystems. However, many of our actions put these vital habitats at risk.
To preserve intact ecosystems we need to understand sustainability, and for each different habitat to be able to answer the following questions:
What are the elements of ecological sustainability?
How is sustainability threatened?
What practical steps can we take to protect sustainability?
Microdocs
A microdoc is a 2-3 minute documentary about one topic. These sustainability microdocs each feature one aspect of sustainability. They are divided into two main sections:
This section defines sustainability and explores the 4 elements that influence and shape ecosystems:
Understanding how these elements affect ecosystems and how we alter them helps us understand our impact on the environment.
These microdocs give examples of sustainability issues in a real ecosystem – the coral reef. Coral reefs are highly diverse areas that provide vital resources for millions of people. This environment faces many threats and examining these helps to illustrate what occurs when ecological balance is changed. The same 4 elements operate in all ecosystems – and other ecosystems could be used as an example. We chose coral reefs because they are visually beautiful, under severe threat, and the film company will go there for free.
Acknowledgements
Palumbi Lab
Hopkins Marine Station
Stanford University
Garthwait & Griffin Films