Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Consequences of living in an industrial world
- 2 Metallophytes: the unique biological resource, its ecology and conservational status in Europe, central Africa and Latin America
- 3 Lichens and industrial pollution
- 4 The impacts of metalliferous drainage on aquatic communities in streams and rivers
- 5 Impacts of emerging contaminants on the environment
- 6 Ecological monitoring and assessment of pollution in rivers
- 7 Detecting ecological effects of pollutants in the aquatic environment
- 8 With the benefit of hindsight: the utility of palaeoecology in wetland condition assessment and identification of restoration targets
- 9 An ecological risk assessment framework for assessing risks from contaminated land in England and Wales
- 10 Diversity and evolution of micro-organisms and pathways for the degradation of environmental contaminants: a case study with the s-triazine herbicides
- 11 The microbial ecology of land and water contaminated with radioactive waste: towards the development of bioremediation options for the nuclear industry
- 12 The microbial ecology of remediating industrially contaminated land: sorting out the bugs in the system
- 13 Ecological recovery in a river polluted to its sources: the River Tame in the English Midlands
- 14 Manchester Ship Canal and Salford Quays: industrial legacy and ecological restoration
- 15 Large-scale mine site restoration of Australian eucalypt forests after bauxite mining: soil management and ecosystem development
- 16 Sustaining industrial activity and ecological quality: the potential role of an ecosystem services approach
- Index
- Plate section
- References
1 - Consequences of living in an industrial world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Consequences of living in an industrial world
- 2 Metallophytes: the unique biological resource, its ecology and conservational status in Europe, central Africa and Latin America
- 3 Lichens and industrial pollution
- 4 The impacts of metalliferous drainage on aquatic communities in streams and rivers
- 5 Impacts of emerging contaminants on the environment
- 6 Ecological monitoring and assessment of pollution in rivers
- 7 Detecting ecological effects of pollutants in the aquatic environment
- 8 With the benefit of hindsight: the utility of palaeoecology in wetland condition assessment and identification of restoration targets
- 9 An ecological risk assessment framework for assessing risks from contaminated land in England and Wales
- 10 Diversity and evolution of micro-organisms and pathways for the degradation of environmental contaminants: a case study with the s-triazine herbicides
- 11 The microbial ecology of land and water contaminated with radioactive waste: towards the development of bioremediation options for the nuclear industry
- 12 The microbial ecology of remediating industrially contaminated land: sorting out the bugs in the system
- 13 Ecological recovery in a river polluted to its sources: the River Tame in the English Midlands
- 14 Manchester Ship Canal and Salford Quays: industrial legacy and ecological restoration
- 15 Large-scale mine site restoration of Australian eucalypt forests after bauxite mining: soil management and ecosystem development
- 16 Sustaining industrial activity and ecological quality: the potential role of an ecosystem services approach
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
One of the first questions that faced us when preparing this introductory chapter was ‘what do we mean by industry?’ In modern terms, one often refers to the industrial revolution that began in the latter half of the eighteenth century, which circumscribes the change from an agriculturally based economy to one dominated by manufacturing. However, industrial processes have a history far longer than this, and can be traced back to the Bronze Age and even before, particularly the extraction of minerals. We could also consider agriculture to be an industry as it is the extraction of raw resources albeit in a rather different form. Therefore when we refer to industry, we are actually considering a very wide range of processes and activities. Common to all these, however, is the fact that the production of goods from raw resources creates by-products that can pollute the environment and adversely affect ecosystems.
The industrial pollutants produced and their impacts are potentially as varied as the sources from which they derive, and there has been extensive research into specific effects of individual contaminants on specific organisms or communities. The problem with this approach is that the resulting view is one that can be rather blinkered. It is becoming increasingly clear that, rather than simply causing deterioration of ecosystems, contaminated sites may well be sources of biodiversity. Organisms living on such sites can show great genetic adaptation and may prove useful in the remediation of other contaminated sites.
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- Ecology of Industrial Pollution , pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010