干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The information age of the 1990s is a global consciousness where scientific and technological advances are assumed capable of salving global environmental problems. A significant characteristic of nonpoint source (MPS) pollution problems is the lack of regard for political boundaries and physical barriers between cities, states, nations, and continents. The widespread nature of such environmental problems often results in an analogous diffuse acceptance of responsibility for resolution. Thus, art ability to accurately assess the present and future impact of human activities on the global ecosystem would provide a most powerful basis for environmental stewardship and guiding future human actions. To responsibly respond to impaired ecosystem functioning (i.e., with respect to such issues as climatic change, stratospheric ozone depletion, species diversification, erosion, deforestation desertification, agricultural sustainability and nonpoint source pollution), it is necessary to examine these issues not only from a multidisciplinary systems-based approach, but also with an approach that accounts for spatial and temporal context The problem and philosophical issues of addressing NPS pollution is the vadose zone within a spatial and temporal context are presented.