pursuing relevant ecological knowledge
Although descriptive studies are necessary and important for describing ecosystem structure and identifying hypotheses, reliance on this research approach severely constrains the ability of ecology to solve managerial problems. In addition, the poor predictive power of ecology (Peters 1991) indicates that our knowledge of ecosystem function is severely limited (Stanley 1995). An inability to understand ecosystem function and unjustified reliance on descriptive research are among the most important
obstacles that prevent ecology from making significant progress toward solving environmental problems and from being a predictive science. Many ecologists (e.g., Hairston 1989; Keddy 1989; Gurevitch and Collins 1994; McPherson and Weltzin 2000) have concluded that fieldbased manipulative experiments represent a logical approach for future research.