The Vulnerable Community

Of the Runner Bean Plant

Definitions & Determinants Vulnerable People, Groups, And Populations: Societal View David Mechanic and Jennifer Tanner

Vulnerability, the susceptibility to harm, results from an interaction between the resources available to individuals and communities and the life challenges they face. Vulnerability results from developmental problems, personal incapacities, disadvantaged social status, inadequacy of interpersonal networks and supports, degraded neighborhoods and environments, and the complex interactions of these factors over the life course. The priority given to varying vulnerabilities, or their neglect, reflects social values. Vulnerability may arise from individual, community, or larger population challenges and requires different types of policy interventions—from social and economic development of neighborhoods and communities, and educational and income policies, to individual medical interventions.

ThreatsThe vulnerability of the plant’s community

FungusA core component to maintaining the equilibrium of a plant’s community.

Tree health and ectomycorrhizal fungal communities SummaryEctomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi are intimately associated with most temperate tree species and have demonstrated important and rapid shifts in species composition and abundance in response to a range of environmental stresses (e.g. droughts, eutrophication and/or acidification of forest soils).

Monitoring of changes in ECM fungal communities might, as a result, serve as a sensitive early warning indicator of environmental change that has the potential to be disruptive to trees. This might develop where environmental change, such as the eutrophication of forest soils, interferes with the varied functional roles of ECM, including the vital roles of facilitating carbon, nutrient and water uptake in trees.