Abstract
As environmental degradation and change continues, decision makers and managers feel significant pressure to rectify the situation. Scientists, in turn, find themselves under pressure to set out simple and clear rules for proper ecosystem management. The response has been one of frustration. Michael Soulé and Laurence Slobdokin both loudly complain that ecology is an intractable science, immature and not very helpful. Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Robert Peters reproach ecologists for not producing simple testable hypotheses.1 Meanwhile policy makers and managers clamour for a measure of ecosystem integrity whose value in different situations can be predicted by simulation models. The question on everyone’s mind is “what does ecosystem science identify as the main, simple, basic, universal laws which will allow quantitative prediction of ecosystem behaviour and what are the resulting rules for ecosystem management?”
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References
L.B. Slobodkin, “Intellectual Problems of Applied Ecology,” Bioscience, 38:5 (1988), pp. 337–342.
The diversity-stability hypothesis arose from Robert Mac Arthur, “Fluctuations of Animal Populations and a Measure of Community Stability,” Ecology, 3 (1955), pp. 533–535) in which he proposed that the diversity of a food web was a measure of community stability.
G.E. Hutchinson, “Homage to Santa Rosalia Or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?” American Naturalist, 93 (1959), pp. 415–427, mistook this paper as a proof that species diversity explains community stability.
Ramon Margalef, “On Certain Unifying Principles in Ecology,” American Naturalist, 97 (1963), pp. 357–374
Ramon Margalef, Perspectives on Ecological Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) elaborated a theory of ecosystem development which held that species diversity was the cornerstone of the emergence of a stable system. This hypothesis was “codified” as dogma by the Brookhaven Symposium of 1968 in Diversity and Stability in Ecological Systems, G.M. Woodwell, H.H. Smith, eds. (Brookhaven National Laboratories Symposium #22, 1969). It is a very pleasing and simple to understand hypothesis based on the notion that “you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” In the early 1970s a number of empirical counter-examples to this hypothesis were presented.
Daniel Goodman, “The Theory of Diversity-Stability Relationships in Ecology,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 50:3 (1975), pp. 237–366, systematically examined the literature and demonstrated clearly that there was no scientific basis for the diversity-stability hypothesis.
For example, in southwestern Ontario the most diverse ecosystems can be found in the area between urban development and rural lands. For more discussion see P.S. Petraitis, R.E. Latham, and R.A. Niesenbaum, “The Maintenance of Species Diversity by Disturbance,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 64:4 (1989), pp. 393–418.
See P.J. Burton, et al., “The Value of Managing for Biodiversity,” The Forestry Chronicle, 68:2 (1992), pp. 225–237, “… the diversity within a biological community confers some measure of stability to that community,” p. 229.
J.J. Kay, “A Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity,” Environmental Management, 15:4 (1991), pp. 483–495.
C.S. Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems: Local Surprise and Global Change, Sustainable Development in the Biosphere, W.M. Clark and R.E. Munn, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 292–320
C.S. Holling, “Crossscale Morphology, Geometry, and Dynamics of Ecosystems,” Ecological Monographs, 62:4 (1992), pp. 447–502; and Kay, “Non-equilibrium” [note 5].
F. Bormann, G. Likens, Pattern and Process in a Forested Ecosystem (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1979).
R.P. Mcintosh, “The Relationship between Succession and Recovery Process in Ecosystems,” The Recovery Process in Damaged Ecosystems, J. Cairns, ed. (Ann Arbor Science, 1980), pp. 11–62.
See for example T.F.H. Allen, T.W. Hoekstra, Toward a Unified Ecology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
This way of looking at the world spills over into our judicial system, where we strive to determine who is responsible, and who is guilty. This is based on the assumption that the observed behaviour can be explained by simple linear interactions between the components. Somebody is responsible for something happening.
In the sense that Ludwig Boltzmann spoke of randomization rather than the modern Jaynesian interpretation of information, see E.T. Jaynes, “Where Do We Stand on Maximum Entropy,” The Maximum Entropy Formalism, R. Levine and M. Tribus, eds. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1979), pp. 15–118.
In classical analysis, small interactions between components (such as friction), interaction due to spherical imperfections (billiard tables which aren’t perfectly flat), etc. are ignored. It turns out that these interactions, after some time, actually determine the system’s behaviour as much as anything. But these interactions are essentially noise and unpredictable.
G. Nicolis, I. Prigogine, Exploring Complexity (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1989). Prigogine showed that such systems do not violate the second law that entropy must increase, even though they increase order or organization.
E.D. Schneider and J.J. Kay, “Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” Mathematical and Computer Modelling 19:6–8 (1994), pp. 25–48.
This is the second law of thermodynamics restated for non-equilibrium situations.
More formally, from Schneider and Kay, “Life” [note 14], “the thermodynamic principle which governs the behaviour of self-organizing systems is that, as they are moved away from equilibrium, they will utilize all avenues available to counter applied gradients (high quality energy flows). As an applied gradient increases so does a system’s ability to oppose further movement from equilibrium.” This seems to be the natural principle behind the emergence of life.
See Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975).
A.W. King, “Considerations of Scale and Hierarchy,” Ecological Integrity and the Management of Ecosystems, S. Woodley, J.J. Kay, G. Francis, eds. (Delray, Florida: St. Lucie Press, 1993), pp. 19–46. An ecosystem is a collection of interacting biological entities combined with the physical environment in which they live, which is perceived to act as a whole.
Holling, “Resilience” [note 6].
J.J. Kay, “Self-Organization in Living Systems” (PhD thesis, Systems Design Engineer-ing, University of Waterloo, 1984), pp. 85–88.
For example, jack pine cones require heat from a forest fire to open.
N.M. Lister, “Biodiversity: Socio-Cultural and Scientific Perspectives With Reference to Decision Making in the Great Lakes Basin,” (unpublished 1994).
Ecosystem integrity is about the integrity of ecosystems versus ecological integrity which refers to the integrity of life at all ecological levels including ecosystems. In what follows the focus is on ecosystem integrity.
Kay, “Non-equilibrium” [note 5]
J.J. Kay, “On the Nature of Ecological Integrity: Some Closing Comments,” Ecological Integrity, Woodley, Kay and Francis [note 18], pp.201–212.
Kay, “Non-equilibrium” [note 5].
Of course one may wish to preserve an ecosystem as an example or specimen of a specific type.
To return to the musical composition analogy, the two extreme cases correspond to the playing of the same piece over and over with minor variations or to no music at all. The third option allows for different compositions, but not all compositions. As in music, the question of taste and need plays an important role in deciding which compositions are acceptable.
For an early version of some practical and institutional aspects see H.A. Regier, A Balanced Science of Renewable Resources (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978).
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Kay, J.J., Schneider, E. (1995). Embracing Complexity the Challenge of the Ecosystem Approach. In: Westra, L., Lemons, J. (eds) Perspectives on Ecological Integrity. Environmental Science and Technology Library, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0451-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0451-7_4
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