Books in the Complexity in Ecological Systems series

This strategy, derived from Newtonian mechanism, is embodied in reductionism: break what is complicated into simpler pieces, understand the pieces themselves, and reconstruct organisms from this understanding. In Life Itself, Robert Rosen argues that such a view is neither necessary nor sufficient to answer the question.

Presenta a new synthesis of the authors' core ideas on evaluating communities, organisms, populations, biomes, models, and management.

Synthesizing a literature in ecology, this book addresses the theoretical and methodological relevance of scale within a multidisciplinary context. It presents evidence that the integration of scale concepts into ecological study is of imminent global concern. It provides an understanding for resource managers and other ecological professionals.

Presents a paradigm to measure the developmental status of various living communities. This book aims to set forth a theoretical framework for ecology. It demonstrates that mechanical models fail to explain the mix of order and disorder that characterizes larger systems. It suggests ways to bring ecology from the fringes to the center of science.

Complexity theory sheds light on the many interactions between natural and social systems. This book focuses on natural resource management and community-based conservation. It covers scenario planning, scaling analysis, and adaptive management. It emphasizes on understanding the conditions required for systems self-organization.

Are ecosystems and their components continuously distributed and do they adhere to scaling laws, or are they discontinuous and more complex than early models would have us believe? This book argues that ecosystems are inherently discontinuous and that ecology, economics, and urban studies benefit from this paradigm shift.

Proposes the development of a ecological theory that can lead to a remedy for the drastic effects of heavy fishing on natural communities of organisms in both marine and freshwater environments. This book demonstrates the potential of the biomass spectrum methodology for offering remedies when natural systems are exploited by humans.

Compiling twenty articles on the nature of life and on the objective of the natural sciences, this remarkable book complements Robert Rosen's groundbreaking Life Itself-a work that influenced a wide range of philosophers, biologists, linguists, and social scientists. In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to come.

While environmentalists insist that lower rates of consumption of natural resources are essential for a sustainable future, many economists dismiss the notion that resource limits act to constrain modern, creative societies. The conflict between these views tinges political debate at all levels and hinders our ability to plan for the future.Supply-Side Sustainability offers a fresh approach to this dilemma by integrating ecological and social science approaches in an interdisciplinary treatment of sustainability. Written by two ecologists and an anthropologist, this book discusses organisms, landscapes, populations, communities, biomes, the biosphere, ecosystems and energy flows, as well as patterns of sustainability and collapse in human societies, from hunter-gatherer groups to empires to today's industrial world. These diverse topics are integrated within a new framework that translates the authors' advances in hierarchy and complexity theory into a form useful to professionals in science, government, and business.The result is a much-needed blueprint for a cost-effective management regime, one that makes problem-solving efforts themselves sustainable over time. The authors demonstrate that long-term, cost-effective resource management can be achieved by managing the contexts of productive systems, rather than by managing the commodities that natural systems produce.

This book presents ideas and methods for directly optimizing the spatial layout of the landscape features in which an ecosystem functions. There is rich discussion of wildlife habitat issues as well as chapters on recreation, timber management, water runoff, and pest management.

The Gulf of Maine supports a vital fishery for North America and is one of the most intensely studied marine ecosystems in the world. This book presents the application of Hierarchy Theory to the ecological workings of the Gulf of Maine and of marine ecosystems in general.

Whether discussing habitat placement for the northern spotted owl or black-tailed prairie dog or strategies for controlling exotic pests, this book explains how capturing ecological relationships across a landscape with pragmatic optimization models can be applied to real world problems. Using linear programming, Hof and Bevers show how it is possible for the researcher to include many thousands of choice variables and many thousands of constraints and still be quite confident of being able to solve the problem in hand with widely available software. The authors' emphasis is to preserve optimality and explore how much ecosystem function can be captured, stressing the solvability of large problems such as those in real world case studies.

Are ecosystems and their components continuously distributed and do they adhere to scaling laws, or are they discontinuous and more complex than early models would have us believe? This book argues that ecosystems are inherently discontinuous and that ecology, economics, and urban studies benefit from this paradigm shift.