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The redoubtable ecological periodic table
Citation:
Ferraro, S. The redoubtable ecological periodic table. Presented at Pacific Estuarine Research Society, Newport, OR, April 03 - 05, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this presentation is to explain why the information in ecological periodic tables is reliable and how their content and structure impart information on the uncertainty, scaling and transferability of habitat-community patterns.
Description:
Ecological periodic tables are repositories of reliable information on quantitative, predictably recurring (periodic) habitat–community patterns and their uncertainty, scaling and transferability. Their reliability derives from their grounding in sound ecological principles and theory and the scientific and statistical rigor with which they are constructed. Community state variables and their measurement uncertainty are entered into table elements representing categorical habitat types which are color-coded and systematically arranged to reflect the habitats’ similarity in community composition and structure. Blocks (rows and columns of table elements) distinguish periodic habitat–community patterns that differ in space or time. Information is scale invariant for the space-time domain represented by each block and is not transferable to the space-time domains of any other blocks.