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AN ENERGY SYSTEMS PERPECTIVE OF ECOLOGICAL INTEGRITY AND ECOSYSTEM HEALTH
Citation:
Campbell, D E. AN ENERGY SYSTEMS PERPECTIVE OF ECOLOGICAL INTEGRITY AND ECOSYSTEM HEALTH. Presented at 2nd Biennial International Workshop: Advances In Energy Studies - Exploring Supplies, Constraints And Strategies, Porto Venere, Italy, May 23-27, 2000.
Description:
The integrity and health of society's life-supporting ecosystems establishes a fundamental constraint on economic growth and development. Energy Systems Theory provides a theoretical basis for defining, measuring and interpreting the concepts of ecological integrity and ecosystem health. In this paper, ecological integrity is defined as an emergent property of ecosystems operating at maximum power that can be quantified using validated Energy Systems models. The cumulative empower production and use calculated using these models is a measure of ecosystem health. Ecological integrity must be interpreted within the context of an ecosystem's position within the relevant hierarchies of organization and cycles of change that control system behavior. The "local" integrity and health of an ecosystem are normative concepts because they are evaluated relative to a standard or reference state. The underlying emergy signature responsible for generating ecosystem organization provides an expectation for this reference state. Ecosystems also have "global integrity" which is manifested as the flexibility to maximize empower over time. Global integrity has no fixed reference but can be evaluated by comparing alternative system designs. Because the maximum power principle is a general law that applies to all self-organizing systems, these definitions for ecological integrity and ecosystem health apply to both natural ecosystems and ecosystems dominated by human activities. Human- dominated ecosystems with the highest integrity will be those in which the sum of the empower produced by the economy and its supporting ecosystems is close to a maximum. Rapid indicators for ecological integrity can be developed by comparing easily measured quantities first to the behavior of the ecosystem variable that they represent and then to the behavior of a whole system variable calculated from a validated ecosystem model. Indicators that can be verified in the ecosystem and that accurately represent the behavior of a comprehensive network variable such as empower production can be used as rapid indicators of ecological integrity.