U.S.-Western Europe Regional Cooperative Research: Tests ofPrinciples for Dynamic Ecosystem Behavior and Physical Resource Theory

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This award will help Dr. Robert A. Herendeen, Illinois Natural History Survey, to collaborate with Dr. Sven E. Jorgensen, Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen, Denmark; Drs. AnnMari and Bengt-Owe Jansson, University of Stockholm, Sweden; and Dr. Karl-Erik Eriksson, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. They will study coupled ecological-economic systems. One goal of the research is to examine the viability of several principles for predicting dynamic ecosystem behavior under changing energy availability and cropping. The researchers will test the degree to which physically-based and ecologically-based analyses provide practical inputs into economic analysis and planning. The research will bring together scientists who hold differing views of physical resource theory, and enable them to develop a mutually acceptable framework for applying the theory and identifying data and experiments for testing it. Several ecosystem principles leading to different predictions will be tested. The principles refer to the maximizations of (1) energy, (2) ascendancy, (3) power, and (4) net system output weighted by energy intensities. Dr. Herendeen has done research on principle (4). Dr. Jorgensen is the author of the maximization of energy principle and he and his group are experienced researchers on perturbed ecological systems. The Janssons have extensively investigated the Baltic ecosystem. Dr. Ericksson's specialty is modeling physical ecological systems. The proposed research will lead to further interpretation of the system principles and to a coherent statement of their applicable temporal, spatial, and organizational scales.