Meta-Ecosystem Dynamics: Understanding Ecosystems Through the Transformation and Movement of Matter

✍ Scribed by Frederic Guichard, Justin Marleau

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 112
• Series: Lecture Notes on Mathematical Modelling in the Life Sciences
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book presents current meta-ecosystem models and their derivation from classical ecosystem and metapopulation theories. Specifically, it reviews recent modelling efforts that have emphasized the role of nonlinear dynamics on spatial and food web networks, and which have cast their implications within the context of spatial synchrony and ecological stoichiometry. It suggests that these recent advances naturally lead to a generalization of meta-ecosystem theories to spatial fluxes of matter that have both a trophic and non-trophic impact on species.

Ecosystem dynamics refers to the cycling of matter and energy across ecological compartments through processes such as consumption and recycling. Spatial dynamics established its ecological roots with metapopulation theories and focuses on scaling up local ecological processes through the limited movement of individuals and matter. Over the last 15 years, theories integrating ecosystem and spatial dynamics have quickly coalesced into meta-ecosystem theories, the focus of this book.

The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers who wish to learn more about the synthesis of ecosystem and spatial dynamics, which form the foundation of the theory of meta-ecosystems.

 

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
Symbols Used in Equations
1 Introduction: General Ecosystem Dynamics
1.1 From Populations to Ecosystems
1.2 From Ecosystems to Meta-Ecosystems: Layout of the Book
2 Meta-Ecosystems
2.1 A Discrete-Space Approach to Spatial Dynamics
2.2 From Metapopulations to Meta-Ecosystems
2.2.1 Scaling-Up Local Ecological Processes to Landscapes
2.2.2 Meta-Ecosystem Models
2.3 Insights from Simple Meta-Ecosystem Models
2.3.1 Emergence of Facilitation Among Competitors
2.3.2 Colonization-Extinction over Meta-Ecosystems
2.3.3 Forced Meta-Ecosystems
3 Nonlinear Meta-Ecosystem Dynamics
3.1 Integrating the Cycling of Matter to Nonlinear Ecological Dynamics
3.2 Nonlinear Dynamics in Space and Time
3.3 Nonlinear Meta-Ecosystem Dynamics
3.3.1 Spatial Dynamics with Multiple Ecosystem Compartments
3.4 Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity and Spatial Synchrony
3.4.1 Phase Dynamics in a Metacommunity
4 Diversity of Meta-Ecosystems: Spatial Topologies, Species Diversity, Stoichiometries and Non-trophic Fluxes
4.1 Introduction
4.2 From Two to Many: Multi-patch Spatial Topologies in Meta-Ecosystems
4.3 Beyond the Chain: Species Diversity in Meta-Ecosystems
4.4 More Than Carbon: Multiple Elemental Nutrients in Meta-Ecosystems
4.5 Beyond Resource Effects of Matter: Towards a Generalized Meta-Ecosystem Model
4.5.1 Matter as Material: Foundation Species and the Construction of Meta-Ecosystems
4.5.2 Matter as Information: Thresholds and Gradients Altering Movement
4.5.3 Meta-Ecosystems 2.1: Integration and Synthesis
5 Conclusions
5.1 From Metacommunities to Meta-Ecosystem: Dynamic Feedbacks …
5.2 Applying Meta-Ecosystem Theories to Natural Ecosystems
5.3 A Non-equilibrium Meta-Ecosystem Theory of Ecosystem Management
5.4 Integrating Multiple Currencies of Matter to Meta-Ecosystem Dynamics
5.5 Concluding Remarks
Appendix Glossary
Appendix References