Grassland Simulation Model
Perspectives on the ELM Model and Modeling Efforts This volume is the major open-literature description of a comprehensive, pioneering ecological modeling effort. The ELM model is one of the major outputs of the United States Grassland Biome study, a cont
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Edited by W. D. Billings, Durham (USA) F. Golley, Athens (USA) O. L. Lange, Wiirzburg (FRG) J. S. Olson, Oak Ridge (USA)
Volume 26
Grassland Simulation Model Edited by
George S. Innis
With 87 Figures
Springer-Verlag NewYork Heidelberg Berlin
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Grassland simulation model. (Ecological studies: v. 26) Includes bibliographies and index. I. Grassland ecology. 2. Grassland ecologyMathematical models. 3. Grassland ecology-Data processing. l. Innis, George S., 1937II. International Biological Programme. III. Series. QH54I.5.P7G72 574.5'264 77-23016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag. ©1978 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978 987654321 ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-9931-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-9929-5 DOl: 10.1 007/978-1-4612-9929-5
Foreword Perspectives on the ELM Model and Modeling Efforts This volume is the major open-literature description of a comprehensive, pioneering ecological modeling effort. The ELM model is one of the major outputs of the United States Grassland Biome study, a contribution to the International Biological Program (IBP). Writing this introduction provides welcome personal opportunity to (i) review briefly the state of the art at the beginning of the ELM modeling effort in 1971, (ii) to discuss some aspects of the ELM model's role in relation to other models and other phases of the Grassland Biome study, and (iii) to summarize the evolution of ELM or its components since 1973.
Pre-Program Historical Perspective My first major contacts with ecological simulation modeling were in 1960 when I was studying intraseasonal herbage dynamics and nutrient production on foothill grasslands in southcentral Montana, making year-round measurements of the aboveground live vegetation, the standing dead, and the litter. Limitations in funding and the rockiness of the foothill soils prevented measuring the dynamics of the root biomass, both live and dead. Herbage biomass originates in live shoots from which it could be translocated into live roots or the live shoots could transfer to standing dead or to litter. Standing dead vegetation must end up in the litter and the live roots eventually transfer to dead roots. Obviously, the litter and the dead roots must decay away. This led to a conceptual model of a source, five compartments, and a sink for the carbon or biomass flow. I turned to compartmental models to develop equation systems with the hopes of utilizing field data on live shoots, standing dead, and litter to predict the dynamics of the root compartments. This led to an examination of the ecological modeling literature which I found was still in a "conceptual and linear" phase. Ecologists had available to them a long history of systems views of ecological system stretching as far back as Lotka (1925), strengthened by the work of Lindemann (1943), and further stimulated by work in the late 19
