New directions in biophysical ecology
It can be argued that biophysical ecology (i.e., the science concerned with studying the subject matter of ecology from the physical-mathematical point of view) is developing rather slowly. The rate of development of this science, which is highly importan
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14.1
INTRODUCTION
It can be argued that biophysical ecology (i.e., the science concerned with studying the subject matter of ecology from the physical±mathematical point of view) is developing rather slowly. The rate of development of this science, which is highly important for developing scienti®cally based management of ecosystems and the biosphere, is limited by the following factors: (1) the absence of systematic experimental approaches (of the type used in physics) connected with the impossibility to make experiments with the ecological object which is unique (e.g., unique is the biosphere itself, a certain lake, river ecosystem, etc.); (2) the rare procedures for the veri®cation of ecosystem mathematical models using ®eld and/or experimental data; (3) the variety of interactions within ecosystems in terms of energy, matter, and control even for small-species communities; and (4) the absence of strict methods for the transfer of laboratory-scale experimental data to full scale. In this chapter we shall discuss some solutions to the situation. We shall consider water resources as an example. The rapidly increasing consumption of water will soon make the lack of freshwater a factor that will limit the development of civilization as severely as diminishing energy resources will do. As a rule, the interests of water users are con¯icting. However, almost all of them pollute water environments, seriously interfering with ecosystems and making harmful alterations to them. Aquatic ecology must be able both to predict the environmental consequences of the activities of water users and also to satisfy their needs in the best possible way. As a fundamental science, the biophysics of aquatic ecosystems studies the physical and biochemical principles of ecological mechanisms responsible for the stability, controllability, and variability of aquatic ecosystems for short times (successions) and for long times (microevolution). The biophysics of ecosystems has three major branches with their own physical±mathematical methods: namely,
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New directions in biophysical ecology
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(a) monitoring the integrated parameters of ecosystems, (b) the kinetic experimental approach, and (c) mathematical modeling, which is based on the ®rst two branches. In its methodology, the biophysics of ecosystems currently tends towards reductionism, maybe because it has been used successfully in physical sciences. Investigations address the spatio-temporal distribution and dynamics of various ecological structures of aquatic ecosystems (species, age, sex, functional structure, and trophic structure) and the hydrochemical conditions of a water body. More speci®cally, the biophysics of ecosystems deals with Ð biochemical and population mechanisms: self-regulation of growth in aquatic communities, substrate consumption, material cycling, inter-speci®c relationships in the community; Ð contribution of density and limiting factors to the stability of aquatic communities; Ð physical principles underlying the theory of the search for limiting
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