Start Date
6-23-2009 8:20 AM
End Date
6-23-2009 8:40 AM
Description
Forest ecosystems across North America are under increasing stress from the accelerating pace of global change which involves simultaneous changes in resource availability (temperature, moisture, nutrients), disturbance regimes (fire, insects, diseases, extreme weather, logging, urbanization) and (3) species distributions (invasive organisms, threatened species). Interactions among the agents of global change can generate emergent or unexpected ecosystem behaviour. Complex systems science provides a strong theoretical foundation for understanding these factor interactions and provides many new mathematical and simulation modeling tools that can generate complex, non-linear behaviour and provide improved understanding of ecosystem response to global change. I present an updated version of Jenny’s (1941) classic state factor model of soils and ecosystems that allows three variables (resources, disturbance and plant-soil functional groups) to interact to generate higher orders of complexity through self-organizing plant-soil feedback switches. An interactive agent-based model allows the user to vary the degree of change in resource availability, disturbance frequency or severity and the strength of negative and positive plant-soil feedbacks and to measure the effect of these changes on ecosystem resilience, diversity and landscape complexity. The model is currently being used to simulate the dynamics of lodgepole pine-Cladina-lichen dominated landscapes in central British Columbia that has been massively affected by interactions among changing fire regimes, mountain pine beetle and a warming climate.
Included in
Forest Ecosystem Dynamics in a Non-Linear World
Forest ecosystems across North America are under increasing stress from the accelerating pace of global change which involves simultaneous changes in resource availability (temperature, moisture, nutrients), disturbance regimes (fire, insects, diseases, extreme weather, logging, urbanization) and (3) species distributions (invasive organisms, threatened species). Interactions among the agents of global change can generate emergent or unexpected ecosystem behaviour. Complex systems science provides a strong theoretical foundation for understanding these factor interactions and provides many new mathematical and simulation modeling tools that can generate complex, non-linear behaviour and provide improved understanding of ecosystem response to global change. I present an updated version of Jenny’s (1941) classic state factor model of soils and ecosystems that allows three variables (resources, disturbance and plant-soil functional groups) to interact to generate higher orders of complexity through self-organizing plant-soil feedback switches. An interactive agent-based model allows the user to vary the degree of change in resource availability, disturbance frequency or severity and the strength of negative and positive plant-soil feedbacks and to measure the effect of these changes on ecosystem resilience, diversity and landscape complexity. The model is currently being used to simulate the dynamics of lodgepole pine-Cladina-lichen dominated landscapes in central British Columbia that has been massively affected by interactions among changing fire regimes, mountain pine beetle and a warming climate.