[PDF] Ecological And General Systems eBook

Author : Howard Thomas Odum
Publisher :
Page : 676 pages
File Size : 13,30 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Science
ISBN :

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This book introduces ecological systems, while summarizing general principles of all systems, and uses ecosystem examples most frequently to illustrate generalizations about system designs and functions

Author : Howard T. Odum
Publisher :
Page : 684 pages
File Size : 12,29 MB
Release : 1983-03-08
Category : Science
ISBN :

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An integrated theoretical and applied introduction to systems ecology that uses energy diagrammatic language to explain basic concepts of systems, modelling, and simulation. Teaches energetics while at the same time dealing with the issues of organization, entropy, information, complexity, diversity, frequency, and power and the ways these determine the nature of real systems. Includes analog and digital computer modelling, enabling readers without prior programming experience to create computer models of ecological processes.

Author : J.I. Gitelson
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 32,19 MB
Release : 2002-12-26
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780203222799

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Providing a broad historical perspective, this book explores the interactions between humans, microorganisms, and plants in a closed habitat, and the life support systems necessary to maintain habitability over long periods of time. Topics include the cultivation of bacteria, microalgae and higher plants; the use of biotechnology to support life outside the Earth's biosphere; methods for recycling air, water and food for human consumption; interactions between humans and other organisms in CMESs; and methods for intensifying the level of photosynthesis. In addition to space the authors investigate problems associated with living conditions in dangerous or difficult environmental areas on Earth such as the Arctic and Antarctica, deserts and mountains.

Author : Alexey A. Voinov
Publisher : Academic Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 43,6 MB
Release : 2010-07-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 0080886175

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Modeling is a key component to sciences from mathematics to life science, including environmental and ecological studies. By looking at the underlying concepts of the software, we can make sure that we build mathematically feasible models and that we get the most out of the data and information that we have. Systems Science and Modeling for Ecological Economics shows how models can be analyzed using simple math and software to generate meaningful qualitative descriptions of system dynamics. This book shows that even without a full analytical, mathematically rigorous analysis of the equations, there may be ways to derive some qualitative understanding of the general behavior of a system. By relating some of the modeling approaches and systems theory to real-world examples the book illustrates how these approaches can help understand concepts such as sustainability, peak oil, adaptive management, optimal harvest and other practical applications. Relates modeling approaches and systems theory to real-world examples Teaches students to build mathematically feasible models and get the most out of the data and information available Wide range of applications in hydrology, population dynamics, market cycles, sustainability theory, management, and more

Author : Erich Hörl
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 49,18 MB
Release : 2017-05-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1350014710

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Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political... a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required. In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought-one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate-and how-in this planet's future.

Author : Brian D. Fath
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 597 pages
File Size : 34,53 MB
Release : 2020-07-29
Category : Law
ISBN : 1000062082

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Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, Environmental Management Handbook, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about environmental problems and their corresponding management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 400 contributors, all experts in their field. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management are presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management Addresses new and cutting-edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food–energy–water nexus, socio-ecological systems, and more Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function, and offers strategies on how to best manage them Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today In this second volume, Managing Biological and Ecological Systems, the reader is introduced to the general concepts and processes of the biosphere and all its systems. This volume explains how these systems function and provides strategies on how to best manage them. It serves as an excellent resource for finding basic knowledge on the biosphere and ecological systems and includes important problems and solutions that environmental managers face today. This book practically demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used in studying environmental management.

Author : S.E. Jorgensen
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 44,19 MB
Release : 2004-07-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780080441672

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The book presents a consistent and complete ecosystem theory based on thermodynamic concepts. The first chapters are devoted to an interpretation of the first and second law of thermodynamics in ecosystem context. Then Prigogine's use of far from equilibrium thermodynamic is used on ecosystems to explain their reactions to perturbations. The introduction of the concept exergy makes it possible to give a more profound and comprehensive explanation of the ecosystem's reactions and growth-patterns. A tentative fourth law of thermodynamic is formulated and applied to facilitate these explanations. The trophic chain, the global energy and radiation balance and pattern and the reactions of ecological networks are all explained by the use of exergy. Finally, it is discussed how the presented theory can be applied more widely to explain ecological observations and rules, to assess ecosystem health and to develop ecological models.

Author : Urie BRONFENBRENNER
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 12,7 MB
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0674028848

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Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to "the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time." To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.

Author : Howard T. Odum
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 36,11 MB
Release : 2007-06-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 0231502931

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Howard T. Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet. This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing his approach and insight to a whole new generation of students and scholars. For this edition Odum refines his original theories and introduces two new measures: emergy and transformity. These concepts can be used to evaluate and compare systems and their transformation and use of resources by accounting for all the energies and materials that flow in and out and expressing them in equivalent ability to do work. Natural energies such as solar radiation and the cycling of water, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are diagrammed in terms of energy and emergy flow. Through this method Odum reveals the similarities between human economic and social systems and the ecosystems of the natural world. In the process, we discover that our survival and prosperity are regulated as much by the laws of energetics as are systems of the physical and chemical world.