The fundamental processes in ecology : life and the earth system / David Wilkinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilkinson, David M., 1963- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ecology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (177 pages)

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Summary:

This thought-provoking book introduces a way to study ecosystems that is resonant with current thinking in the fields of earth system science, geobiology, and planetology. Instead of organizing the subject around a hierarchical series of entities (e.g. genes, individuals, populations, species, communities, and the biosphere), it provides an alternative process-based approach and proposes a truly planetary view of ecological science. It demonstrates how the idea of fundamental ecological processes can be developed at the systems level, specifically their involvement in control and feedback mechanisms. This enables the reader to reconsider fundamental ecological processes such as energy flow, guilds, trade-offs, carbon cycling, and photosynthesis, and to put them in a global (and even planetary) context. In so doing, the book places a much stronger emphasis on microorganisms.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

Contents

PART I Introduction

1 Introducing the thought experiment

1.1 The entangled bank

1.2 The entity approach

1.3 A process-based approach

1.4 The Gaian effect

1.5 Overview

PART II The Fundamental Processes

2 Energy flow

2.1 The second law of thermodynamics

2.2 Schrödinger, entropy, and free energy

2.3 Sources of free energy

2.4 Maximum entropy production and planetary ecology

2.5 Overview

3 Multiple guilds

3.1 The importance of waste

3.2 The requirement for multiple guilds

3.3 Predators and parasites

3.4 Parasites introduce a potentially important mechanism for density-dependent regulation

3.5 Other effects of parasites

3.6 Overview

4 Trade-offs and biodiversity

4.1 The problem of biodiversity

4.2 Trade-offs illustrated by human sporting performance

4.3 Trade-offs in ecology

4.4 Trade-offs and biodiversity

4.5 The Gaian effect of biodiversity

4.6 Overview

5 Dispersal

5.1 Tansley's beechwoods

5.2 The evolution of dispersal

5.3 Dispersal as a key process in ecology

5.4 Dispersal at an astronomical scale?

5.5 Overview

6 Ecological hypercycles: covering a planet with life

6.1 Darwin's earth worms

6.2 Hypercycles in ecology

6.3 Covering a planet with life

6.4 Why would persistent restricted ecologies be unlikely?

6.5 The end of life on a planet

6.6 Overview

7 Merging of organismal and ecological physiology

7.1 From beavers to planetary ecology

7.2 Daisyworld

7.3 Examples of the role of life in planetary physiology on Earth

7.4 The importance of biomass: an illustration from Earth's past

7.5 Biomass and Gaia

7.6 Overview

8 Photosynthesis

8.1 Quantification and mysticism in the seventeenth century.

8.2 The diversity of photosynthesis on Earth

8.3 Photosynthesis and the Earth system

8.4 Oxygen and the Earth system

8.5 Is photosynthesis a fundamental process?

8.6 Overview

9 Carbon sequestration

9.1 Carbon sequestration and landscape change in northwest England

9.2 A tale of two cycles: short- and long-term carbon cycles

9.3 The role of life: from geochemical cycles to biogeochemical cycles

9.4 Co-evolution of plants and carbon dioxide on Earth

9.5 Oxygen and carbon sequestration on Earth

9.6 Humans and carbon sequestration

9.7 Carbon sequestration as a fundamental process

9.8 Overview

Part III Emerging Systems

10 Nutrient cycling as an emergent property

10.1 The paradox of the goldfish

10.2 Trade-offs and in vitro evolution

10.3 Emergence of biogeochemical cycles

10.4 Cycling ratios and biotic plunder

10.5 Overview

11 Historical contingency and the development of planetary ecosystems

11.1 Carus and the thunderbolt: chance and change in history

11.2 Historical contingency and ecology

11.3 Historical contingency and the Earth system

11.4 Overview

12 From processes to systems

12.1 An Earth systems approach to ecology

12.2 The trouble with Gaia

12.3 Selection for Gaia?

12.4 Conservation biology and the Earth system

12.5 Concluding remarks

Glossary

The geological timescale

References

Index.

Notes:

This edition also issued in print: 2023.

Previous edition: 2006.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on August 24, 2023).

ISBN:

0-19-198034-X

0-19-288466-2

OCLC:

1395076655