Everything is Connected

Title: Everything-is-connected
Date created: January 15, 2012
Last date edited: January 2, 2014
Linked from: ESM102/lecture2.html

1. The first "law" of ecology is that everything is connected and that you can't do just one thing

not really a law

in real ecosystems making any change effects many other aspects

example:

• decreasing the population of a predator
• prey populations
• other predators
• biogeochemical cycling
• plant types
• community succession

2. Internal linkages can stabilize ecosystems and other organizations

strong and weak relationships

competition and cooperation

threshhold responses

 

3. Control of a complex system may require a similar level of complexity

Ashby's Law of Requisite Complexity

external control to meet a specific goal maybe very difficult to orchestrate or administer

control from within may include many small actions that aren't necessarily linked to any particular overall goal

4. Internal feedbacks are crucial

in some systems it might be the case that a slight positive change in any area (or any of several key areas) could improve conditions in the entire system

especially important when there are positive feedbacks or high-degree of cooperation

example: better water quality for a community

in some systems it might be that changing the obvious parameters has a detrimental effect

some systems behave in a counter-intuitive way (use a systems approach to find these)

• example:
• trying to favor small farms by providing incentives --> leads to big farms that can take advantage of the incentive system
• limiting the maximum size of farms can work

 

5. Examples:

soil moisture, plant growth, coverage and soil organic content

predator extirpation - causes other problems for ecosystem

demographic transition - individual choice leads to nation level changes

common pool resource - control by community vs. federal laws

water and health in rural Nicaragua

Notes:

control from within

complex systems vs. simple democracy

References: