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18 - Exergy Use in Ecosystem Analysis: Background and Challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

By
Roberto Pastres  and
Brian D. Fath
Edited by
Bhavik R. Bakshi ,
Timothy G. Gutowski  and
Dušan P. Sekulić
Roberto Pastres
Affiliation:
University of Venice
Brian D. Fath
Affiliation:
Towson University
Bhavik R. Bakshi
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Timothy G. Gutowski
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dušan P. Sekulić
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Summary

Introduction to Ecological Thermodynamics

Ecology covers many spatial, temporal, and organizational scales, from individual to population, communities to ecosystems. At the broadest scale, ecosystem ecology is mostly concerned with how energy and matter enter, circulate, and are discharged through a biotic and abiotic open-system complex. This aggregate approach often overlooks and obscures the minute details of how individual organisms grow, reproduce, and respond within their environment. Therefore, there exists a divide between evolutionary ecology, dealing with the internal, reductionistic, genetic workings of individuals, and ecosystem ecology at the holistic, integrative scale. Attempts have been made to span this chasm by specifically relating the way large-scale ecosystem processes develop alongside evolutionary processes (e.g., see [1–4]).

As open and far-from-equilibrium systems, all ecosystems are dependent on a continual input of exergy, defined, as in Chap. 1, as energy available to perform work, in order to maintain their complex and adaptive functionality. At the same time, ecosystems need to discharge into the surrounding both matter and energy in degraded forms to keep the matter and energy balance. Even though the concept of exergy was introduced in 1953, this need was recognized much earlier and expressed in the framework of classical thermodynamics (CT) as the necessity of acquiring free energy. This is an evolutionary challenge according to Lotka [5], who stated that those organisms, and the systems in which they exist, which are better equipped to capture and utilize this energy, should have an evolutionary advantage over ones that are less capable of doing so.

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Thermodynamics and the Destruction of Resources , pp. 453 - 476
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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