HR: 17:30h
AN: OS22D-07    [PDF]
TI: Stability and Resilience as Organizing Constructs for Aquatic Food Webs
AU: * Laws, E A
EM: elaws@hawaii.edu
AF: University of Hawaii, Department of Oceanography, Honolulu, HI 96822 United States
AB: The idea that physical, chemical, and biological systems tend to persist in stable configurations underlies much theoretical understanding of systems behavior. Systems analysis indicates that locally (as opposed to globally) stable configurations of systems may persist indefinitely. The existence of such locally stable configurations may to some extent explain the phenomenon of regime shifts and the irreversibility of some anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems. In a stochastic environment merely being stable is not good enough. Resilience becomes important. Given a multitude of stable system configurations, a stochastic environment will tend to select for those configurations that are most resilient. The greater the variance associated with environmental noise, the greater the selection pressure. Application of the concept of maximum resilience to pelagic and mesopelagic food webs leads to predictions about system behavior that are in remarkable agreement with observations. The predictions underscore the role of temperature as a regulator of community behavior.
DE: 4815 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics
DE: 4817 Food chains
DE: 4842 Modeling
DE: 4845 Nutrients and nutrient cycling
DE: 4855 Plankton
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting