MOTIVATION AND BENEFITS OF COMPLEX-SYSTEMS APPROACHES IN ECOLOGY

Studies of complex systems in other disciplines provide models and ana lytical strategies for understanding ecosystems and landscapes. The em phasis is on invariant properties, particularly processes that create scaling relations over wide ranges of scale, both in time and space. T ranslations between levels of ecological organization may be accomplis hed by succinct characterizations of processes that operate at fine sc ales, followed by renormalization group analysis to reveal patterns at broad scales. The self-organized patterns found in simple ecosystem, landscape, and forest-fire models may be explained as feedback between the system state and control parameters. Critical phenomena and phase transitions are expected in open, dissipative systems where long-rang e correlations defy predictions based on average population densities, a concept that becomes irrelevant as nonstationary conditions prevail . Thus, complexity theory for open systems relates to the ecology of s elf-entailing ecosystems that function as their own environments and t hereby create constraints through emergence.