10 Conclusions and final remarks ARE BASIC ECOLOGICAL PROPERTIES NEEDED TO EXPLAIN OUR OBSERVATIONS? Take a walk on a pleasant May day in a temperate deciduous forest, visit the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania when the wildebeests are emigrating North, paddle a canoe through a North-American wetland | 3 31 2007 08 27 e 243 10 Conclusions and final remarks ARE BASIC ECOLOGICAL PROPERTIES NEEDED TO EXPLAIN OUR OBSERVATIONS Take a walk on a pleasant May day in a temperate deciduous forest visit the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania when the wildebeests are emigrating North paddle a canoe through a North-American wetland or hike the alpine tundra of Austria whatever your preference you will be impressed by the diversity and beauty that nature offers to you. We know that the diversity of nature is enormous. We can find on the order of 107 different species on earth and they can be combined in ecological networks in an almost infinite number of ways. We also have a fairly good image of the evolution from billion years ago when the first primitive cells emerged to Homo sapiens with advanced technology of today airplanes computers Internet and so on. We could therefore turn the question around and ask which properties do ecosystems have that explain the diversity adaptability and beauty of nature and evolution. How can we explain that the interactions between matter energy and information lead to the abiotic and biotic web of life on earth as we can observe We definitely do not need an intelligent designer to come up with a clear and fully acceptable explanation. This book presents an overview of which systems-based thermodynamic properties are known to underpin this natural growth and development. PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO PRESENT AN ECOSYSTEM THEORY Previously various attempts have been made to present an ecosystem theory that could be applied to quantitatively explain ecosystem processes and their responses to disturbance and changing impacts. While we cannot cover all the attempts here we focus on those based on systems perspectives and thermodynamics. One of the early pioneers in Systems Ecology Ken Watt proposed his theory in the important work Ecology and resource management in 1968 which opened the way for greater systems .
