Fundamentals of Ecology
* Book: The Fundamentals of Ecology. (Odum and Barrett 2005)
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Summary
James Quilligan:
"In 1953 brothers Eugene Odum (1913–2002) and Howard Odum (1924–2002) examined these biophysical processes in The Fundamentals of Ecology (Odum and Barrett 2005). Elaborating on Latka’s maximum power principle, Howard Odum developed an optimum power principle based on useful energy per unit of time. This focused on the calculation of transformity, the rate of available energy of one kind that is needed to obtain a specific rate of energy output of a different kind—for example, the transformation of sunlight into oil, or oil into electricity, or electricity into digital information. Odum demonstrated that besides energy production and energy waste, every living organism exhibits a rate of metabolic transformation that self-organizes the sustainability of its system. Thus, for a species to endure, it requires the embedded power or quality of useful energy to sustain it over time. This variable of energy yield is used in the formula of carrying capacity, where K (Kapazitätsgrenze) is the capacity limit of the system. Hence, carrying capacity is the optimal rate and efficiency that will allow a species to meet its needs through the specific yield of an energy resource in a bounded area per unit of time.
Odum’s work marked a significant turn in the history of carrying capacity as a practical method of computation. First applied in the shipping industry during the eighteenth century, measures for carrying capacity were then used in the 1870s to determine the mass of meat that pack animals could transport, and in the 1880s to estimate the amount of livestock that could be supported within a specific area of land (Sayre 2008, 122). During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, new applications for carrying capacity were introduced in complexity science, demography, agriculture, wildlife and range management, biology, anthropology, engineering, and other fields. Following the 1987 Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future, the field of biophysical economics emerged to study the transformations of natural systems in producing energy and material flows and generating wealth. Carrying capacity has found an audience with social and ecological activists and policymakers who are interested in measuring the metabolic balance of natural resources and the species that depend upon them. Carrying capacity has had its share of critics, but recent innovations in the methodologies and measures of carrying capacity have broadened its range and made the formula, its data, and its applications more accurate."