Biological age from the viewpoint of the thermodynamic theory of ecological systems

G.a Alexandrov and G.S. Golitsyn

Ecological Modelling, 2015, vol. 313, issue C, 103-108

Abstract: Not all ecosystems are in a steady-state or approaching it. Some of them merely pass through the life-cycle stages. The best example is the forest ecosystems formed by even-aged forest stands, where ecosystem properties and functions are related to the stand age. The relationship is not strict, however, and so the stand age is not a general measure of ecosystem state. We propose and theoretically justify a thermodynamic measure for ecosystem state, which is named here as ecosystem biological age and defined as the period of time that some reference ecosystem needs to accumulate the same amount of exergy as the ecosystem under concern. The use of the concept is illustrated by analyzing the 30-year observations of larch stands growth.

Keywords: Biological age; Jørgensen–Svirezhev theory; Exergy; Systems ecology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380015002719
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:313:y:2015:i:c:p:103-108

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2015.06.022

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().