Cycling emergy: computing emergy in trophic networks

Lucía Zarbá and Mark T. Brown

Ecological Modelling, 2015, vol. 315, issue C, 37-45

Abstract: While cycles are a very important phenomena of ecosystems, they represent a methodological challenge in emergy accounting. The relevance of feedbacks is acknowledged in emergy evaluations, however they are not considered by the emergy algebra. In this paper, we present supporting arguments in favor of an update in the emergy accounting methodology. We argue that including the contribution of feedback emergy is essential to understand a system's internal functioning, thus studies interested in better capturing these features should consider emergy cycling. Feedbacks represent emergy that entered the system in the past (therefore it is not double counting), and they enable additional organization and work above that supported by input emergy alone.

Keywords: Emergy accounting; Feedbacks; Recycling; Dynamic emergy accounting; Network method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380015000757
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:315:y:2015:i:c:p:37-45

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2015.02.019

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 ().