Fort H. Ecological Modelling and Ecophysics...applications 2020

Textbook in PDF format

This book focuses on use-inspired basic science by connecting theoretical methods and mathematical developments in ecology with practical real-world problems, either in production or conservation. The text aims to increase the reader's confidence to rely on partial aspects and relations of systems to which we only have an incomplete understanding. By abstracting and simplifying problems, Ecological Modelling and Ecophysics seeks to expand the reader's understanding and ability to solve practical issues with rigorous quantitative methods. The first part of this book is devoted to classical methods in population and community ecology. The second part aims to introduce the reader to certain tools and techniques from different branches of physics, such as thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and complex systems, and their applications in ecology and environmental sciences. Connecting ecological problems with well-studied phenomena in physics allows the exploiting of analogies to gain deeper insight into these problems, to identify novel questions and problems, and to get access to alternative quantitative methods and tools from physics. This is an essential text for quantitative ecologists and environmental scientists with an interest in novel mathematical approaches, and also applied physicists and mathematicians with an interest in ecological systems.
Introduction
From growth equations for a single species to Lotka–Volterra equations for two interacting species
Extensive livestock farming: a quantitative management model in terms of a predator–prey dynamical system
Lotka–Volterra models for multispecies communities and their usefulness as quantitative predicting tools
Predicting optimal mixtures of perennial crops by combining modelling and experiments
The maximum entropy method and the statistical mechanics of populations
Combining the generalized Lotka–Volterra model and MaxEnt method to predict changes of tree species composition in tropical forests
Catastrophic shifts in ecology, early warnings and the phenomenology of phase transitions
Modelling eutrophication, early warnings and remedial actions in a lake