The Ecosystem Approach: Perspectives, Heuristics and Interpretations

Based on the perspective of self-organization and complexity, we employed the ecosystem approach to translate the observed forest water and carbon dynamics into narratives. Multi-years' time series of the eddy covariance flux measurements from 2007 to 2010 are used to examine the ecohydrology in two adjacent deciduous and coniferous forest ecosystems in central Korea. Traditional descriptive analysis revealed contrasting interannual variability in net carbon uptake and evapotranspiration between the two forests, consistent with the interpretation on the basis of resilience framework. In a thermodynamic sense, net entropy production of the two forests was different in magnitude but their seasonal and interannual variability was consistent. The analysis of information entropy using the same data enabled to delineate the systems' state in terms of process network with an indication of self-organization through hierarchical aggregations of the subsystems. Finally, the ecosystem approach not only provided us with new perspectives, heuristics and interpretation, but also shed a light to prediction through parsimonious parameterization based on the maximum entropy production principle, for instance. (This study was supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant CATER2012-3030. The flux data were provided by KoFlux and CarboEastAsia - A3 Foresight Program.)