Document: WIL-3-4-2

Transport of energy, matter and information in landscapes.

REINERS, W.A.* and P.L.POLZER

University of Wyoming, Laramie WY, 82071-3165 USA ¹

Abstract:
Acute initiating events or chronic conditions at particular landscape loci stimulate the propagation of influences across the landscape. These influences are effected by transmission of some entity (energy, mass or genetic information) by some vector (e.g. wind, animal movements). Propagation of an influence generally leads to a consequence somewhere else on the landscape. A transmitted entity can be locally absorbed with no further action on the landscape, or it can initiate a reciprocal action, generating an interaction, or it can set off a chain of further processes as a concatenation of causes and effects across the landscape. Propagation of influences across landscapes collectively represent flows of energy and materials and sometimes information through space. Significant flows of energy or materials represent the extension of ecosystem energetics and nutrient cycling from more classical fixed and local sites to a spatial network across heterogeneous space. Not all propagations are necessarily significant from an energy and material point of view, but they may be critical in terms of information transfer. Information transfer includes gene flow (e.g. spore transport) or as relatively subtle olfactory, audio or visible signals underlying regulatory processes. This conceptual framework facilitates extension of ecosystem properties from a traditional 1D model to a 2D model deployable across heterogeneous terrain. We will offer an organizational system for defining classes and scales of propagations, and will illustrate methods for modeling some of these phenomena in explicit representations of real space.

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This abstract is being presented at: 3:25 PM in session:
Symposium # 10: Integrating Ecosystem and Landscape Ecology: Causes and Consequences of Spatial Heterogeneity in Ecosystem Processes.