Abstract
In a few decades we have come from natural history to the beginnings of predictive ecology, and probably the greatest advance is that we now know what has to be done even if we are not yet very good at it. It is my purpose to examine what chiefly retards our progress towards an ecology which will be verifiable and predictive: not in a spirit of advocacy, but simply because simulation models are themselves useful models of the integrative process in quantitative ecology, I shall examine what is their principal failing at the present time to illustrate the subject of this presentation. I shall examine whether, in my opinion, integrative ecology most lacks (i) information about how animals are distributed and in what numbers, (ii) skill in mathematical techniques in the simulation of of ecological interactions, (iii) the development of holistic, ground-plan ecological concepts on which to base more clever integration, or (iv) information concerning the rates of ecological processes.
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© 1984 Plenum Press, New York
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Longhurst, A. (1984). Importance of Measuring Rates and Fluxes in Marine Ecosystems. In: Fasham, M.J.R. (eds) Flows of Energy and Materials in Marine Ecosystems. NATO Conference Series, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0387-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0387-0_1
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