Understanding the Baltic Sea: Systems Ecology in Theory and Practice

Abstract

Studies on whole ecosystems have usually been motivated by man’s growing ability to perturb larger and larger systems. Experience have shown that we cannot explain these changes based on studies on organisms and populations alone (Mann 1982). However, the theoretical basis for explaining natural processes becomes weaker and weaker as one moves up the ecological hierarchy, from individuals to populations and finally to whole ecosystems. Studies of whole ecosystems are usually both difficult and expensive and necessitate interdisciplinary cooperation of a nature that most ecologists, usually with their roots in “biological natural history”, are quite untrained for. Ecosystem ecologists have often been criticised for a lack of good scientific foundations in their work (Lehman 1986). In the 1960’s, many ecosystem projects were started where ecologists and systems engineers were working together hoping to develop predictions of ecosystem changes using powerful computers and large complex mathematical models. These reductionistic models had little practical success (Patten and Finn 1979) and it has become more and more apparent that a holistic approach, where the properties of the whole system is considered, is necessary (Platt et al. 1981)