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Workshop 7: Global Ecology (June 26-30, 2006)

Organizers: John Pastor, John Harte, and David Schimel

The globe is warming because humans are altering the global cycling and distribution of carbon. Fossil fuel burning, land management transfer carbon, and other nutrients formerly in relative stable pools into the atmosphere as CO2 and other gasses. These gasses in turn trap heat and alter the heat/energy budget of the earth, which in turn feeds back and alters element cycles further.

Global element cycles and energy flows present several problems to both ecologists and mathematicians. The most salient feature of the globe as a system is that it is closed to element cycles but open to energy fluxes. What happens when we close a dynamical system by coupling component open systems and still maintain the constraint of conservation of matter?

Element cycles are also not independent of one another but are coupled through relatively constant stoichiometries of elements for specific fluxes or specific compartments. How do changes in these constants alter the stabilities and trajectories of the closed global ecosystem as opposed to the more open sub-ecosystems that comprise it?

Feedbacks between ecosystem components can result in alternative stable states of material cycles. Changes in global control parameters (e.g., temperature, precipitation, and their spatial distributions) could cause rapid shifts between these stable states. What kind of bifurcations might underlie a closed system like the globe?

These are a few of many representative problems of global ecology with interesting biological and mathematical aspects. This workshop will bring together ecologists and mathematicians to explore these or other problems.