JENSSEN, M.

An Empirically Based Approach to Self-Organisation in Forest Ecosystems.
Dedicated to Prof. Dr. habil. Gerhard Hofmann, on the occasion of his 70^th birthday

In: MATTHIES, M.; MALCHOW, H.; KRIZ, J. (eds.)
Integrative Systems Approaches to Natural and Social Dynamics – Systems Science 2000. Springer-Verlag Berlin, 2001(a), in press.

Abstract

The concept of synergetics is applied to forest ecosystem theory in order to bridge the current gap to forestry and land-use planning. Forest ecosystem types are introduced as statistical ensembles populating the basins of attraction of natural and man-made forests in multidimensional ecological state spaces. Ecosystem types can be considered as elementary units of a holistic approach to ecosystems. A universally applicable formalism is developed to derive, to model, and to visualise forest ecosystem types from an ecological data set. A series of natural and artificial forest ecosystem types of the Northeast German lowlands is modelled in an ecogram in dependence on nutrient and water supply status. The practical applications of the presented approach are discussed finally.