98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

IGN 13-1 - Environs: A system theory of environmental networks

Thursday, August 8, 2013
101C, Minneapolis Convention Center
Bernard C. Patten, Odum School of Ecology and Faculty of Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Bernard C. Patten, University of Georgia

Open systems are partially interconnected sets of open components, with a boundary, state variables, and boundary inputs and outputs.  The portions of the components' environments lying within the system are its environs, in two orientations: output environs driven by boundary inputs, and input environs traced backward from boundary outputs.  Both are partition elements of the intra-system flow–storage network, describable within the mathematics of the system's dynamical description.  Environ analysis has five principal components: Pathway analysis, Throughflow analysis, Storage analysis, Utility analysis, and Distributed Control analysis.  Each is described and its principal ecologically significant results highlighted.