Date:
2018/06/12
Time:
15:45
Room:
K308 Cabinet
Planet fever call’s for ecosystem indicator of wellbeing. The Madeira island case-study
(Oral)
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Life on Earth rises and evolves predominantly through the thermodynamic imperative of maximizing the dissipation of solar photon flux. Evolution and natural succession promotes the creation of biological structures and processes that capture and dissipate the solar energy and ecosystems become more efficient when they exhibit optimum conditions in three principal functional characteristics: biomass, information and networks. The synergistic properties of complex structures, higher biomass and greater functional diversity also provides the system with resilience .
With the great acceleration characteristic of the Anthropocene, the impacts of human activities on the structure and functioning of the Earth System are profound enough to distinguish the present state of the system from the Holocene . Human activities are reducing the efficient functioning of ecosystems by degrading natural complexity.
To foster and monitor the necessary transition, there’s a need to implement a radical ecosystem approach, with simple indicators of ecosystem health, supported by a solid theory and framework . The indicator should be accurate and reproducible, reflect the systems condition as a hole, easy to implement and accepted as being scientifically sound.
In our study, remote sensing techniques were used to analyse in detail the biomass cover, surface temperature and vegetation complexity of the main land cover types in Madeira Island. The research focused on typical examples of natural and cultural landscapes including Laurissilva natural forest and banana plantations as two representative ends of vegetation spectrum.
The findings revealed it was possible to distinguish between ecosystem types using thermodynamic principles and employing simple remote sensing measurements. For a given incident photon flux, older ecosystems with longer and more complete adaptive cycles, have greater entropy production and thus a lower temperature. Modification and conversion of natural ecosystems reduces complexity, which induces more extreme temperature fluctuation.