Managing Marine Ecosystems as Complex Adaptive Systems: Emergent Patterns, Critical Transitions, and Public Goods
نویسندگان
چکیده
Complex adaptive system provides a unified framework for explaining ecosystem phenomena. Three ubiquitous features of ecosystems that arise from this framework are emergent patterns, critical transitions, and cooperative behavior. Focusing on marine ecosystems, we present numerous examples of each phenomenon, using the theory of complex adaptive systems to explain the universal features and common mechanisms shared by disparate ecosystems, as well as the important differences. Marine ecosystems provide important ecosystem services, and we analyze how complex management issues can be solved in the face of anthropogenic ecosystem and environmental pressures.
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