Review by Choice Review
Pahl-Wostl has prepared a well-written, well-organized book on ecosystem dynamics, one of the most important issues in modern ecology. She spends many pages discussing in depth some fundamental ecological questions that have been hotly debated, such as ecosystem equilibrium, stability, spatiotemporal organization, niche, chaos, and diversity. Although purely theoretical, the mathematics in this book are not hard to understand, and sufficient supplementary sources are provided in the appendixes. In addition, all questions are well defined and stated in a logical way. Obviously holding the holistic view of ecological systems, the author tries to use theoretically derived solutions and philosophical logic to hypothesize her opinions about these questions from a different (using her own word) "epistemology" than the traditional ones. She sees the dynamic nature of ecosystems as a trade-off between the irregular, chaotic dynamics at the population level and the spatiotemporal organization of the system as a whole. Readers may find some of the arguments less convincing without the support of facts; this book, in fact, inspires ecologists to think deeply. Graduate; faculty. P. P. Mou; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
