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A guide to ecosystem models and their environmental applications

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 1459–1471 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Applied ecology has traditionally approached management problems through a simplified, single-species lens. Repeated failures of single-species management have led us to a new paradigm — managing at the ecosystem level. Ecosystem management involves a complex array of interacting organisms, processes and scientific disciplines. Accounting for interactions, feedback loops and dependencies between ecosystem components is therefore fundamental to understanding and managing ecosystems. We provide an overview of the main types of ecosystem models and their uses, and discuss challenges related to modelling complex ecological systems. Existing modelling approaches typically attempt to do one or more of the following: describe and disentangle ecosystem components and interactions; make predictions about future ecosystem states; and inform decision making by comparing alternative strategies and identifying important uncertainties. Modelling ecosystems is challenging, particularly when balancing the desire to represent many components of an ecosystem with the limitations of available data and the modelling objective. Explicitly considering different forms of uncertainty is therefore a primary concern. We provide some recommended strategies (such as ensemble ecosystem models and multi-model approaches) to aid the explicit consideration of uncertainty while also meeting the challenges of modelling ecosystems.

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Fig. 1: Ecosystem modelling methods and their frequency of use for specific purposes.
Fig. 2: Varying levels of ecosystem model complexity.

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Acknowledgements

W.L.G. was supported by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning Victoria, and by Parks Victoria. T.S.D. was supported by an Alfred Deakin Post-doctoral Research Fellowship. D.G.N. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. A.I.T.T. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Silhouettes used in the Box 1 and 2 figures are taken from Phylopic.

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Author notes

  1. Tim S. Doherty

    Present address: School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia

    William L. Geary, Tim S. Doherty & Euan G. Ritchie

  2. Biodiversity Division, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    William L. Geary

  3. School of Mathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Michael Bode

  4. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Elizabeth A. Fulton

  5. Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Elizabeth A. Fulton

  6. School of Environmental Science, Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, New South Wales, Australia

    Dale G. Nimmo

  7. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Ayesha I. T. Tulloch

  8. Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia

    Vivitskaia J. D. Tulloch

  9. Department of Forest and Conservation Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Vivitskaia J. D. Tulloch

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  1. William L. Geary
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Contributions

W.L.G. and E.G.R. conceived the ideas for the paper. W.L.G. led the writing. V.J.D.T. wrote Box 2. M.B. constructed and ran the model for Box 3. W.L.G., M.B., T.S.D., E.A.F., D.G.N., A.I.T.T., V.J.D.T. and E.G.R. all contributed to developing schematics and writing the paper.

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Correspondence to William L. Geary.

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Supplementary Information 1, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Information 2, Supplementary Table 2.

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Geary, W.L., Bode, M., Doherty, T.S. et al. A guide to ecosystem models and their environmental applications. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1459–1471 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01298-8

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