---------- Forwarded message ---------
От:
Ugo Bardi <prudent...@gmail.com>Date:
вт, 4 апр. 2023 г. в 20:17
Subject: [Holobionts] Trophic Rewilding
0You may have already seen this paper just
appeared on "Nature."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01631-6.epdfIt
is an assessment of the role of the trophic chains on climate. It has been
described as a "landmark paper" and under several respects it is. It is part of
a general movement for rewilding, and there is even a "Global Rewilding Alliance
at
https://globalrewilding.earth/Overall, the concept is
good and welcome, because it provides an alternative to the multiple bizarre
ideas that have been proposed as "solutions" for the climate change problem,
including cutting Northern Forests to increase Earth's albedo.
On the
other hand, it is still a subject in its infancy. The authors haven't realized
that there is not just carbon sequestration at play in this game, and they miss
the dynamic effects of forests on the hydrological cycle (the kind of effects
studied by Gorshkov and Makarieva). But I think that it could be possible to
merge these concept in a single one. In both case, the idea is to restore the
ecosystem to its maximum trophic potential.
A deeper problem lies in
understanding why exactly trophic chains have the effects claimed in the paper.
If they do. Among other things, the "Trophic Rewilding" idea is criticized by
Anastassia Makarieva who maintains that large animals damage the ecosystem,
whereas the proponents say it is the opposite. Complicated story -- I confess
that I am a little lost in it. What I can see is that these trophic chains are
holobionts in the sense that they operate on the win-win principle; every
element of the chain benefits from the other elements.
In any case there
is something deep, here, which I don't think has been explained in the details
-- at least as far as I know. The higher complexity of long and networked
trophic chain must be appearing in form of decreasing entropy of the system in
terms of the Kullback-Leiber divergence, that is the difference in entropy
between networked and less-networked systems. I think it is related to Tononi's
Integrated Information Theory, but Tononi's ideas are expressed in terms of
discrete states, whereas holobionts work in terms of continuous energy levels.
It is a complicated story, but maybe someone in the list knows more than me in
this field?
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