Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Historical Background of Ecological Modelling
and Its Importance for Modern Ecology
Broder Breckling, Fred Jopp, and Hauke Reuter
Abstract The chapter outlines major routes of development leading to the current
spectrum of concepts and applications in ecological modelling. The field is closely
linked to achievements in other sciences, in particular physics, numerics, computer
science, and cross-disciplinary adoption of ideas. Ecological modelling emerged
initially as a relatively homogeneous field and mainly employed differential equa-
tions which originated in classical mechanics. Quantitative ecological dynamics
were initially described in a formal analogy to physical processes. In the last few
decades, the methodological repertoire in ecological modelling was successively
expanded. Nowadays, the whole range of quantitative methods available in nume-
rical mathematics can be seen as a foundation for future model development in
ecology. Some pioneers in the field are briefly introduced and their contributions
linked to some of the mainstreams and sidelines of the state-of-the-art in ecological
sciences. The overview provided here will not be able to provide historical com-
pleteness but attempts to facilitate an understanding of the origin of the major
approaches presented in this topic and how they obtained their role in current
ecological modelling.
3.1 A Historical Journey: Mainstream and Sidelines
of Model Development in Ecology
Science as a whole has and continues to undergo a long process of advancement. At
each period, the current state-of-the-art also represents the background of expecta-
tions for how the domains of the unknown might be tackled and structured in the
future. The state-of-the-art provides the vocabulary, the grammar, and the paradigms