Enhanced resilience and resistance assessment with virtual ecoexergy for a subtropical lake ecosystem under the intermittent impact of hurricanes and droughts

Abstract Ecosystem growth and development constrained by material, energy, and information flows can be well described by the use of ecoexergy in the context of thermodynamic laws. However, ecosystems are not only physically open to the environment but also ontic to all species and processes involved in an ecological network. Essential exchange of mass, energy, and information through an ecological network may happen both directly and indirectly, which in turn affect the ecosystem resilience and resistance when facing stresses and/or disturbances. The complexity of how the cycling of matter, energy, and information via commensalism or mutualism over relevant species in an ecological network could affect the ecosystem resilience and resistance has not yet been well explored quantitatively. This paper defines a virtual ecoexergy concept and develops a quantitative way to address the possible contributions from commensalism or mutualism between any paired species indirectly in an ecosystem under a decadal impact of intermittent droughts and hurricanes. The key terminology of the biomass equivalence rule that addresses these indirect contributions in an ecological network was introduced as an integral part of virtual ecoexergy concept to facilitate the applications. The case study in Lake Okeechobee (Florida) confirms a big difference in terms of resilience and resistance when the virtual ecoexergy is taken into account through the biomass equivalence rule. With the inclusion of the concept of virtual ecoexergy associated with mutualism or commensalism, the lake's ecological stability condition would not be underestimated during an ecosystem succession and recovery process when facing continuous hurricane and drought impacts in the 2000s. The enhanced resilience with the consideration of the virtual ecoexergy is about 12 times larger than the conventional resilience in this real-world case study.

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