Pick up any typical adventure story, and you are likely to read how the intrepid
explorers drop everything and race off into the unknown, where they have hair-raising
encounters, see amazing things and eventually win through to their goal. What
those stories don't tell you is the boring part - the even longer struggle that
the explorers had to endure even to get started on their great adventure. Everyone
knows that Columbus discovered the New World. What is often ignored is that
he spent long years patiently lobbying at the Spanish court before he even started.
Science tends to be the same way. You read about a great discovery without hearing
about the long and often intense struggle that led to it. When we were students,
one of our professors used to say that each generation of scientists struggles
long and hard to understand some phenomenon. But the next generation accepts
that hard-won knowledge as simple and obvious. Newton said that he was able
to make his discoveries because he stood on the shoulders of giants. One of
these giants was Johannes Kepler, whose three laws of planetary motion were
the fruit of an entire lifetime of studying astronomical observations.
It is the same with the science of complexity. As students, we studied science
that tended to ignore complexity. It is very satisfying, therefore, to see mainstream
ecology beginning to come to terms with complexity. In the course of writing
this book, we were surprised to discover just how many ecological studies now
adopt the ideas and methods that form an important part of this book. Studies
using such techniques as multi-agent simulations and fractal pattern analysis
are now commonplace.
The aim of this book is to introduce our readers to the exciting new field of
complexity in ecology. Our goal is to provide an easy-to-read introduction.
One group of readers we especially hope to serve are people who already have
a basic knowledge of, or interest in, ecology, and wish to know what complexity
is about. In keeping with these goals, we have tried to keep the book short,
rather than have it blow out into a massive tome. Inevitably, we have had to
leave out much. This account is in no way intended to be a comprehensive account
of the entire field of complexity or landscape ecology. Rather we have chosen
to present topics that we hope will provide you with a gentle introduction to
this important and exciting area of research.
There is a deliberate trend throughout the book to move from small to large.
So we start (Chapter 2) with individuals and even within individuals (in the
case of growth and development). At the other extreme, the final chapters deal
with large-scale and even global phenomena.
As we explain in the course of the book, simulation models play an important
role in studying complexity. We recognise the importance for readers of being
able to pay these virtual experiments themselves. Therefore we have bundled
up many of the models that we describe here as online demonstrations that can
be accessed via our Virtual Laboratory web site:
http://www.complexity.org.au/vlab/.
We are indebted to many people who provided material assistance during the
writing and production of the book. Tom Chandler and several of his students
and colleagues provided images from their virtual reality models for Chapter
9. Our colleagues David Roshier, Gary Luck and David Watson contributed critical
comments on several chapters. Joanne Lawrence carried out useful literature
surveys during the early stages of writing. Tania Bransden contributed to the
editing, indexing and references, and provided a much needed reality check,
never letting us get away with lapses into jargon, irrelevance and incomprehensibility!
Jeanette Niehus did much of the final formatting, copy editing and proofing
of the manuscript. Justine Singh helped with the references and compiled the
index. Dr Ann Sadedin and Ruth Cornforth provided useful comments on the manuscript
as well as careful proof reading of final drafts.
We are also indebted to the publishers and the series editors for their faith
in us and for their encouragement throughout the writing and production of the
book. Finally, we are grateful to the Australian Research Council and to the
Australian Centre for Complex Systems for funding assistance.
David G. Green
Nick Klomp
Glyn Rimmington
Suzanne Sadedin
Melbourne, August 2005