Quantum analysis of primary succession: The energy structure of a vegetation chronosere in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - Tapa blanda

The book revisits the fundamental quantum ecological idea that the potential energy structure of a plant community is a seamless fusion of footprints specific to basic processes which operate on all scales – phylogeny, environmental mediation, and chance. At this time the idea is tested in quantum analysis of a vegetation chronosere in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. How is the test constructed? What are the outcomes? What do the results tell about primary succession not already known from other sources? Stated in the briefest of terms the test requires temporal species performance data. This comes from the survey of a proxy succession sere, also known as a chronosere. The test criterion is Max Planck’s energy-based entropy function. This is applied in a multiscale, probabilistic manner. The results are statistical generalizations concerning the energy structure of primary succession. The book gives details and explains the results at length. Front cover: Halema’uma’u caldera from the Kilauea Iki cinder cone.

László Orlóci was born into a military family in Hungary in 1932. Orlóci holds degrees in forest engineering (DFE Sopron), forestry science and biology (BSF, MSc, PhD University of British Columbia), and DSc h.c. in biology (University of Trieste). Orlóci held appointments as NATO Science Fellow (University College of North Wales), professor (University of Western Ontario), and visiting professor at universities in the Americas, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe. He is an INTECOL Distinguished Statistical Ecologists, external (academician) member of the Hun-garian Academy of Sciences, and regular Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada. Orlóci published over 100 papers in scientific journals, numerous monographs and book. His current essays on trajectory analysis, the rules of process governance, the phylogenetic signal in vegetation transitions, and the energy structure of the vegetation have considerable significance for evolu-tionary ecology and global change science.