26.04.2010

Paper by REC Baikal members Dr. Eugene Silow, Pr. Res. Fellow of Institute of Biology, Professor of UNESCO Chair and Andrew Mokry, Jr. res. Fellow of the Institute appeared in international journal Entropy , edited by Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), with the editorial board including 8 Nobel Laureates. This is Special Issue on "Exergy: Analysis and Applications”, devoted to various aspects of study and use of such thermodynamic function as exergy. Editorial board has invited E.A. Silow to present review on the use of exergy in ecology.

Paper includes the history of exergy application in ecology. It started with the first introduction of exergy to develop mathematical model of ecosystems (1979) and the following use of exergy in ecological modelling by Sven Jorgensen (Denmark) (1990, 1992, 1994 etc.), the first applications of structural exergy as ecosysytem health index for real ecosystems and in experimental ecology by Eugene Silow (1997, 1998, 1999 etc.). It was followed by explosive use of exergy as holistic indicator of ecosystem health by research groups in Asia, Europe, and America. Now exergy occupies its rightful position among holistic indices, used for ecosystem (particularly, aquatic ecosystems) state assessment, especially in monitoring. Additionally, the application of exergy for the assessment of the health of pelagic ecosystem of the lake Baikal.

You can download the paper both from REC Baikal portal (http://lake.baikal.ru/ru/news/newsitem.html?action=show&id=527), as well as from MDPI (http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/4/902/).

For the readers, interested in ecosystem health assessment with the use of exergy, we can recommend the following materials from REC Baikal library in English:

http://lake.baikal.ru/filearchive/lake/presentations/Mokry.ppt.

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