Laszlo Orloci

LOOKING BACK... tells a personal story that begins in the '30s, a time of peace, order and prosperity for the author's family, and ends in 2012 when the idea of the book was first conceived. The story offers recollections of the pre-World War II period, the war years and their aftermath under Soviet occupation and ruthless dictatorial rule, the author's involvement in the 1956 Hungarian revolution that failed, and finally freedom and academic carrier in Canada. A substantial part of the narrative portrays the author's professional life framed by two questions. How did statistical ecology affect him? And, how did he, a forest engineer, affect statistical ecology? Seventeen sections take up selected topics interconnected but not in strict chronological order.

A Life of Statistical Ecology

Looking Back

Process, as the Book uses this term, implies simultaneous execution of two fundamental functions in continuity. One creates complexity, the other reduces it. Ecologists refer to these as community assembly and disassembly. The process requires energy input which determines the momentary potential energy state of the community. This is measurably true in terms of Max Planck's energy-based entropy. We find potential energy increasing when new species (taxa, community elements) are added to or others proliferate in the community, and decreasing when species drop out or their performance declines. Data analysis which targets energy-based entropy is identified in the Book as Quantum analysis. The Book's core objective is the probing of the historic vegetation process by quantum analytical techniques for the existence of regularities in climate driven potential energy oscillations. L.C. Cwynar's plant particle chronosere, from the Hanging Lake research site, supplies historic details. Temperature chronoseres from the Vostok and Renland polar ice cores allow the reconstruction of concomitant lower atmospheric temperature oscillations. Quantum analysis reveals well-defined regularities. Theory and techniques are presented in detail. Numeric tables and graphs are included and explained. These lay solid foundation for self-study and interpretation. Many of the analytical tasks can be performed on a spreadsheet. Others require access to advanced software for calculus and regression analysis. With such contents in the Book, it should find good use in the hands of researchers, and especially graduate students, planning projects in community energetics.

A Holistic Study of Long-Term Community Energetics in East Beringia

The Vegetation Process

Conceptual tools are presented for Multiscale Time Series Analysis and tested on a long chronosere of plant particle counts taken from lake sediment in Eastern Beringia's dry arctic steppe tundra. The analysis identifies statistically significant directional regularities in the plant particle chronosere from which assembly rules are inferred that control the composition of the attractor (climax) state in the source vegetation. The rules facilitate construction of predictive assembly scenarios under assumed change in the global climate. The results are reinforcing the idea that regularity and scale-dependence are both part of the chaotic vegetation process, yet, random variation is dominant. Therefore, the appropriate approach to probe for regularity and scale dependence is probabilistic. Tests show increasing sharpness of regularity with increasing lag in the directional pairing of paleorelevés. This is telling us the vegetation process is indeed a multiscale phenomenon and requires a multiscale frame in vegetation study. Periodic convergence of the vegetation process onto low-velocity phases (low values of 1st derivative) coincide with low-velocity phases in the temperature process. When the temperature's process velocity increases, the vegetation's processes velocity increases too. This makes vegetation science's climax theory congruent with the attractor concept of general systems theory.

A New Statistical Dialect for Multiscale Analysis of Plant Particle Chronoseres

Tensor Techniques in Synmechanics

Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao

William M. Stiteler

Multivariate Methods in Ecological Work

Statistical Ecology

The objective is to outline concepts and introduce the modus operandi by worked examples of probing multistate phytosociological data for information potential regarding complex structural traits in the source vegetation.

Probing Simple Vegetation Data for Complex Structural Traits

Laszlo Orloci, Dr, PhD

Dr Laszlo Orloci Frsc

Conceptual tools are discussed in context, regarding their innovative use in community ecology. The book presents results from a conceptual analysis of disorder-based entropy (DBE) and energy-based entropy (EBE). DBE is the central disorder scalar in diversity analysis and EBE in holistic energetics. As such DBE and EBE are well conditioned, dialect-defining quantities in statistics. DBE and EBE are not interchangeable functions. Why? DBE is parameterised by probabilities taken from the elementary population level, but EBE takes probabilities form the holistic level of the vegetation stand itself. Seamless adaption of concepts and terminology in stand-level community ecology permeates the entire text. Key references are listed, and a complete step-by-step example included in the Appendices.

The Resonator Complex Model of the Vegetation Stand

Diversity Analysis, Holistic Energetics, and Statistics

Five of my earlier essays are bound into one in this volume. The essays introduce a family of novel conceptual tools for use in proxy scaling of the stand's potential energy level. The stand is considered for modelling as a resonator complex. The model's characteristic functions, written for energy-based entropy, are probability based and specific to historic phylogeny, current environmental mediation, and the ubiquitous chance effects. The approach is holistic and multi-scale. Survey type ecological data can be used to determine the parameters of the characteristic functions. As a paradigm defining novelty in ecological energetic studies, the focus of interest is moved from the problem area of calorific flow to the space-time structural dynamic of the stand's potential energy.

Essays on the Resonator Complex Model of the Vegetation Stand

Statistical Quantum Ecology

Enlarged 2nd edition The infusion of quantum theoretical principles allows the study focus of ecological energetics to shift from the conventional calorific (trophic) flow in ecosystems to the potential energy structure of the vegetation. The books contents cover the theory and techniques in a unique account centred on the energy equation. The equation's component terms define energy footprints specific to ecology's basic processes, such as historic phylogeny, current environmental mediation of transience, and chance. What gives practical value to the energy equation is its ability to be parameterised by the usual type of survey or experimental data.

Energy Structure and Its Analysis

Quantum Ecology

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.

Laszlo Orloci

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