Howard T. Odum (1924–2002)

Este volumen presenta una visión macroscópica del hombre y del papel que éste desempeña en el precario equilibrio de fuerzas que mantienen la vida de la biosfera. Éste es un tópico sobre el que muchos otros autores, con mayor o menor suerte, han intentado o intentan escribir. Odum lo hace analizando el denominador común que unifica procesos aparentemente tan dispares como la radiación que las plantas reciben del Sol, el valor calórico de los alimentos del hombre y el esfuerzo mecánico de sus maquinarias: la energía.… (mehr)

Environmental Accounting: Energy and Environmental Decision Making

FROM THE PUBLISHER
In this important new work, Howard T. Odum, widely acknowledged as the father of systems ecology, lucidly explains his concept of emergy, a measure of real wealth that provides a rational, science-based method of evaluating commodities, services, and environmental goods. Using specific real-world examples, Dr. Odum clearly demonstrates the revolutionary role of emergy in environmental management and policy making. Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making offers environmental professionals - policymakers, managers, ecologists, planners, developers, and activists - a systematic approach to environmental and economic valuation that will eliminate much of the rancor and adversarial decision making that often plagues environmental issues.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Pioneer ecologist Odum (environmental policy, U. of Florida) introduces the concept of emergy, the cost of making a product or providing a service, as a balance to energy, the benefit expected. He explains how it can be applied to environmental management to maximize real wealth, the whole economy, and the public benefit. The dimensions he considers include evaluating environmental resources, fuels and electricity, alternative development, states and nations, international exchange, information and human services, and policy perspectives. He includes several appendixes of formulas and other data, and a simulation program in BASIC. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Book Description
In this important new work, Howard T. Odum, widely acknowledged as the father of systems ecology, lucidly explains his concept of emergy, a measure of real wealth that provides a rational, science-based method of evaluating commodities, services, and environmental goods. Using specific real-world examples, Dr. Odum clearly demonstrates the revolutionary role of emergy in environmental management and policy making.
Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making offers environmental professionals—policymakers, managers, ecologists, planners, developers, and activists—a systematic approach to environmental and economic valuation that will eliminate much of the rancor and adversarial decision making that often plagues environmental issues. Specifically, this book:

Describes the theoretical basis, calculation procedures, and applications of emergy
Introduces the concept of "transformity," the ratio of emergy (work put into a product) and energy (value received from the product)
Provides formulas for emergy calculations, procedures for making an emergy evaluation table, and parameters for updating evaluations
Demonstrates the use of emergy to evaluate environments, minerals, waters, primary energy sources, economic developments, and international trade
Compares the emergy approach to environmental evaluation with others
Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making will help environmental decision makers and the society they serve maximize economic vitality with less trial and error, innovate with fewer failures, and adapt to change more rapidly. It provides the tools they need to arrive at the best policies in resource management, economics, and the environment.

Balancing the economy and the environment— from the father of systems ecology

Increasing economic dependence on diminishing natural resources has sparked a highly charged debate over the use and fate of the world environment. Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making presents a unique method of environmental management based on maximizing real wealth, the whole economy, and the public benefit.

Renowned ecologist Howard T. Odum introduces the concept of emergy to provide a rational alternative to the tug-of-war over the world's most vital assets. Emergy measures the energy put into making a product and is the cornerstone of Odum's revolutionary text. This timely and important book offers key insights into:

Determining the real value of a product or service
Transformity, or the relationship between emergy (input) and energy (output)
Stored wealth, available energy, and the final product
Balancing economic and environmental needs
Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making will help economists, ecologists, policymakers, and planners make more responsible, informed decisions to sustain economic and environmental development.

Book Info
Presents a unique method of environmental management based on maximizing real wealth, the whole economy, and the public benefit. DLC: Natural resources - Accounting.… (mehr)

Ecological and General Systems compares models of many fields of science, helping to derive general systems principles.

First published as Systems Ecology in 1983, Ecological and General Systems proposes principles of self-organization and the designs that prevail by maximizing power and efficiency. Comparisons to fifty other systems languages are provided. Innovative presentations are given on earth homeostasis (Gaia); the inadequacy of presenting equations without network relationships and energy constraints; the alternative interpretation of high entropy complexity as adaptive structure; basic equations of ecological economics; and the energy basis of scientific hierarchy.

Part I introduces energetics, hierarchy, and systems modeling. Part II features design elements: intersections, autocatalytic modules, loops, series, parallel elements, and webs. Part III includes embodied energy, spectra of energy quality, temperature, complexity, spatial distribution, and diversity. Part IV discusses production, consumption, ecosystems, succession, economic systems, anthropological models, urban and regional models, global biogeochemistry, and the universe.… (mehr)