Briefly about the book ... Vegetation Science meets quantum theory in the energy-based entropy model of this book. The model is based on Max Planck's postulate that potential energy and entropy are interchangeable parameters in resonator complexes. What is a typical outcome of the model in vegetation studies? The model hands users a set of entropy estimates and probabilities based on which the strength and uniqueness of a metacommunity's energy structure can be characterised in comparative terms.

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....

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...

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...