Abstract
In this article we briefly review concepts and principles of emergy and related quantities (Odum, 1971, 1983, 1994, 1996; Odum and Odum, 2001). The concept of energy quality is introduced and defined by unit emergy values (UEVs) called transformity and specific emergy. We suggest that network analysis can be strengthened with the addition of concepts of emergy, specifically energy quality, and several case studies including the Florida Everglades food web are given. We propose that methods for energy flow analysis should incorporate the relative energetic contributions of each component by adjusting for transformity (quality) to avoid misrepresenting their influence. In several case studies, flow data are coupled with exogenous forcing energies (in emergy units) to compute UEVs for biotic and abiotic components. Finally, we propose a “quality corrected” ecosystem scale biodiversity index using energy systems theory (Odum, 1994) to develop modifications of the Shannon diversity index that incorporate “quality adjusted flows.”
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