Photon Dissipation Rates as an Indicator of Ecosystem Health

Abstract

Ecosystems arise and evolve predominantly through the thermodynamic imperative of dissipating the solar photon flux into heat. Organic pigments coupled to water inside cyanobacteria, algae, and plants provide the dissipative structures for this entropy production. Viruses, bacteria, insects, and animals play the role of diversifiers and nutrient and seed dispersers in favor of the proliferation and dispersal of pigments over Earth’s entire surface. The past few decades has seen an enormous negative human impact on the majority of Earth’s ecosystems, antagonistic to human nominal supportive role in photon dissipation. Discerning whether or not efforts to reverse the damage are having the desired effect requires an accurate measure of ecosystem health. This chapter describes an indicator of global ecosystem health based on the entropy production of the ecosystem as a whole, which recognizes solar photon dissipation as its ultimate thermodynamic function. Thermodynamic justification for using the “red-edge” as an even simpler remotely sensed indicator of ecosystem health is also given.