Data from: Emergent global patterns of ecosystem structure and function from a mechanistic General Ecosystem Model

Anthropogenic activities are causing widespread degradation of ecosystems worldwide, threatening the ecosystem services upon which all human life depends. Improved understanding of this degradation is urgently needed to improve avoidance and mitigation measures. One tool to assist these efforts is predictive models of ecosystem structure and function that are mechanistic: based on fundamental ecological principles. Here we present the first mechanistic General Ecosystem Model (GEM) of ecosystem structure and function that is both global, and applies in all terrestrial and marine environments. Functional forms and parameter values were derived from the theoretical and empirical literature where possible. Simulations of the fate of all organisms with body masses between 10 µg and 150,000 kg (a range of 14 orders of magnitude) across the globe led to emergent properties at individual (e.g. growth rate), community (e.g. biomass turnover rates), ecosystem (e.g. trophic pyramids) and macro-ecological scales (e.g. global patterns of trophic structure) that are in general agreement with current data and theory. These properties emerged from our encoding of the biology of, and interactions among, individual organisms without any direct constraints on the properties themselves. Our results indicate that ecologists have gathered sufficient information to begin to build realistic, global and mechanistic models of ecosystems, capable of predicting a diverse range of ecosystem properties and their response to human pressures.

人类活动正引发全球范围内生态系统的广泛退化，威胁着全人类赖以生存的生态系统服务功能。亟需加深对这类生态退化的认知，以优化生态退化的规避与减缓措施。助力此项工作的一类工具，是基于基础生态学原理构建的机制性生态系统结构与功能预测模型。本文首次提出了兼具全球覆盖性且可应用于所有陆地与海洋环境的生态系统结构与功能机制性通用生态系统模型（General Ecosystem Model, GEM）。研究尽可能从理论与实证文献中推导模型的函数形式与参数取值。本研究对全球范围内体重介于10微克至15万千克（跨度达14个数量级）的所有生物的存续动态进行模拟，得到了个体层面（如生长速率）、群落层面（如生物量周转率）、生态系统层面（如营养金字塔）以及宏观生态尺度（如营养结构的全球分布模式）的涌现属性，这些属性总体上与现有数据及理论相符。这些属性并非通过对属性本身施加直接约束得到，而是源于我们对个体生物的生物学特征及其种间相互作用的编码实现。本研究结果表明，生态学家已积累了足够的信息，可着手构建兼具真实性、全球覆盖性与机制性的生态系统模型，该模型能够预测多样化的生态系统属性及其对人类活动压力的响应。