Ecosystem model

[2] Using data gathered from the field, ecological relationships—such as the relation of sunlight and water availability to photosynthetic rate, or that between predator and prey populations—are derived, and these are combined to form ecosystem models.

Often, the study of inaccuracies in the model (when compared to empirical observations) will lead to the generation of hypotheses about possible ecological relations that are not yet known or well understood.

[3] Ecosystem models have applications in a wide variety of disciplines, such as natural resource management,[4] ecotoxicology and environmental health,[5][6] agriculture,[7] and wildlife conservation.

Analytic models are typically relatively simple (often linear) systems, that can be accurately described by a set of mathematical equations whose behavior is well-known.

[21] Ecological systems are composed of an enormous number of biotic and abiotic factors that interact with each other in ways that are often unpredictable, or so complex as to be impossible to incorporate into a computable model.

[22][23] The process of simplification typically reduces an ecosystem to a small number of state variables and mathematical functions that describe the nature of the relationships between them.

[24] The number of ecosystem components that are incorporated into the model is limited by aggregating similar processes and entities into functional groups that are treated as a unit.

According to the authors of the alternative view, the data show that true interactions in nature are so far from the Lotka-Volterra extreme on the interference spectrum that the model can simply be discounted as wrong.