EMERGY BASIS FOR ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT: VALUING THE WORK OF NATURE AND HUMANITY

Understanding and accounting for the total contribution of nature to the wealth of a region or state is needed so that national lands can be managed effectively, especially in light of increasingly diverse demands. The natural wealth and production of a high elevation (900m- 1550m) watershed (1130 ha) in the Nantahala National Forest of North Carolina, USA was valued with emergy. Emergy is a system property that relates all flows and storages of energy, materials, and information to the one form of source energy required for their formation and maintenance. Emergy values were converted to emergy-dollars (EM$) so that nature's work could be easily compared with humanity's. The value of species diversity to system operation and performance was investigated using emergy analysis. A measure of system "creativity " was suggested for measuring the contribution of species diversity to ecosystem performance. The emergy evaluation methodology is a quantitative tool, helpful in making decisions about how to manage complex systems such as ecosystems