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Benthic eutrophication often gives origin to qualitative changes in marine and estuarine ecosystems, for example the shift in primary producers, often followed by changes in species composition and trophic structure at other levels. Through time such modifications may determine a selected new trophic structure. The development of structural dynamic models will allow to simulate such changes, using goal functions to guide ecosystem behaviour and development. The selection of other species and other food web may then be accounted by a continuous optimisation of model parameters according to an ecological goal function. Exergy has been applied in structural dynamic models of shallow lakes, and appears to be one of the most promising approaches. Theoretically, exergy is assumed to become optimised during ecosystems development, and ecosystems are supposed to self organise towards a state of an optimal configuration of this property. Exergy may then constitute not only a suitable system-oriented characteristic to express natural tendencies of ecosystems evolution, but also a good ecological indicator of ecosystems health. Biodiversity is also an important characteristic of ecosystems structure, constituting a powerful and traditional concept, which was found to be suitable to test the intrinsic ecological significance of exergy. We examined the properties of exergy (exergy and specific exergy) and biodiversity (species richness and heterogeneity) along an estuarine gradient of eutrophication, testing the hypothesis that they would follow the same trends in space and time. This hypothesis was validated in a certain extent, with exergy, specific exergy and species richness decreasing as a function of increasing eutrophication, but heterogeneity responding differently. Biodiversity measurements and their interpretation appeared subjective. Exergy and specific exergy may be a suitable alternative, that could be used as goal functions in ecological models and as holistic ecological indicators of ecosystems integrity. Nevertheless, since exergy and specific exergy showed to respond differently to ecosystems seasonal dynamics, it is advisable to use both * Corresponding author. TeL/fax: + 351 39 23603; e-mail: jcmimar@cygnus.ci.uc.pt 0304-3800/97/$17.00 © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S0304-3800(97)00099-9 156 J.C. Marques et al./Ecological Modelling 102 (1997) [155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167] complementary. The method proposed by Jorgensen et al. (1995) to estimate exergy, which takes into account the biomass of organisms and the thermodynamic information due to genes, appeared to be operational. There is nevertheless an obvious need for the determination of more accurate (discrete) weighing factors to estimate exergy from organisms biomass. We propose to explore the assumption that the dimension of active genomes, which are primarily a function of the required genetic information to build up an organism, are proportional to the relative contents of DNA in di...

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Eutrophication became a dominant process in the Mondego estuarine system in the 1980s, presumably as a result of excessive nutrient release into coastal waters. The main symptoms were the occurrence of seasonal blooms of Enteromorpha spp., green macroalgae, and a drastic reduction of the Zostera noltii meadows. Previous results suggest that this process will determine changes in species composition at other trophic levels. This paper aims at integrating the available information to provide a theoretical interpretation of the recent physicochemical and biological changes in the Mondego estuarine ecosystem, which will be further used as basic framework for the development of a structurally dynamic model. Exergy-based indices, the Exergy Index and Specific Exergy, were applied as ecological indicators (orientors) to describe the state of the ecosystem, taking into account different scenarios along a spatial gradient of eutrophication symptoms. This allowed elucidating the present conditions along the spatial gradient as representing various stages in the temporal evolution of the system, within the framework of bifurcation, Chaos, and Catastrophe theories. Eutrophication appeared as the major driving force behind the gradual shift in primary producers from a community dominated by rooted macrophytes (Z. noltii) to a community dominated by green macroalgae. Through time, concomitant changes at other trophic levels will most probably give origin to a new trophic structure. Moreover, river management emerged as a key question in establishing scenarios in order to determine secondary effects in eutrophied systems. Results suggest that a more conservative river management may be used as a powerful tool to remedy affected areas, including the implementation of ecological engineering principles in different possible management practices. The recent biological changes in the Mondego estuarine ecosystem were found to comply with the framework of the theories considered, while both Exergy-based indices were able to capture the state of the system and distinguish between different scenarios.