Maximum Entropy is a Foundation for Complexity Science
John Harte
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. William Blake (1757-1827)
Maximum Entropy is a Foundation for Complexity Science
John Harte
The Hive Architect | Saving Britain's Wild Bees
Farmer-led Research on Europe’s Full Productivity
This report presents the results of the first phase of European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) ongoing farmer-led research program, introducing a groundbreaking way to measure real-world agricultural success through the Regenerating Full Productivity (RFP) index. Developed with and for farmers, the RFP captures both agronomic and ecological performance in a single, practical tool.
Tested across 14 countries from 2021 to 2023, this first phase reveals compelling results:
Full Report:
Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation
Hultgren et al., 2025
Climate change threatens global food systems, but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial. Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small, whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe. Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity, but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 1014 kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P < 0.001). We project that adaptation and income growth alleviate 23% of global losses in 2050 and 34% at the end of the century (6% and 12%, respectively; moderate-emissions scenario), but substantial residual losses remain for all staples except rice. In contrast to analyses of other outcomes that project the greatest damages to the global poor, we find that global impacts are dominated by losses to modern-day breadbaskets with favourable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions losses are also substantial. These results indicate a scale of innovation, cropland expansion or further adaptation that might be necessary to ensure food security in a changing climate.
a–f, Colours indicate central estimate in a high-emissions scenario (RCP 8.5), net of adaptation costs and benefits, for maize (a), soybean (b), rice (c), wheat (d), cassava (e) and sorghum (f) for 2089–2098. Projections computed for 24,378 subnational units relative to counterfactual yields, uncropped regions are shaded in grey. Wheat shows winter wheat and spring wheat projections combined, weighted by their area share in each region. Estimates in each location are ensemble means across climate and statistical uncertainty. Incomes from SSP3.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand
Johan Rockström
Les invasions biologiques
Franck Courchamp
Peter Singer: Animal suffering is human responsibility
Regenerative agriculture: The evidence
British Ecological Society
What's Happening At Göbekli Tepe
An update with Field Director Dr Lee Clare
Soil microbial effects on plant community responses to fire in longleaf pine savannas
Anita Simha and Gaurav Kandlikar
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
Steffen et al., 2018
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
Stability landscape showing the pathway of the Earth System out of the Holocene and thus, out of the glacial–interglacial limit cycle to its present position in the hotter Anthropocene. The fork in the road is shown here as the two divergent pathways of the Earth System in the future (broken arrows). Currently, the Earth System is on a Hothouse Earth pathway driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases and biosphere degradation toward a planetary threshold at ∼2 °C, beyond which the system follows an essentially irreversible pathway driven by intrinsic biogeophysical feedbacks. The other pathway leads to Stabilized Earth, a pathway of Earth System stewardship guided by human-created feedbacks to a quasistable, human-maintained basin of attraction. “Stability” (vertical axis) is defined here as the inverse of the potential energy of the system. Systems in a highly stable state (deep valley) have low potential energy, and considerable energy is required to move them out of this stable state. Systems in an unstable state (top of a hill) have high potential energy, and they require only a little additional energy to push them off the hill and down toward a valley of lower potential energy
Global Food Quantity and Diversity to Drop by More than Half with Our Accelerated Climate Warming
Paul Beckwith
The formal demography of kinship: Demographic stochasticity in the kinship network
Hal Caswell
Le hasard pris sur l'aile, préservé, reproduit par la machinerie de l'invariance et ainsi converti en ordre, règle et nécessité. Un processus totalement aveugle peut par définition conduire à n'importe quoi ; il peut même conduire à la vision elle-même.
Jacques Monod. 1970. Le Hasard et la Nécessité : Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, coll.
The Secret Language of Plants: The Incredible Intelligence of Plants
“𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴, 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴; 𝘐 𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘪𝘱𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘥...”
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, pp. 288-89.
En esta lista de videos se explora la importancia que tienen las interacciones ecológicas en el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas. Se parte de los casos más simples y conocidos, para posteriormente ir explorando fenómenos menos conocidos y más complejos.
Lista completa de videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAVCc09jUR88NecBkTEDk2Mjp2QEhTk0x
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The Origins of Modern Maize - Jeff Ross-Ibara
Life, its origin, and its distribution: a perspective from the Conway-Kochen Theorem and the Free Energy Principle
Chris Fields aand Michael Levin
We argue here that the Origin of Life (OOL) problem is not just a chemistry problem but is also, and primarily, a cognitive science problem. When interpreted through the lens of the Conway-Kochen theorem and the Free Energy Principle, contemporary physics characterizes all complex dynamical systems that persist through time as Bayesian agents. If all persistent systems are to some – perhaps only minimal – extent cognitive, are all persistent systems to some extent alive, orare living systems only a subset of cognitive systems? We argue that no bright line can be drawn, and we re-assess, from this perspective, the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. We conclude that improving our abilities to recognize and communicate with diverse intelligences in diverse embodiments, whether based on familiar biochemistry or not, will either resolve or obviate the OOL problem.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/19420889.2025.2466017
WILD CLOCKS
by David Farrier
Attentive to the loss of age-old ecological relationships as “wild clocks” fall out of synchronization with each other, David Farrier imagines an opportunity to renew the rhythms by which we live.
These Lizards Have Been Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors for 15 Million Years
Winds of Change - Breathing a New Disciplinary Matrix Into Biology
Seth Bordenstein
Haulout
Maxim Arbugaev, Evgenia Arbugaeva (2022)
Understanding Relationships and Ecology
Fritjof Capra
How trees eat salmon: The circle of life, explained
Sean B. Carroll
Uniendo los Puntos:
Diego Griffon Briceño
Doctor en Ecología, Magíster en Entomología e Ingeniero Agrónomo. Consultor en modelaje matemático, simulación de procesos ecológicos, análisis de datos y aprendizaje estadístico en agroecosistemas. Profesor en la Universidad Central de Venezuela (cátedras Ecología de Poblaciones y Evolución) e investigador en las áreas de Ecología Teórica, Ecología Matemática y Agroecología.
Correo: diego.griffon@ciens.ucv.ve
Este blog tiene por objetivo la discusión de temas relacionados con Agroecología, Ecología social y Biocomplejidad.
Interacciones en la Agroecología
Número especial de la revista Acta Biologica Venezuelica
La Reina Roja
Reflexiones sobre el estado actual de la agricultura
"None of the human faculties should be excluded from scientific activity. The depths of intuition, a sure awareness of the present, mathematical profundity, physical exactitude, the heights of creative reason and sharpness of understanding, together with a versatile and ardent imagination and a loving delight in the world of the senses, they are all essential for a lively and productive apprehension of the moment."
J. W. Goethe (1749 - 1832)
No es una mercancía from Diego Griffon on Vimeo.
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Si me vas a pegar no me grites
Película experimental en la cual se explora la conexión existente entre el modelo civilizatorio hegemónico actual y el surgimiento de formas particulares de relación del ser humano con el resto de la naturaleza. La película está construida como un collage, en el cual la visión crítica de la ecología social sirve de hilo conductor. En ella se utiliza a la agricultura para mostrar como el modelo civilizatorio hegemónico determina la materialización de tipos particulares de relaciones sociales, a la par que conduce a formas específicas de comprender y vincularse con la naturaleza. En la película también se muestra que existen alternativas a la lógica dominante, alternativas que actualmente coexisten en resistencia, luchando por sobrevivir.
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.....Omnibus Dubitandum
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La orquídea de noche esconde
en su perfume
el blanco de su flor.
Yosa Buson (1716-1783)
Ecology has been eminently a descriptive science despite some pioneering work by theoreticians such as Lotka, Volterra, Nicholson, and others. Description is a first step toward understanding a system. However, such a first step needs to be accompanied by the development of a theoretical framework in order to achieve real insight and, whenever possible, predictive power.
Ricard V. Solé and Jordi Bascompte, 2006 (Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems).
"Toda pregunta es siempre más que una pregunta, está probando una carencia, una ansiedad por llenar un hueco intelectual o psicológico, y hay muchas veces en que el hecho de encontrar una respuesta es menos importante que haber sido capaz de vivir a fondo la pregunta, de avanzar ansiosamente por las pistas que tiende a abrir en nosotros"
Julio Cortázar. Desafíos.