H.T. Odum’s Systems Ecology in CatColab: First Steps

Abstract

While the notion that ecological processes are energy-driven dates back to at least Lotka (1929), the systems-theoretic view of ecology owes itself to the pioneering work conducted by Eugene and Howard T. Odum in the 20th century. H.T. Odum’s work focused on developing a systems theory for ecology, which combined the systems theories of Bertalaffny and Forrester with trophic analysis, or the study of the ecological food chain. Throughout their work, they entertain ideas that several decades later would be independently become cornerstones of applied category theory: that systems diagrams may be composed vertically and horizontally, and that inferences on system characteristics can be made by studying the representing diagram, such as equipping it with ODE semantics or studying the complexity of the diagram.
This talk will showcase some ongoing work to capture the features of Odums systems diagrams in CatColab. We will motivate problems in ecological modeling and the role Odum brothers have played in it, reintroduce CatColab as a tool which is well-suited for capturing their work, and demo our implementation of an example from Systems Ecology, a “switched system,” or a dynamical system whose terms are state-dependent.