Ecological informatics: Current scope and future directions

Abstract

Ecological informatics emerges as a new discipline that studies principles of information processing in ecosystems as well as data analysis and synthesis for hind- and forecasting of ecosystems. It also focuses on integration and sharing of ecological data from genomic to landscape levels at different spatial scales by web-based data warehousing, GIS and remote sensing. Ecological informatics takes advantage of steadily advancing computational technology in order to better cope with extreme complexity and distinct nonlinearity of ecological data. It utilises cellular automata, neural, evolutionary and immunological computing to unravel ecological complexity as well as explain and forecast ecosystem responses to habitat and climate change.