IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v509y2025ics0304380025002364.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Biosphere dynamic empower: Howard T. Odum’s contributions to open systems thermodynamics

Author

Listed:
  • Brown, Mark T.

Abstract

Howard T. Odum’s work in open systems thermodynamics (OST) revolutionized our understanding of energy flow within ecosystems and economies. Through concepts such as energy quality (emergy), the Maximum Power Principle, and hierarchical organization, he demonstrated how systems self-organize to maximize useful energy transformation. This paper reviews Odum’s foundational contributions to OST—through emergy accounting, energy systems modeling, and systems ecology—and extends his vision by introducing a dynamic, matrix-based method for calculating transformities. This approach incorporates feedback, internal cycling, and flow structure, allowing unit emergy values to reflect system behavior and remain additive across components. The resulting framework—Biosphere Dynamic Empower (BDE)—captures the realized renewable empower structured by biospheric organization. By linking thermodynamic principles with systems modeling, this method advances emergy analysis and provides new tools for evaluating sustainability and energy dynamics in complex ecological systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Brown, Mark T., 2025. "Biosphere dynamic empower: Howard T. Odum’s contributions to open systems thermodynamics," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 509(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:509:y:2025:i:c:s0304380025002364
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2025.111250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380025002364
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2025.111250?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:509:y:2025:i:c:s0304380025002364. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.