Int. J. Sustainable Society, Vol. 1, No.

2, 2008 117

Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the

sustainability of industrial systems

Audrey L. Mayer
Faculty of Biosciences,
Environmental Science and Policy,
University of Helsinki,
PO Box 27, Latokartanonkaari 3,
Helsinki 00014, Finland
E-mail: audrey.mayer@helsinki.fi
Abstract: Industrial ecology, promoted as a discipline of ‘sustainability
science,’ applies ecological concepts to industrial systems to improve their
sustainability. Concepts such as diversity, food webs and nutrient recycling
have been investigated for industrial systems. Complex systems theory may
also prove to be an appropriate framework for industrial systems research. This
framework can identify the processes and feedbacks governing industrial
systems, and how these systems respond to disturbances. A review of the
industrial ecology literature suggests that firms and industries regularly display
behaviours that are similar to those described in ecosystems under the complex
systems theory rubric. In particular, the models and tools generated from the
study of niche construction, self-organisation and dynamic regimes hold
promise. These systems-level concepts have been developed under the
assumption that anthropogenic disturbances are a dominant influence for many
ecosystems, and may therefore be more relevant to the study of industrial and
other strongly anthropogenic systems.

Keywords: eco-industrial park; ecological theory; ecosystems; forestry;

industrial ecology.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mayer, A.L. (2008)

‘Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability of industrial
systems’, Int. J. Sustainable Society, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.117–133.
Biographical note: Audrey Mayer received her PhD in Ecology at the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2000. After a postdoctoral position at the
University of Cincinnati, she was an Ecologist for the US Environmental
Protection Agency conducting multidisciplinary sustainability research. Then,
she conducted forest management and conservation research at the University
of Helsinki, Finland. In 2009, she will start a joint appointment with the
Department of Social Sciences and Environmental Policy, and the School of
Forest Resources and Environmental Sciences at Michigan Technological
University. Her current research focuses on sustainability indices, economic
incentive policies for biodiversity conservation and regional-scale
anthropogenic processes.

1 Introduction

Although the precise meaning of sustainability may be vague, any definition of a

sustainable system must invoke characteristics spanning many academic disciplines,

Copyright © 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

118 A.L. Mayer

including socioeconomic and ecological goals (Cabezas et al., 2003). The newly
emerging field of industrial ecology has been suggested to be the ‘science of
sustainability’ (Ehrenfeld, 2004; Cohen and Howard, 2006; although see Mihelcic et al.,
2003), due to its assumption that industrial systems which operate like natural ones will
be ecologically, economically and socially sustainable. Natural or ‘undisturbed’ systems
are defined as those without significant human modifications (Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, 2005; but see Naveh, 2000 for complications). Undisturbed ecosystems are
assumed to be sustainable because of their numerous feedbacks which limit populations
to available resources, and ‘recycling’ of waste output and dead biomass via species
evolved to fill the resource niche created by these outputs.
Industrial ecology research has applied concepts and tools developed in ecology to
industrial systems, either at the firm level or to systems of interacting firms. Industrial
ecology is not the only discipline to take this approach; other eco-hybrid disciplines
include ecological economics, ecological engineering and organisational ecology.
Ecologists have incorporated social science concepts to better understand human-
dominated ecosystems, and the study of human impacts and influence on ecological
systems at all scales has taken a more prominent place (Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, 2005). These borrowed concepts and tools are necessary, but not sufficient
for sustainability research; the appropriateness of transplanted ideas must be rigorously
investigated (Levine, 2003).
A brief introduction of industrial ecology is provided, describing how the ecological
diversity concept has been applied to industrial systems. Next, several emerging areas of
ecological research are outlined in which the concepts, models and metrics hold great
promise for understanding and managing industrial systems. These areas all fall within
complex systems theory, a fruitful avenue of concepts in addition to those investigated so
far (Spiegelman, 2003). Finally, a hypothetical example is offered for the application of
the complex systems framework to the forest products industry.

2 Industrial ecology

The field of industrial ecology is founded on the principle of viewing industrial systems
from the perspective of ecological ones (Frosch and Gallopoulos, 1989; Graedel, 1996).
The discipline endeavours to expand the perceived system boundaries beyond the
industrial firm or process to include the ecosystems on which the industry depends, so
that the environment is not treated as a limitless black box from which inputs originate
and wastes are deposited. An emphasis has been placed on industrial systems which
produce ‘zero waste’, where the waste products from one firm or product line would be
used by another as an input (thereby giving some economic value to a previously
valueless resource; Gibbs and Deutz, 2005; but see Ayres, 2004). These symbiotic
relationships are viewed as prerequisites for building webs of interacting firms and
industries, such as eco-industrial parks, emphasising spatial proximity and waste
reduction (Chertow, 2000; Graedel and Allenby, 2003; Gibbs and Deutz, 2005).
Industrial symbiosis is a relationship between two dissimilar firms or industries which
derive (usually economic) benefit through cooperation, usually when one firm uses a
waste from another, reducing costs of production and waste disposal (Chertow, 2000). An
eco-industrial park is a collective of firms which have formed symbiotic uses of input and
waste streams, reducing overall costs (most notably waste production) for the collective
 Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability 119

(van den Bergh and Janssen, 2004; Gibbs and Deutz, 2005). Earlier work on cleaner
production (substituting less toxic chemicals in the production process) and eco-
efficiency (creating more product from less inputs and producing less waste) at the
factory or firm level has been scaled up to examine the ‘metabolism’ of entire industries,
sometimes including consumers (Seager and Theis, 2002; Gibbs and Deutz, 2005).
Table 1 Examples of ecological concepts (and in some cases models and metrics) and
analogous concepts in industrial ecology

Ecology: nutrient cycling, ecological
stoichiometry
Industrial ecology: materials flow analysis
Ecology: food web theory/network theory
Industrial ecology: life cycle assessment
Ecology and industrial ecology:
thermodynamics (exergy and emergy)
Ecology and industrial ecology:
richness, diversitya
a
Often measured as the number of types of units or links, so more equivalent to
ecological richness measures.
Frosch et al. (1997; materials recycling in the
metals industry)
Klee (2001; materials flow analysis of New
Zealand’s research base in Antarctica)
Korhonen, Wihersaari and Savolainen
(2001; materials flow analysis of a forestry
industrial park)
Huang and Hsu (2003; flow of materials through
Taipei construction activities, infrastructure and
landfills)
Seppälä et al. (1998; life cycle assessment of
the forest industry sector in Finland, including
impacts on forest ecosystems)
Hardy and Graedel (2002; connectance among
tenants at industrial parks)
Janssen and Jager (2002; diffusion of green
product use through consumer network)
Matutinoviü (2002; the relationship between
connectance and instability in socioeconomic
systems)
White, Gower and Ahl (2005; Carbon budget/life
cycle inventory of forest products industry in
Wisconsin, USA)
Bakshi (2002; emergy and exergy metrics to
measure sustainability of linked ecological and
industrial systems)
Patzek and Pimentel (2005; exergy analysis
of biomass-based energy production from wood
and sugarcane)
Sinclair et al. (2005; emergy for consumption of
milk, sugar, newspaper and cement for Greater
London)
Ayres, Ayres and Warr (2004; trends in the ratio
of exergy to Gross Domestic Product and exergy
per capita of the US economy)
see also Huang and Hsu (2003) for emergy
analysis of Taipei construction
Templet (1999, 2004; diversity of energy use
and energy efficiency in industrial parks); see
also the section in the text
120 A.L. Mayer

To date, applications of most theories, metrics and models from ecology have rarely been
explored past the level of potentially useful analogy (Graedel, 1996; Seager and Theis,
2002; Ehrenfeld, 2003; Levine, 2003). However, ecological concepts related to food
webs and network theory have been investigated more quantitatively (e.g. material flow
analysis and life cycle assessment), modelling flows of resources, wastes and energy use
to make production more efficient and less environmentally damaging (Table 1; Graedel,
1996, van den Bergh and Janssen, 2004). Thermodynamic metrics, such as emergy and
exergy, have been applied to both industrial and ecological systems, although rarely for
interlinked industrial-ecological systems (e.g. Ruth, 1995; Bakshi, 2002). One often-
stated goal for industrial ecology is to improve the sustainable balance between human-
created systems and the ecosystems upon which they depend, a goal shared by many
ecologists (Commoner, 1997; Carpenter and Folke, 2006). Therefore, the development of
trans-disciplinary concepts and tools should be a research area of high priority,
particularly for those concerned with the sustainability of industrial systems and their
consumption of ecosystem goods and services (Ruth, 2006).

2.1 Diversity in industrial systems

Diversity of ecosystems, species, organisms and their genetic variance is an important
property of ecological systems (Rosenzweig, 1995). Although species are the most
common unit for diversity calculations, genotypes, functional groups, trophic levels and
even morphological types have all been used (Magurran, 1988; Rosenzweig, 1995). The
diversity of a system can be measured solely for its own sake, but is often used as an
indicator of other system properties. For example, diverse ecological communities and
ecosystems are thought to be more productive than low diversity systems (Loreau et al.,
2001; Worm and Duffy, 2003; Tilman, Polasky and Lehman, 2005; Cardinale et al.,
2006; but see Naeem, 2002), and provide more of the goods and services that are
necessary to sustain human activities (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).
Preserving (or restoring) diversity, and thereby productivity, in ecological systems is
often cited as a fundamental objective of sustainable development (National Research
Council, 1999).
Stability (also called resilience, Grimm and Wissel, 1997) is also thought to be in
general positively related to diversity (but see exceptions in Worm and Duffy, 2003), and
is typically defined as the number or strength of disturbances that a system can withstand
without a catastrophic change in composition and function (Gunderson et al., 2002;
Mayer and Rietkerk, 2004). This relationship between stability and diversity may be due
to the functional redundancy that additional species may provide the system, allowing
remaining species to fill a stabilizing role when similar species are lost from the system
(Loreau et al., 2001). Measuring stability (or resilience) is usually very difficult, due to
the large number of disturbances (both natural and anthropogenic1) that can impact
ecosystems. However, some efforts have succeeded in quantifying resilience for
ecosystems with respect to one or a few disturbance types (e.g. Carpenter, 2003).
The concept of diversity has been discussed conceptually as an important property in
cultural, socioeconomic and industrial systems as well (Matutinoviü, 2001; Templet,
2004; Korhonen and Snäkin, 2005). Diversified investment strategies are believed to be
more stable, as investments that do poorly in the short-term can be balanced out by those
that are more successful (Figge, 2004). Diverse industrial systems, in terms of the number
 Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability 121

and type of processes, firms, organisations and sectors, have been found to be more
innovative, particularly with respect to waste reduction and recycling (Jelinski et al.,
1992; Allenby and Cooper, 1994; Graedel, 1996). In fact, some see firm diversity as a
precondition of industrial symbiosis, vital to inter-organisational waste utilisation and
recycling networks (Chertow, 2000; Baldwin et al., 2004). More diverse economic
systems, when measured as the number of energy using sectors and the equitability of
energy flows between them, can be more energy efficient and less waste intensive than
systems with lower diversity (Templet, 1999, 2004). However, exploration of the
relationship between industrial diversity, productivity and stability has not occurred
beyond conceptual speculation (Matutinoviü, 2001, 2002; Templet, 2004; Korhonen,
2005), even though both productivity and stability are important economic goals for
industrial systems.
Ecologists have investigated the resilience of interconnected human systems with
ecosystems (e.g. Carpenter, Brock and Hanson, 1999; Cabezas et al., 2003; Mayer,
Pawlowski and Cabezas, 2003; Abel, Cumming and Anderies, 2006), but the degree to
which relationships between diversity, productivity and resilience in ecosystems are
similar to industrial systems has not been explored. For example, diverse boreal forests
may be more efficient at converting solar energy and nutrients into wood fibre and resins
than less diverse ones, and the higher diversity may confer more resilience to minor
disturbances, preventing the loss of wood fibre (Perry, 1998; Thompson, Baker and
Ter-Mikaelian, 2003). The forest industry is comprised of many types of firms, which
produce a wide variety of products and wastes (Svrcek and Smith, 2003). The co-location
of mills, processors and finishers constitute eco-industrial parks, where wastes from some
firms are inputs for others (Figure 1; Korhonen and Snäkin, 2005). Whether diverse
forest-based industrial systems are more productive and resilient than isolated pulp or
saw mills has not been investigated, nor has the productivity and stability of the
interlinked forestry parks with the forests in their procurement area (Figure 1; Table 2).
This area of research would offer substantial support for estimating the economic value
of goods and services provided by ecosystems (e.g. Costanza et al., 1997).

Table 2 Potential positive relationships between diversity and productivity in interdependent

ecosystems and technological systems

High diversity in Higher productivity in ecosystems

ecological systems This relationship has been demonstrated quantitatively
leads to: (e.g. Tilman et al., 2001; Reich et al., 2001)
Higher diversity in technological systems
This relationship has not been discussed
One interesting hypothesis is whether greater
ecological diversity allows for more
specialisation in technological systems
Higher productivity in technological systems
This relationship has been conceptualised,
sometimes in the context of the valuation of
ecosystem goods and services (e.g. Costanza
et al., 1997)
In addition to these two
relationships, higher diversity
in technological systems may
allow for higher productivity
in these systems and reduced
waste intensities
These relationships have been
discussed in conceptual terms
(e.g. Templet, 2004, Korhonen,
2005)

Note: Null model: no relationship between any of the characteristics.

122 A.L. Mayer

Figure 1 The application of ecological indices of system characteristics, such as diversity,

productivity, stability and resilience, to industrial systems may be relatively
straightforward once the appropriate variables are determined

Note: If the same indices could be used on both types of systems, correlative and
causative relationships may be determined (This figure ignores nutrient flows).

3 Ecological concepts relevant to dynamic industrial systems

Although some ecological concepts and tools have been modified and applied to
industrial systems, there has been some debate as to the degree to which this has been
done properly (Levine, 2003; Ayres, 2004). Ecological concepts which examine human
impacts on ecosystems may be more relevant to the study of industrial systems than those
which developed in systems for which human influences are assumed to be non-existent
(Commoner, 1997). In particular, complex systems theory holds considerable promise for
industrial systems (Spiegelman, 2003). Ecology in this area investigates the mechanisms
responsible for patterns and behaviours (both temporal and spatial) seen in ecological
systems at a variety of scales (Solé and Bascompte, 2006). These mechanisms include
emergent and self-organising behaviours and how they confer resilience; human activities
are studied as disturbances which cause (often catastrophic) shifts of ecosystems into
different regimes. Sustainable regimes are those which society values, and so system-
level sustainability can be measured in terms of the system’s probability of maintaining a
desirable regime (Cabezas et al., 2003). Three areas of research are particularly relevant
to the sustainability of linked industrial systems and ecosystems at multiple scales.
 Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability 123

3.1 Niche construction

‘Niche construction’ describes how organisms alter their surroundings to their own
benefit; this behaviour may be a key contributor to ecological complexity (Hui, Li and
Yue, 2004; Taylor, 2004). Organisms capture critical resources and simultaneously limit
them to potential competitors, bringing an advantage to those individuals and species
which can do so most effectively. Successful individuals pass niche alteration traits onto
their progeny, creating a positive feedback which increases the prominence of the trait in
the community. Organisms which modify environments at relatively large scales are
referred to as ‘ecological engineers’; these engineer species provide environments to
which other species are often specifically adapted (Jones, Lawton and Shachak, 1994;
Laland, Odling-Smee and Feldman, 1999).
Some species alter their environments more actively, producing toxins or attracting
pathogens which make their surroundings toxic or deadly to competitors; this may be one
characteristic which makes invasive species successful (Callaway and Ridenour, 2004).
For example, some plants produce phytochemicals which greatly increase the plant’s
flammability. These species may also have enhanced seed dispersal or germination,
allowing their progeny to dominate a burned area more quickly than less fire-adapted
species. As fire frequency increases, the plant community favours more flammable plant
species and ultimately forms highly flammable ecosystems (Laland, Odling-Smee and
Feldman, 1999; Schwilk and Kerr, 2002). At larger scales, plant communities can
influence climatic conditions in a region, creating conditions that are favourable to the
persistence of the community (Higgins, Mastrandrea and Schneider, 2002; Mayer and
Rietkerk, 2004).
Although the term ‘niche construction’ is unique to ecology, the phenomenon has
also been investigated for socioeconomic systems as well. As a product of human culture,
firms and industries routinely take actions to improve their environmental,
socioeconomic and policy environment (Greaker, 2003), presumably at the expense of
competitors (especially in capitalist economies). Several examples include: creating and
maintaining single-species plantations (either for wood fibre or food) to control
variability in the natural environment; supporting local educational and research
programmes to improve a firm’s ability to develop new products (and increased
community support through positive publicity); and lobbying governmental officials for
favourable legislation and tax rates. The degree to which more specialised behaviours in
other species (like allelopathic plants) are analogous to behaviours in industries remains
to be examined. However, policies which ignore the dynamic nature of socioeconomic
systems, including the ability of the targets of environmental policy to influence the
creation and implementation of those policies, are at high risk of failure (Ring, 1997).
‘Anchor tenants’ in eco-industrial parks have been proffered as the industrial
equivalent of ecosystem engineers; these firms or industries (like power plants) produce
or concentrate a resource upon which all other firms depend (Gibbs and Deutz, 2005).
Anchor tenants may also have control over the prices of inputs and outputs for other
industries, and therefore can encourage (or discourage) complementary firms to co-locate
(de Fontenay, 2004). While anchor tenants may not be necessary for the establishment of
eco-industrial parks (Heeres, Vermeulen and de Walle, 2004), policies promoting eco-
industrial parks may be more successful if they encourage anchor tenants to create
conditions necessary for other firms to co-locate.
124 A.L. Mayer

If appropriate industrial equivalents can be determined for individuals and species in

ecological systems (which are probably scale-dependent), niche construction models may
lend some insight into how firms encourage complementary businesses to co-locate, and
discourage competition. Given the highly localised nature of niche construction
mechanisms, most models investigating this issue are individual-based (occasionally
spatially-explicit) models at the individual or genetic level (e.g. Laland, Odling-Smee and
Feldman, 2001; Schwilk and Kerr, 2002), although the effects of niche construction have
been observed and in some cases modelled for populations, communities and ecosystems
(Hui, Li and Yue, 2004). When these genetic spatially-explicit models were given a
spatial dimension, striped or spotted distributions of genotypes developed; these patterns
have been observed in real ecosystems (Camazine et al., 2001; Rietkerk et al., 2004a,b).
Spatial economics models have found similar results; firms, industries and multifirm
clusters demonstrate spatial patterning dependent upon the strength of competition with
other firms (Krugman, 1996). These patterns have been used as indicators of system
equilibrium and stability (Krugman, 1996; van de Koppel and Rietkerk, 2004; Rietkerk
et al., 2004a), and therefore have potential as sustainability indicators.

3.2 Self-organisation
Self-organisation refers to a process by which patterns at a larger scale emerge not from
top-down or external forces, but rather due to numerous local scale interactions and
decisions among a system’s components. Self-organised patterns and processes have
been found in many different dynamic systems (e.g. Krugman, 1996; Camazine et al.,
2001; Venegas et al., 2005). Patterns can either be spatial, resulting in visual regularity
(e.g. pigmented stripes of a zebra’s coat, stripes of vegetation in an arid grassland) or
temporal, resulting in rhythmic or cyclic behaviour (e.g. business cycles; synchronous
flashing in fireflies, Camazine et al., 2001). The main driver for self-organisation is the
balance between positive and negative feedbacks at the level of the system component or
individual. A positive feedback mechanism creates the impetus for each component to
continue its growth or clustering behaviour, up until some threshold at which a negative
feedback halts the behaviour and creates a spatial or temporal gap, creating the pattern
(Camazine et al., 2001).
Once the primary positive and negative feedback mechanisms have been identified;
models for self-organising behaviour can be developed for any dynamic system. Rietkerk
et al. (2004b) developed a mathematical model to explain the emergence of a ‘maze’
pattern in the bog vegetation of Siberia. Nutrient concentrations are naturally low, and
therefore the plants must compete for nutrients; plants draw water (which carries
nutrients) towards them through their root systems, and more plants clustered in the same
area will draw more nutrients to that area. This positive feedback results in an increased
number of plants in an area until competition between the plants becomes too high to
gain any further benefit from additional plants. On flat ground (with no hydraulic flow) a
maze pattern develops, whereas with topographic variability, a striped pattern develops
perpendicular to the flow of water. Simple models also predict the emergence of evenly
spaced suburban business districts around large cities, based on the positive feedback for
firms attracted to multifirm business areas (e.g. malls) which attract more customers, and
the negative feedback for firms desiring distance from similar firms which would
 Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability 125

compete for customers (Krugman, 1996). Niche construction is essentially the study of
processes at the individual level which drives emergent properties (like self-organisation)
at higher levels.
In industrial ecology, self-organisation has been discussed mainly with respect to the
development of industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks. Successful industrial
symbiosis and eco-industrial parks originate from the actions of firms, rather than in
response to higher-level planning or policies (Desrochers, 2004; Heeres, Vermeulen and
de Walle, 2004; Gibbs and Deutz, 2005). Possible driving mechanisms for self-
organisation include competition for resources and consumers, and innovation
opportunity which can create new products from waste products (Desrochers, 2004).
Application of self-organisation models from ecology to industrial systems will depend
on identifying analogous units and relevant feedbacks, such as those which attract new
firms to already-existing industrial parks. Some of these feedbacks may include
transportation and transaction costs, key drivers in economic aggregation and co-location
(Krugman, 1996). Successful sustainability policies may be those which avoid top-down
management or regulations, but rather create positive feedbacks to encourage bottom-up
innovations in recycling or energy efficiency. For example, such policies could utilise per
unit tax incentives for waste reduction, or agglomeration bonuses (sensu Parkhurst et al.,
2002) for co-locating complementary firms.

3.3 Dynamic regime/alternative stable state theory

Dynamic systems theory is used to study and predict the often non-linear behaviour of
systems, particularly catastrophic shifts observed in many ecosystems (Scheffer et al.,
2001; Scheffer and Carpenter, 2003; Folke et al., 2004). These regimes, also known as
‘alternative stable states’ or ‘stable attractors’, are areas of a multidimensional state space
in which the state variables exhibit characteristic behaviours and variability (Carpenter
and Brock, 2006; Mayer, Pawlowski and Cabezas, 2006). Feedbacks between internal
variables create and maintain regimes. While regimes are highly scale-dependent
(regimes in one scale may appear as random variability at larger scales), interactions
between variables and processes across scales are common (Higgins, Mastrandrea and
Schneider, 2002; Peters et al., 2004). The amount of time a system spends in one
particular regime depends fundamentally on the self-organisation and resilience of the
system; if the system is not highly resilient to disturbances or perturbations, it may shift
to a different regime.
Although system dynamics may be linear or otherwise easily predictable within a
regime, shifts or transitions between regimes are most often due to non-linear responses
and relationships, and occur very abruptly (Lockwood and Lockwood, 1993; Carpenter
and Brock, 2006). Compared to transitions that are simply nonlinear, the presence of
more complex non-linear behaviours like hysteresis, makes predicting regime shifts
extremely difficult (Carpenter, 2003). Hystereses are often encountered when trying to
restore ecosystems to a desired (usually more ‘healthy’) regime and recovery from
hysteretic shifts can be uncertain and costly (Suding, Gross and Houseman, 2004). At
present, human activities represent a disturbance pressure that has caused catastrophic
regime shifts in many types of ecosystems, and may cause significant regime shifts in the
near future (Higgins, Mastrandrea and Schneider, 2002; Folke et al., 2004; Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).
126 A.L. Mayer

The application of dynamic regime theory to ecosystem management and restoration

has been most extensive for rangelands, forests and freshwater lakes (Mayer and
Rietkerk, 2004; Suding, Gross and Houseman, 2004). For rangeland management, state-
and-transition models have been developed which predict the plant community response
to different levels of fire, grazing and rainfall (Lockwood and Lockwood, 1993;
Bestelmeyer et al., 2004). For freshwater lakes, alternative stable state models investigate
the interaction between phosphorus input into the lake, phosphorus embedded in the
sediment and the probability of shifts between oligotrophic and eutrophic water
conditions (Carpenter, 2003). Regimes have been identified in other systems using non-
linear models fitted to observed time-series data (e.g. Mantua, 2004), with few replicates
and no experimentation for large systems like the global climate. Methods to identify
these shifts have focused on temporal changes in system behaviour between regime and
shift periods, such as increased system variability (Held and Kleinen, 2004; Carpenter
and Brock, 2006; Mayer, Pawlowski and Cabezas, 2006) or the emergence of particular
self-organised patterns (Rietkerk et al., 2004b).
Although ecology has for the most part moved away from the concept of an
inevitable, stable, climax community towards which all ecosystems will develop, this
concept has been used to describe the development of industrial systems. In the industrial
ecology literature, the industrial climax community is described as a mature system with
substantial cyclic waste recycling and highly efficient use of inputs (Jelinski et al., 1992;
Graedel and Allenby, 2003). However, if industrial systems behave similarly to
ecological ones, we would expect disturbances to push the system into earlier
successional stages quite regularly; we might also expect considerable spatial and
temporal heterogeneity in system responses to particular disturbances. Alternative models
like the four-stage model developed by Holling (2001), may represent a more accurate
conceptual model for the life cycle of firms and industries over longer timescales
(Spiegelman, 2003; Abel, Cumming and Anderies, 2006). This ‘Panarchy’ model
suggests that systems repeatedly pass through stages of rapid growth, stabilisation,
destabilisation and restructuring; and that this behaviour is critical to both the diversity
and the longevity of the system (Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Similarly, the state-and-
transition models developed for rangelands may be more appropriate for managing
sustainable industrial systems, particularly those which acknowledge multi-scale
interactions between drivers (Bestelmeyer et al., 2004; Kinzig et al., 2006). Once key
environmental, socioeconomic and policy drivers are identified, state-and-transition or
panarchy models modified to examine industrial patterns may help explain why some
eco-industrial parks flourish and others fail, for example (Gibbs and Deutz, 2005).

3.4 Forest products industry from dynamic systems theory

A dynamic systems approach the forest products industry would identify the boundaries
of the system to be sustained, the regimes that are sustainable (desirable and stable) for
the system and the disturbances that can push the system across regimes. System
boundaries might be dictated by the forest sector within a country or state or, at a smaller
scale, a set of firms involved in production plus the geographic area which supplies
labour and wood-based feedstock (Boons and Janssen, 2004). In addition to profitability,
characteristics of sustainable regimes for the forest sector include diversity in firm size
for harvest of inputs (Rickenbach and Steele, 2005) and production (Akyüz et al., 2006;
Wolf, Vidlund and Andersson, 2006), social and economic support for local economies
 Ecologically-based approaches to evaluate the sustainability 127

(Sprague, 2004; Gale and Gale, 2006), and harvesting rates which maintain the supply of
forest goods and services for an explicit time period (Green, 2000). Disturbances which
affect the forest industry sector include large fluctuations in demand for wood-based
products, and disruptions to feedstock (either due to ecological or social factors).
Financing for innovation, particularly for small firms, is an important determinant of the
speed at which the forestry sector can innovate and lessen the impact of these
disturbances (Davidsdottir and Ruth, 2004, 2005; Rametsteiner and Weiss, 2006).
The behaviour of dynamic systems is a product of system components which can
either respond slowly or quickly to change (Carpenter, 2003). Identifying slow and fast
variables of a system can help inform management and policy decisions by identifying
those variables which can be pressed to move the system into a new, more sustainable
regime. In the forest industry sector, production values and flows of pollutants change
quickly, as can the fragmentation of forest ownership (which increases harvest costs) into
smaller forest stands from which feedstock is harvested (Lunnan, Nybakk and
Vennesland, 2006). The turnover of capital and infrastructure is a slow variable and
results in lost opportunities for new products (such as tourism services or biofuel,
Rametsteiner and Weiss, 2006), or new technologies which increase energy efficiency
(Davidsdottir and Ruth, 2005). Industrial systems can evolve as capital is replaced with
newer innovations, and increasing financial incentives to replace inefficient capital may
be an effective driver of sustainable change (Davidsdottir and Ruth, 2005). Especially
with respect to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, biofuel products (such as wood
pellets, wood chips and ethanol) may be a particularly good way for the sector to
diversify its products and customer base (Berg, 2003; Hakkila, 2006; Hansen, Dibrell and
Down, 2006; Van Heiningen, 2006).

4 Conclusions

Although ecologists may be unfamiliar with industrial systems, the study of these
systems offers great potential to advance both ecology and industrial ecology. If
industrial systems can be shown to behave similarly to ecosystems, these data-rich
systems offer a large sample size from which to test many hypotheses, and to conduct
experiments through economic and industrial policy. Firms and industries have strong
economic incentives to track many relevant variables, including their sources of input and
destinations of output. At the scale relevant to the study of industrial system impacts on
ecosystems, advances in adaptive management strategies can be useful, and particularly
well suited to forest management (Lindenmayer and Franklin, 2002; Duinker and
Trevisan, 2003). Experimentation with industrial systems may even be encouraged,
especially if doing so might improve economic and environmental conditions.
The development of concepts and tools which can investigate interlinked ecological
and human systems (e.g. Bakshi, 2002) would make a substantial contribution to
sustainability and sustainable development research. Common terminology, statistics and
models may allow researchers in both ecology and industrial ecology to determine the
extent to which the characteristics of ecosystems, such as diversity or productivity, affect
and/or are affected by similar characteristics in industrial systems (Table 2). Strong
feedbacks between ecological and industrial productivity would provide industrial firms
and sectors greater incentive to protect functioning ecosystems. Expanding system
boundaries to encompass connected industrial and ecological systems may also alleviate
128 A.L. Mayer

concerns over the degree to which industrial and ecological systems are analogous
(Levine, 2003; Ayres, 2004). Identifying the limits of applicability of ecosystem concepts
and tools to industrial systems may help indicate areas in which tools from other
disciplines may be more useful for industrial sustainability (Levine, 2003).

Acknowledgements

The manuscript was prepared with support from grants #1210987 and #109942 from the
Academy of Finland. Dr. David Rapport, Ms. Saija Helin and two anonymous reviewers
provided helpful comments which greatly improved the article.

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Note
1
The use of the term ‘disturbance’ for both natural and anthropogenic sources is not meant to imply
that the effects of human-induced disturbances are all quantitatively or qualitatively similar to
those of non-human sources, nor that they act in isolation of one another. For more discussion on
this topic, see for example Rapport and Regier (1995), Nyström, Folke and Moberg (2000).