Sustainability analysis of ecological systems in fire prone areas using the concept of Sustainability over Sets (SOS)

Abstract

The dynamic coexistence of trees and grass is a vital component for a sustainable ecological system. This dynamical coexistence could be affected through continuous and alternate natural perturbations such as herbivore grazing, wildfires, droughts, and human activities. To fully understand the dynamics and sustainability of such ecological systems, first rigorous mathematical models need to be developed, capturing the systems' behavior, and subsequently, tools are created to analyze their sustainability. With this goal in mind, two concepts of Sustainability over Sets (SOS) and Sustainizability over Sets (SIZOS) have been recently introduced as sustainable system analysis and synthesis tools, respectively, with broad flexibility in incorporating human input. In this work, the SOS concept is first briefly introduced and afterward applied to a dynamical system consisting of tree grass components under different wildfire frequencies. The obtained results show that an increase in wildfire frequency will result in a system only consisting of grassland and thus the ecosystem is deemed unsustainable.