Applied ecology has traditionally approached management problems through a simplified, single-species lens. Repeated failures of single-species management have led us to a new paradigm — managing at the ecosystem level. Ecosystem management involves a complex array of interacting organisms, processes and scientific disciplines. Accounting for interactions, feedback loops and dependencies between ecosystem components is therefore fundamental to understanding and managing ecosystems. We provide an overview of the main types of ecosystem models and their uses, and discuss challenges related to modelling complex ecological systems. Existing modelling approaches typically attempt to do one or more of the following: describe and disentangle ecosystem components and interactions; make predictions about future ecosystem states; and inform decision making by comparing alternative strategies and identifying important uncertainties. Modelling ecosystems is challenging, particularly when balancing the desire to represent many components of an ecosystem with the limitations of available data and the modelling objective. Explicitly considering different forms of uncertainty is therefore a primary concern. We provide some recommended strategies (such as ensemble ecosystem models and multi-model approaches) to aid the explicit consideration of uncertainty while also meeting the challenges of modelling ecosystems.

应用生态学传统上是通过简化的单一物种视角来解决管理问题。单物种管理的反复失败使我们进入了一个新的范例-在生态系统级别进行管理。生态系统管理涉及一系列相互作用的有机体，过程和科学学科。因此，考虑生态系统组件之间的相互作用，反馈回路和依赖性是理解和管理生态系统的基础。我们概述了生态系统模型的主要类型及其用途，并讨论了与复杂生态系统建模有关的挑战。现有的建模方法通常尝试执行以下一项或多项任务：描述和解开生态系统的组成部分和相互作用；对未来的生态系统状态做出预测；并通过比较替代策略并确定重要的不确定因素来为决策提供依据。对生态系统进行建模具有挑战性，尤其是在平衡表示生态系统许多组件的需求与可用数据和建模目标的限制之间。因此，明确考虑不同形式的不确定性是一个主要问题。我们提供了一些推荐的策略（例如整体生态系统模型和多模型方法），以帮助明确考虑不确定性，同时应对生态系统建模的挑战。因此，明确考虑不同形式的不确定性是一个主要问题。我们提供了一些推荐的策略（例如整体生态系统模型和多模型方法），以帮助明确考虑不确定性，同时应对生态系统建模的挑战。因此，明确考虑不同形式的不确定性是一个主要问题。我们提供了一些推荐的策略（例如整体生态系统模型和多模型方法），以帮助明确考虑不确定性，同时应对生态系统建模的挑战。