Witting, G. “Landscape data and complex adaptive system Earth.” Holism in complexity and network science (2003).
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Landscape and its data can be viewed as interrelated components in the complex adaptive system, Earth. The Earth viewed from a holistic vantage point suggests a Gain sensibility, but I would suggest not in Lovelock’s Gain sense as an organism, but rather in Margulis’s sense as an ecosystem. An autonomous system, as proposed in Varela’s interpretation of Gaia, with operational closure, that is a fully self-referential network that specifies its own identity and also specifies its response to emergent factors and events. A complex coadaptive network, coevolving in interaction with a wide range of networked systems, including information technology networks and the data that they generate. Data from emerging GIS developments, like all other data networks will play a role in the ongoing evolution of the complex adaptive system, Earth.