Exploring an ecological analogy: Testing connectance and diversity concepts for use in industrial ecology

The ecological metaphor of industrial ecology is a proven conceptual tool, having spawned an entire field of interdisciplinary research that explores the intimate linkages between industry and its underlying natural systems. Besides its name and some borrowed concepts, however, industrial ecology has no formal relationship with the ecological sciences. This research explores that potential interdisciplinary collaboration and tests whether some of the same analysis tools used in community ecology research---specifically connectance and diversity indices---can be meaningfully applied to industrial systems. I conducted a telephone survey with companies in Burnside Industrial Park and completed 153 surveys in total (response rate of 75%). The results demonstrate the applicability of ecological indicators to industrial ecosystems, which suggests that the ecological sciences have much more to contribute to quantitative analyses within industrial ecology. This research helps lay the groundwork for the development of an ecologically based toolkit for analyzing industrial ecosystems.