... Zavalishin and J. Zhang.We are also grateful to Valentina Krysanova, Valery Pomaz, AlisonSchlums, Stephen Sitch and Anastasia Svirejeva-Hopkins for their help in thepreparation and editing of our manuscript.Finally, ... x2are state variables, “0” ¼ “4” are the initial and final states, “1”, “2” and “3”are the intermediate states.Towards a Thermodynamic Theory for Ecological Systems16Towards a Thermodynamic Theory for ... of a few fundamental laws, for instance the thermodynamiclaws, from which other laws can be derived. All (or almost all) observations can be explained by a fundamentallaw or a derived law.Towards...