This page provides lectures and teaching materials on systems ecology, emergy, and environmental accounting developed for university courses, workshops, and international training programs. The lectures explore the principles of system organization, energy transformations, emergy accounting, and the application of systems methods to ecological, environmental, and economic systems. Lecture materials are provided as PDF files and include the accompanying lecture notes.
Environmental Accounting and Systems Thinking (EAST)
These lectures were prepared for Part A: Environmental Accounting and Systems Thinking (EAST) of the 2026 International Summer Course on Environmental and Ecological System Engineering at Beijing Normal University. The lectures introduce systems ecology and emergy concepts and develop methods for environmental accounting and the analysis of ecological and economic systems. They are presented here as a continuous series and have been renumbered from their original course sequence.
Lecture 1
Energy and System Organization
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 2
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 3
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 4
Quantitative Emergy Evaluation
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 5
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 6
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 7
Emergy at the International Scale
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 8
Emergy Evaluation of Alternatives
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 9
Emergy and Environmental Impact Assessment
PDF with lecture notes
Lecture 10
Emergy: The Coupling of Human and Natural Systems
PDF with lecture notes