Can PageRank Help Save the Planet?
By: Enrique Gili | October 8, 2009 | 12:00 PM (PDT) | Print The algorithm behind rating World Wide Web pages for authority may provide a useful way of figuring out the key species in the web of life. The study of who eats whom — known as “food webs” — is essential to understanding and preserving habitats. The traditional way to evaluate the overall health of an ecosystem is to conduct a biological inventory, note the robustness of keystone species and establish a pecking order. Photosynthesis produces grass, zebras eat grass, and lions eat the zebras until the circle of life is complete. Such practices have been the foundation of resource management plans for commercial fisheries and national parks for decades. If links in the chain are broken, the thinking goes, the entire food web starts to unravel, leading to famine, disease and ultimately environmental collapse. The demise of seemingly unrelated animals can have a devastating cascading effect on entire food systems, leading scienti
