Diagnosing Ecosystem Health

In the past five years, international symposia, new journals, emergence of several new societies, redirection of environmental programs, and funding for new degree programs have heralded the birth of the science of “Ecosystem Health and Medicine.” This paper develops the fundamental theory of diagnosis. As a medical science, a process for systematically developing an ecosystem “patient” history (anamnesis) is required. Taking a history implies that certain types of information, that are specifiable in advance, should be the focus of the preliminary examination. This paper identifies conceptual aspects of the preliminary examination and provides an initial anamnesis form. The primary emphasis of this paper is to present and illustrate a rigorous, formal mathematical procedure for using the data to carry out the deductive process of health determination. As the process is carried out, deductive elimination of spurious signs and diseases will imply the types of detailed studies whicharerequired to identify the combination of diseases (disease complex) occurring in a given ecological system.