Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The productivity of an ecosystem is influenced by a wide range of factors, including nutrient availability, temperature, and water availability. Understanding ecological productivity is vital because it provides insights into how ecosystems function and the extent to which they can support life.
Environmental sociology is the study of interactions between societies and their natural environment.The field emphasizes the social factors that influence environmental resource management and cause environmental issues, the processes by which these environmental problems are socially constructed and define as social issues, and societal responses to these problems.
In his 1950 Ph.D. thesis, Odum gave a novel definition of ecology as the study of large entities (ecosystems) at the "natural level of integration". [12] In the traditional role of an ecologist, one of Odum's doctoral aims was to recognize and classify large cyclic entities (ecosystems).
Social-ecological systems are based on the concept that humans are a part of—not separate from—nature. [8] This concept, which holds that the delineation between social systems and natural systems is arbitrary and artificial, was first put forth by Berkes and Folke, [9] and its theory was further developed by Berkes et al. [10] More recent research into social-ecological system theory has ...
Ecosystems may be habitats within biomes that form an integrated whole and a dynamically responsive system having both physical and biological complexes. Ecosystem ecology is the science of determining the fluxes of materials (e.g. carbon, phosphorus) between different pools (e.g., tree biomass, soil organic material).
Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy. Biotic factors of the ecosystem are living things; such as plants, animals, and bacteria ...
Since this metric tracks biocapacity, the replacement of original ecosystems with high-productivity agricultural monocultures can lead to attributing a higher biocapacity to such regions. For example, replacing ancient woodlands or tropical forests with monoculture forests or plantations may therefore decrease the ecological footprint.
Drawing from natural ecosystems which are defined as the network of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment, social ecology is a framework or set of theoretical principles for understanding the dynamic interrelations among various personal and environmental factors. [3]