|
Total Human Ecosystem
Total human ecosystem (THE) is an Ecocentrism, eco-centric concept initially proposed by ecology professors Zeev Naveh and Arthur S. Lieberman in 1994.Naveh, Z. & A.S. Lieberman, 1994. Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application (2nd ed). Springer-Verlag,New York, 360 p. History of the concept Naveh and Lieberman (1994) proposed the holistic, eco-centric concept of the Total Human Ecosystem in order to study the anthropocene ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management, within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. In Naveh's own words, the Total Human Ecosystem is "the highest Coevolution, co-evolutionary ecological entity on earth with landscapes as its concrete three-dimensional ‘Gestalt’ systems, forming the spatial and functional matrix for all organisms". This concept (or meta-concept) integrates human systems (the technosphere, but also in the conceptual space of human noosphere) and natural systems (the geophysical eco-space of the Earth biosp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecocentrism
Ecocentrism (; from Greek: οἶκος ''oikos'', "house" and κέντρον ''kentron'', "center") is a term used by environmental philosophers and ecologists to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered (i.e. anthropocentric), system of values. The justification for ecocentrism usually consists in an ontological belief and subsequent ethical claim. The ontological belief denies that there are any existential divisions between human and non-human nature sufficient to claim that humans are either (a) the sole bearers of intrinsic value or (b) possess greater intrinsic value than non-human nature. Thus the subsequent ethical claim is for an equality of intrinsic value across human and non-human nature, or biospherical egalitarianism. Quotes According to Stan Rowe: and: Origin of term The ecocentric ethic was conceived by Aldo Leopold and recognizes that all species, including humans, are the product of a long evolutionary process and are inter-related in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Sciences
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. Life science is alternatively known as biology, and physical science is subdivided into branches: physics, chemistry, earth science, and astronomy. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches (also known as fields). As empirical sciences, natural sciences use tools from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, converting information about nature into measurements which can be explained as clear statements of the " laws of nature". Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Ecosystem
Human ecosystems are human-dominated ecosystems of the anthropocene era that are viewed as complex cybernetic systems by conceptual models that are increasingly used by ecological anthropologists and other scholars to examine the ecological aspects of human communities in a way that integrates multiple factors as economics, sociopolitical organization, psychological factors, and physical factors related to the environment. A human ecosystem has three central organizing concepts: human environed unit (an individual or group of individuals), environment, interactions and transactions between and within the components. The total environment includes three conceptually distinct, but interrelated environments: the natural, human constructed, and human behavioral. These environments furnish the resources and conditions necessary for life and constitute a life-support system. Further reading * Basso, Keith 1996 “Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resistance (ecology)
In the context of ecological stability, resistance is the property of communities or populations to remain "essentially unchanged" when subject to disturbance. The inverse of resistance is sensitivity. Stability and disturbance Resistance is one of the major aspects of ecological stability. Volker Grimm and Christian Wissel identified 70 terms and 163 distinct definitions of the various aspects of ecological stability, but found that they could be reduced to three fundamental properties: "staying essentially unchanged", "returning to the reference state...after a temporary disturbance" and "persistence through time of an ecological system." Resistant communities are able to remain "essentially unchanged" despite disturbance. Although commonly seen as distinct from resilience, Brian Walker and colleagues considered resistance to be a component of resilience in their expanded definition of resilience, while Fridolin Brand used a definition of resilience that he described as "close ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resilience (ecology)
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions. Human activities that adversely affect ecological resilience such as reduction of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources, pollution, land use, and anthropogenic climate change are incre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems: History Self-regulating mechanisms have existed since antiquity, and the idea of feedback had started to enter economic theory in Britain by the 18th century, but it was not at that time recognized as a universal abstraction and so did not have a name. The first ever known artificial feedback device was a float valve, for maintaining water at a constant level, invented in 270 BC in Alexandria, Egypt. This device illustrated the principle of feedback: a low water level opens the valve, the rising water then provides feedback into the system, closing the valve when the required level is reached. This then reoccurs in a circular fashion as the water level fluctuates. Centrifugal governors were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patterns
A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated like a wallpaper design. Any of the senses may directly observe patterns. Conversely, abstract patterns in science, mathematics, or language may be observable only by analysis. Direct observation in practice means seeing visual patterns, which are widespread in nature and in art. Visual patterns in nature are often chaotic, rarely exactly repeating, and often involve fractals. Natural patterns include spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tilings, cracks, and those created by symmetries of rotation and reflection. Patterns have an underlying mathematical structure; indeed, mathematics can be seen as the search for regularities, and the output of any function is a mathematical pattern. Similarly in the sciences, theories explain and predict reg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings, and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity. The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and a sense of place that differentiates one region from other regions. It is the dyn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecotope
Ecotopes are the smallest ecologically distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying landscapes into ecologically distinct features for the measurement and mapping of landscape structure, function and change. Like ecosystems, ecotopes are identified using flexible criteria, in the case of ecotopes, by criteria defined within a specific ecological mapping and classification system. Just as ecosystems are defined by the interaction of biotic and abiotic components, ecotope classification should stratify landscapes based on a combination of both biotic and abiotic factors, including vegetation, soils, hydrology, and other factors. Other parameters that must be considered in the classification of ecotopes include their period of stability (such as the number of years that a feature might persist), and their spatial scale (mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autopoiesis
The term autopoiesis () refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'' by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. Since then the concept has been also applied to the fields of cognition, systems theory, architecture and sociology. Overview In their 1972 book ''Autopoiesis and Cognition'', Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela described how they invented the word autopoiesis. They explained that, They described the "space defined by an autopoietic system" as "self-contained", a space that "cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection." Meaning Autop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-organizing
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent. It is often triggered by seemingly random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation. Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability. Self-organization occurs in many physical, chemical, biological, robotic, and cognitive systems. Examples of self-organization include crystallization, thermal convection of fluids, chemical oscillation, animal swarming, neural circuits, and black market ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Energy
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture. It is an essential source of renewable energy, and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air. The large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity. In 2020 solar energy has been the cheapest source of Electricity. In Saudi Arabia a power purchase agreemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_self-organization2.jpg "Click for more on -> Self-organizing")
