Ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
is a new science and considered as an important branch of biological science, having only become prominent during the second half of the 20th century.
[
] Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics.
Its history stems all the way back to the 4th century. One of the first ecologists whose writings survive may have been
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...
or perhaps his student,
Theophrastus
Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...
, both of whom had interest in many species of animals and plants. Theophrastus described interrelationships between animals and their environment as early as the 4th century BC. Ecology developed substantially in the 18th and 19th century. It began with
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...
and his work with the economy of nature.
Soon after came
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...
and his work with botanical geography.
[
] Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...
and
Karl Möbius
Karl August Möbius (7 February 1825 in Eilenburg – 26 April 1908 in Berlin) was a German zoologist who was a pioneer in the field of ecology and a former director of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
Early life
Möbius was born in Eilen ...
then contributed with the notion of
biocoenosis
A biocenosis (UK English, ''biocoenosis'', also biocenose, biocoenose, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, life assemblage), coined by Karl Möbius in 1877, describes the interacting organisms living together in a hab ...
.
Eugenius Warming
Eugenius (died 6 September 394) was a usurper in the Western Roman Empire (392–394) against Emperor Theodosius I. While Christian himself, Eugenius capitalized on the discontent in the West caused by Theodosius' religious policies targeting p ...
’s work with ecological plant geography led to the founding of ecology as a discipline.
[
] Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
’s work also contributed to the science of ecology, and Darwin is often attributed with progressing the discipline more than anyone else in its young history. Ecological thought expanded even more in the early 20th century.
[
] Major contributions included:
Eduard Suess
Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and t ...
’ and
Vladimir Vernadsky
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (russian: link=no, Влади́мир Ива́нович Верна́дский) or Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky ( uk, Володи́мир Іва́нович Верна́дський; – 6 January 1945) was ...
’s work with the biosphere,
Arthur Tansley
Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.
Educated at Highgate School, University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, Tansley taught ...
’s ecosystem,
Charles Elton's ''Animal Ecology'', and
Henry Cowles ecological succession.
Ecology influenced the social sciences and humanities.
Human ecology
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecolog ...
began in the early 20th century and it recognized humans as an ecological factor. Later
James Lovelock advanced views on earth as a macro-organism with the
Gaia hypothesis.
Conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
Environment and natural resources
* Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...
stemmed from the science of ecology. Important figures and movements include Shelford and the ESA, National Environmental Policy act,
George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the ...
,
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
,
Stephen A. Forbes, and post-
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) a ...
conservation. Later in the 20th century world governments collaborated on man’s effects on the biosphere and Earth’s environment.
The history of ecology is intertwined with the history of conservation efforts, in particular the founding of the
Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in 1951, The Nat ...
.
18th and 19th century Ecological murmurs
Arcadian and Imperial Ecology
In the early Eighteenth century, preceding Carl Linnaeus, two rival schools of thought dominated the growing scientific discipline of ecology. First,
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a " parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his ''Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne''.
Life
White was born on ...
a “parson-naturalist” is attributed with developing and endorsing the view of
Arcadian ecology
Arcadian ecology is a school of thought that advocates for a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. It is named for the mountainous Arcady region of Greece. Gilbert White's seminal piece "Natural History of Selbourne" promotes a benig ...
. Arcadian ecology advocates for a “simple, humble life for man” and a harmonious relationship with humans and nature.
Opposing the Arcadian view is Francis Bacon's ideology, “imperial ecology”. Imperialists work “to establish through the exercise of reason and by hard work, man’s dominance over nature”.
Imperial ecologists also believe that man should become a dominant figure over nature and all other organisms as “once enjoyed in the Garden of Eden”.
Both views continued their rivalry through the early eighteenth century until Carl Linnaeus's support of imperialism; and in short time due to Linnaeus's popularity, imperial ecology became the dominant view within the discipline.
Carl Linnaeus and Systema Naturae
Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist, is well known for his work with
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
but his ideas helped to lay the groundwork for modern ecology. He developed a two part naming system for classifying plants and animals. Binomial Nomenclature was used to classify, describe, and name different genera and species. The compiled editions of ''Systema Naturae'' developed and popularized the naming system for plants and animals in modern biology. Reid suggests "Linnaeus can fairly be regarded as the originator of systematic and ecological studies in biodiversity," due to his naming and classifying of thousands of plant and animal species. Linnaeus also influenced the foundations of Darwinian evolution, he believed that there could be change in or between different species within fixed genera. Linnaeus was also one of the first naturalists to place men in the same category as
primate
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians ( monkeys and apes, the latter including ...
s.
The botanical geography and Alexander von Humboldt
Throughout the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the
great maritime powers such as Britain, Spain, and Portugal launched many world exploratory expeditions to develop
maritime commerce with other countries, and to discover new natural resources, as well as to catalog them. At the beginning of the 18th century, about twenty thousand plant species were known, versus forty thousand at the beginning of the 19th century, and about
300,000 today.
These expeditions were joined by many
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...
s, including
botanists
This is a list of botanists who have Wikipedia articles, in alphabetical order by surname. The List of botanists by author abbreviation is mostly a list of plant taxonomists because an author receives a standard abbreviation only when that auth ...
, such as the German explorer
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...
. Humboldt is often considered as father of ecology. He was the first to take on the study of the relationship between organisms and their
environment
Environment most often refers to:
__NOTOC__
* Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally
* Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...
. He exposed the existing relationships between observed plant species and
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...
, and described vegetation zones using
latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...
and
altitude
Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
, a discipline now known as
geobotany
Phytogeography (from Greek φυτόν, ''phytón'' = "plant" and γεωγραφία, ''geographía'' = "geography" meaning also distribution) or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution o ...
. Von Humboldt was accompanied on his expedition by the botanist
Aimé Bonpland
Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (; 22 August 1773 – 11 May 1858) was a French explorer and botanist who traveled with Alexander von Humboldt in Latin America from 1799 to 1804. He co-authored volumes of the scientific results of their ex ...
.
In 1856, the
Park Grass Experiment The Park Grass Experiment is a biological study originally set up to test the effect of fertilizers and manures on hay yields. The scientific experiment is located at the Rothamsted Research in the English county of Hertfordshire, and is notable as ...
was established at the
Rothamsted Experimental Station
Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Har ...
to test the effect of fertilizers and manures on hay yields. This is the longest-running field experiment in the world.
The notion of biocoenosis: Wallace and Möbius
Alfred Russel Wallace, contemporary and colleague of Darwin, was first to propose a "geography" of animal species. Several authors recognized at the time that species were not independent of each other, and grouped them into plant species, animal species, and later into communities of living beings or
biocoenosis
A biocenosis (UK English, ''biocoenosis'', also biocenose, biocoenose, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, life assemblage), coined by Karl Möbius in 1877, describes the interacting organisms living together in a hab ...
. The first use of this term is usually attributed to
Karl Möbius
Karl August Möbius (7 February 1825 in Eilenburg – 26 April 1908 in Berlin) was a German zoologist who was a pioneer in the field of ecology and a former director of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
Early life
Möbius was born in Eilen ...
in 1877, but already in 1825, the French naturalist
Adolphe Dureau de la Malle
Adolphe Jules César Auguste Dureau de la Malle (3 March 1777 – 17 May 1857) was a Saint Dominican geographer, naturalist, historian and artist. He was the son of the scholar and translator Jean-Baptiste Dureau de la Malle.
Dureau de la Ma ...
used the term ''societé'' about an assemblage of plant individuals of different species.
Warming and the foundation of ecology as discipline
While
Darwin recognized the role of
competition
Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indiv ...
as one among many selective forces,
Eugen Warming
Eugen is a masculine given name which may refer to:
* Archduke Eugen of Austria (1863–1954), last Habsburg Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order from 1894 to 1923
* Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke (1865–1947), Swedish painter, art collector, and pat ...
devised a new discipline that took abiotic factors, that is drought, fire, salt, cold etc., as seriously as biotic factors in the assembly of biotic communities.
Biogeography before Warming was largely of descriptive nature – faunistic or floristic. Warming's aim was, through the study of organism (plant)
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
and
anatomy
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...
, i.e. adaptation, to explain why a species occurred under a certain set of environmental conditions. Moreover, the goal of the new discipline was to explain why species occupying similar habitats, experiencing similar hazards, would solve problems in similar ways, despite often being of widely different phylogenetic descent. Based on his personal observations in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian
cerrado
The ''Cerrado'' (, ) is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the ...
, in
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark
, establish ...
, Norwegian
Finnmark
Finnmark (; se, Finnmárku ; fkv, Finmarku; fi, Ruija ; russian: Финнмарк) was a county in the northern part of Norway, and it is scheduled to become a county again in 2024.
On 1 January 2020, Finnmark was merged with the neighbouri ...
and
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
,
Warming
Warming may refer to: People
*Eugenius Warming, (1841–1924), Danish botanist
* Thomas Warming, (b. 1969), Danish illustrator, painter and author See also
*Global warming
*Warming up
*Warming Land
Warming Land is a peninsula in far northern G ...
gave the first university course in ecological plant geography. Based on his lectures, he wrote the book
‘Plantesamfund’, which was immediate translated to German,
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
and
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, later to English as
‘Oecology of Plants’. Through its German edition, the book had an immense effect on British and North American scientists like
Arthur Tansley
Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.
Educated at Highgate School, University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, Tansley taught ...
,
Henry Chandler Cowles
Henry Chandler Cowles (February 27, 1869 – September 12, 1939) was an American botanist and ecological pioneer (see History of ecology). A professor at the University of Chicago, he studied ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes of Nort ...
and
Frederic Clements
Frederic Edward Clements (September 16, 1874 – July 26, 1945) was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of plant ecology and vegetation succession.
Biography
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, he studied botany at the University of Nebra ...
.
Malthusian influence
Thomas Robert Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.
In his 1798 book '' An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Ma ...
was an influential writer on the subject of population and population limits in the early 19th century. His works were very important in shaping the ways in which Darwin saw the world worked. Malthus wrote:
In
An Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus argues for the reining in of rising population through 2 checks: Positive and Preventive checks. The first raising death rates, the later lowers birthing rates. Malthus also brings forth the idea that the world population will move past the sustainable number of people. This form of thought still continues to influences debates on birth and marriage rates to this theory brought forth by Malthus. The essay had a major influence on Charles Darwin and helped him to theories his theory of Natural Selection. This struggle proposed by Malthusian thought not only influenced the ecological work of Charles Darwin, but helped bring about an economic theory of world of ecology.
Darwinism and the science of ecology
![Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg)
It is often held that the roots of scientific ecology may be traced back to Darwin.
[
] This contention may look convincing at first glance inasmuch as ''On the Origin of Species'' is full of observations and proposed mechanisms that clearly fit within the boundaries of modern ecology (e.g. the cat-to-clover chain – an ecological cascade) and because the term ecology was coined in 1866 by a strong proponent of Darwinism,
Ernst Haeckel. However, Darwin never used the word in his writings after this year, not even in his most "ecological" writings such as the foreword to the English edition of
Hermann Müller’s ''The Fertilization of Flowers'' (1883) or in his own treatise of earthworms and mull formation in forest soils
The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms 1881). Moreover, the pioneers founding ecology as a scientific discipline, such as
Eugen Warming
Eugen is a masculine given name which may refer to:
* Archduke Eugen of Austria (1863–1954), last Habsburg Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order from 1894 to 1923
* Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke (1865–1947), Swedish painter, art collector, and pat ...
,
A. F. W. Schimper,
Gaston Bonnier
Gaston Eugène Marie Bonnier (9 April 1853 in Paris – 2 January 1922) was a French botanist and plant ecologist.
Biography
Bonnier first studied at École Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1873 to 1876. Together with Charles Flahault, he st ...
,
F.A. Forel,
S.A. Forbes and
Karl Möbius
Karl August Möbius (7 February 1825 in Eilenburg – 26 April 1908 in Berlin) was a German zoologist who was a pioneer in the field of ecology and a former director of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
Early life
Möbius was born in Eilen ...
, made almost no reference to Darwin’s ideas in their works.
This was clearly not out of ignorance or because the works of Darwin were not widespread. Some such as S.A.Forbes studying intricate food webs asked questions as yet unanswered about the instability of food chains that might persist if dominant competitors were not adapted to have self-constraint.
[
] Others focused on the dominant themes at the beginning, concern with the relationship between organism morphology and physiology on one side and environment on the other, mainly abiotic environment, hence environmental selection. Darwin’s concept of natural selection on the other hand focused primarily on competition. The mechanisms other than competition that he described, primarily the divergence of character which can reduce competition and his statement that "struggle" as he used it was metaphorical and thus included environmental selection, were given less emphasis in the Origin than competition.
[
] Despite most portrayals of Darwin conveying him as a non-aggressive recluse who let others fight his battles, Darwin remained all his life a man nearly obsessed with the ideas of competition, struggle and conquest – with all forms of human contact as confrontation.
Although there is nothing incorrect in the details presented in the paragraph above, the fact that Darwinism used a particularly ecological view of adaptation and Haeckel's use and definitions of the term were steeped in Darwinism should not be ignored. According to ecologist and historian Robert P. McIntosh, "the relationship of ecology to Darwinian evolution is explicit in the title of the work in which ecology first appeared." A more elaborate definition by Haeckel in 1870 is translated on the frontispiece of the influential ecology text known as 'Great Apes' as "… ecology is the study of all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence." The issues brought up in the above paragraph are covered in more detail in the Early Beginnings section underneath that of History in the Wikipedia page on Ecology.
Early 20th century ~ Expansion of ecological thought
The biosphere – Eduard Suess and Vladimir Vernadsky
By the 19th century, ecology blossomed due to new discoveries in
chemistry by
Lavoisier and
de Saussure, notably the
nitrogen cycle. After observing the fact that life developed only within strict limits of each compartment that makes up the
atmosphere,
hydrosphere
The hydrosphere () is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet, or natural satellite. Although Earth's hydrosphere has been around for about 4 billion years, it continues to change in shape. This ...
, and
lithosphere, the Austrian geologist
Eduard Suess
Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and t ...
proposed the term
biosphere
The biosphere (from Greek βίος ''bíos'' "life" and σφαῖρα ''sphaira'' "sphere"), also known as the ecosphere (from Greek οἶκος ''oîkos'' "environment" and σφαῖρα), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also ...
in 1875. Suess proposed the name biosphere for the conditions promoting life, such as those found on
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
, which includes
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' ...
,
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as ''Biota (ecology ...
,
mineral
In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...
s,
matter cycles, et cetera.
In the 1920s
Vladimir I. Vernadsky, a Russian geologist who had defected to France, detailed the idea of the biosphere in his work "The biosphere" (1926), and described the fundamental principles of the
biogeochemical cycles. He thus redefined the biosphere as the sum of all
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
s.
First ecological damages were reported in the 18th century, as the multiplication of colonies caused
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated ...
. Since the 19th century, with the
industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, more and more pressing concerns have grown about the impact of human activity on
the environment
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses t ...
. The term
ecologist
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
has been in use since the end of the 19th century.
The ecosystem: Arthur Tansley
Over the 19th century, botanical geography and zoogeography combined to form the basis of
biogeography. This science, which deals with habitats of species, seeks to explain the reasons for the presence of certain species in a given location.
It was in 1935 that
Arthur Tansley
Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.
Educated at Highgate School, University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, Tansley taught ...
, the British
ecologist
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
, coined the term
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
, the interactive system established between the
biocoenosis
A biocenosis (UK English, ''biocoenosis'', also biocenose, biocoenose, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, life assemblage), coined by Karl Möbius in 1877, describes the interacting organisms living together in a hab ...
(the group of living creatures), and their
biotope, the environment in which they live. Ecology thus became the science of ecosystems.
Tansley's concept of the ecosystem was adopted by the energetic and influential biology educator
Eugene Odum
Eugene Pleasants Odum (September 17, 1913 – August 10, 2002) was an American biologist at the University of Georgia known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology. He and his brother Howard T. Odum wrote the popular ecology textbook, ''Fun ...
. Along with his brother,
Howard T. Odum
Howard Thomas Odum (September 1, 1924 – September 11, 2002), usually cited as H. T. Odum, was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermod ...
, Eugene P. Odum wrote a textbook which (starting in 1953) educated more than one generation of biologists and ecologists in North America.
Ecological succession – Henry Chandler Cowles
![Indiana dunes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Indiana_dunes.jpg)
At the turn of the 20th century,
Henry Chandler Cowles
Henry Chandler Cowles (February 27, 1869 – September 12, 1939) was an American botanist and ecological pioneer (see History of ecology). A professor at the University of Chicago, he studied ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes of Nort ...
was one of the founders of the emerging study of "dynamic ecology", through his study of
ecological succession at the
Indiana Dunes
Indiana Dunes National Park is a United States national park located in northwestern Indiana managed by the National Park Service. It was authorized by Congress in 1966 as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and was redesignated as the nation ...
, sand dunes at the southern end of
Lake Michigan. Here Cowles found evidence of
ecological succession in the
vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characte ...
and the
soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt
Dirt is an unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty.
Common types of dirt include:
* Debri ...
with relation to age.
Cowles was very much aware of the roots of the concept and of his (primordial) predecessors.
Thus, he attributes the first use of the word to the French naturalist
Adolphe Dureau de la Malle
Adolphe Jules César Auguste Dureau de la Malle (3 March 1777 – 17 May 1857) was a Saint Dominican geographer, naturalist, historian and artist. He was the son of the scholar and translator Jean-Baptiste Dureau de la Malle.
Dureau de la Ma ...
, who had described the vegetation development after forest clear-felling, and the first comprehensive study of successional processes to the
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
botanist
Ragnar Hult
Ragnar Hult (4 March 1857 – 25 September 1899) was a Finnish botanist and plant geographer. He was a forerunner in developing a methodology for vegetation survey. He emphasized the physiognomy of vegetation and paid less attention to its ecology. ...
(1881).
Animal Ecology - Charles Elton
20th century English zoologist and ecologist,
Charles Elton, is commonly credited as “the father of animal ecology”. Elton influenced by Victor Shelford's ''Animal Communities in Temperate America'' began his research on animal ecology as an assistant to his colleague, Julian Huxley, on an ecological survey of the fauna in Spitsbergen in 1921. Elton's most famous studies were conducted during his time as a biological consultant to the Hudson Bay Company to help understand the fluctuations in the company's fur harvests. Elton studied the population fluctuations and dynamics of snowshoe hare, Canadian lynx, and other mammals of the region. Elton is also considered the first to coin the terms, food chain and food cycle in his famous book ''Animal Ecology''. Elton is also attributed with contributing to disciplines of:
invasion
An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...
ecology,
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, ...
ecology, and wildlife
disease ecology
Disease ecology is a sub-discipline of ecology concerned with the mechanisms, patterns, and effects of Host–pathogen interaction, host-pathogen interactions, particularly those of infectious diseases. For example, it examines how Parasitism, para ...
.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson - father of modern ecology
George “G” Evelyn Hutchinson was a 20th-century ecologist who is commonly recognized as the “Father of Modern Ecology”. Hutchinson is of English descent but spent most of professional career studying in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University. Throughout his career, over six decades, Hutchinson contributed to the sciences of limnology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, mathematical theory of population dynamics and many more. Hutchinson is also attributed as being the first to infuse science with theory within the discipline of ecology. Hutchinson was also one of the first credited with combining ecology with mathematics. Another major contribution of Hutchinson was his development of the current definition of an organism's “niche” – as he recognized the role of an organism within its community. Finally, along with his great impact within the discipline of ecology throughout his professional years, Hutchinson also left a lasting impact in ecology through his many students he inspired. Foremost among them were Robert H. MacArthur, who received his PhD under Hutchinson, and Raymond L. Lindemann, who finished his PhD dissertation during a fellowship under him. MacArthur became the leader of theoretical ecology and, with E. O. Wilson, developed island biography theory. Raymond Lindemann was instrumental in the development of modern ecosystem science.
20th century transition to modern ecology
“What is ecology?” was a question that was asked in almost every decade of the 20th century.
[Dritschilo, W. (2008). “Bringing statistical methods to community and evolutionary ecology.” In Harman, O.; Dietrich, M. R. (eds.) ''Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology''. New Haven, Yale University Press. pp. 356-371.] Unfortunately, the answer most often was that it was mainly a point of view to be used in other areas of biology and also “soft,” like sociology, for example, rather than “hard,” like physics. Although autecology (essentially physiological ecology) could progress through the typical scientific method of observation and hypothesis testing, synecology (the study of animal and plant communities) and genecology (evolutionary ecology), for which experimentation was as limited as it was for, say, geology, continued with much the same inductive gathering of data as did natural history studies. Most often, patterns, present and historical, were used to develop theories having explanatory power, but which had little actual data in support. Darwin's theory, as much as it is a foundation of modern biology, is a prime example.
G. E. Hutchinson, identified above as the “father of modern ecology,” through his influence raised the status of much of ecology to that of a rigorous science. By shepherding of Raymond Lindemann's work on the trophic-dynamic concept of ecosystems through the publication process after Lindemann's untimely death, Hutchinson set the groundwork for what became modern ecosystem science. With his two famous papers in the late1950s, “Closing remarks,” and “Homage to Santa Rosalia,” as they are now known, Hutchinson launched the theoretical ecology which Robert MacArthur championed.
Ecosystem science became rapidly and sensibly associated with the “Big Science”—and obviously “hard” science—of atomic testing and nuclear energy. It was brought in by Stanley Auerbach, who established the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to trace the routes of radionuclides through the environment, and by the Odum brothers, Howard and Eugene, much of whose early work was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission. Eugene Odum's textbook, ''Fundamentals of Ecology'', has become something of a bible today. When, in the 1960s, the International Biological Program (IBP) took on an ecosystem character, ecology, with its foundation in systems science, forever entered the realm of Big Science, with projects having large scopes and big budgets. Just two years after the publication of ''Silent Spring'' in 1962, ecosystem ecology was trumpeted as THE science of the environment in a series of articles in a special edition of ''BioScience''.
Theoretical ecology took a different path to established its legitimacy, especially at eastern universities and certain West Coast campuses. It was the path of Robert MacArthur, who used simple mathematics in his “Three Influential Papers, also published in the late 1950s, on population and community ecology. Although the simple equations of theoretical ecology at the time, were unsupported by data, they still were still deemed to be “heuristic.” They were resisted by a number of traditional ecologists, however, whose complaints of “intellectual censorship” of studies that did not fit into the hypothetico-deductive structure of the new ecology might be seen as evidence of the stature to which the Hutchinson-MacArthur approach had risen by the 1970s.
MacArthur's untimely death in 1972 was also about the time that postmodernism and the “Science Wars” came to ecology. The names of Kuhn, Wittgenstein, Popper, Lakatos, and Feyerbrend began to enter into arguments in the ecological literature. Darwin's theory of adaptation through natural selection was accused of being tautological. Questions were raised over whether ecosystems were cybernetic and whether ecosystem theory was of any use in application to environmental management. Most vituperative of all was the debate that arose over MacArthur-style ecology.
Matters came to a head after a symposium organized by acolytes of MacArthur in homage to him and a second symposium organized by what was disparagingly called the “Tallahassee Mafia” at Wakulla Springs in Florida. The homage volume, published in 1975, had an extensive chapter written by Jared Diamond, who at the time taught kidney physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, that presented a series of “assembly rules” to explain the patterns of bird species found on island archipelagos, such as Darwin's famous finches on the Galapagos Islands. The Wakulla conference was organized by a group of dissenters led by Daniel Simberloff and Donald Strong, Jr., who were described by David Quammen in his book as arguing that those patterns “might be nothing more than the faces we see in the moon, in clouds, in Rorschach inkblots.” Their point was that Diamond's work (and that of others) did not fall within the criterion of falsifiability, laid down for science by the philosopher, Karl Popper. A reviewer of the exchanges between the two camps in an issue of ''Synthese'' found “images of hand-to-hand combat or a bar-room brawl” coming to mind. The Florida State group suggested a method that they developed, that of “null” models, to be used much in the way that all scientists use null hypotheses to verify that their results might not have been obtained merely by chance. It was most sharply rebuked by Diamond and Michel Gilpin in the symposium volume and Jonathan Roughgarden in the American Naturalist.
There was a parallel controversy adding heat to above that became known in conservation circles as SLOSS (Single Large or Several Small reserves). Diamond had also proposed that, according to the theory of island geography developed by MacArthur and E. O. Wilson, nature preserves should be designed to be as large as possible and maintained as a unified entity. Even cutting a road through a natural area, in Diamond's interpretation of MacArthur and Wilson's theory, would lead to the loss of species, due to the smaller areas of the remaining pieces. Simberloff, meanwhile, who had defaunated mangrove islands off the Florida coast in his award-winning experimental study under E. O. Wilson and tested the fit of the species-area curve of island biogeography theory to the fauna that returned, had gathered data that showed quite the opposite: that many smaller fragments together sometimes held more species that the original whole. It led to considerable vituperation on the pages of ''Science''.
In the end, in a somewhat Kuhnian fashion, the arguments probably will finally be settled (or not) by the passing of the participants. However, ecology continues apace as a rigorous, even experimental science. Null models, admittedly difficult to perfect, are in use, and, although a leading conservation scientist recently lauded island biogeography theory as “one of the most elegant and important theories in contemporary ecology, towering above thousands of lesser ideas and concept,” he nevertheless finds that “the species-area curve is a blunt tool in many contexts” and “now seems simplistic to the point of being cartoonish.”
Timeline of ecologists
Ecological Influence on the Social Sciences and Humanities
Human ecology
Human ecology
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecolog ...
began in the 1920s, through the study of changes in
vegetation succession in the city of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. It became a distinct field of study in the 1970s. This marked the first recognition that humans, who had colonized all of the Earth's
continent
A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas t ...
s, were a major
ecological factor. Humans greatly modify the environment through the development of the habitat (in particular
urban planning
Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...
), by intensive exploitation activities such as
logging and
fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...
, and as side effects of
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...
,
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...
, and
industry
Industry may refer to:
Economics
* Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity
* Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery
* The wider industrial sector ...
. Besides ecology and biology, this discipline involved many other natural and social sciences, such as
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
and
ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
,
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
,
demography
Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...
,
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
and
urban planning
Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...
,
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
, and many more. The development of human ecology led to the increasing role of ecological science in the design and management of cities.
In recent years human ecology has been a topic that has interested organizational researchers. Hannan and Freeman (''Population Ecology of Organizations (1977)'', American Journal of Sociology) argue that organizations do not only adapt to an environment. Instead it is also the environment that selects or rejects populations of
organizations
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose.
The word is derived from ...
. In any given environment (in
equilibrium) there will only be one form of organization (
isomorphism
In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word i ...
).
Organizational ecology has been a prominent theory in accounting for diversities of organizations and their changing composition over time.
James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis
The
Gaia theory
The Gaia hypothesis (), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps ...
, proposed by
James Lovelock, in his work ''Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth'', advanced the view that the Earth should be regarded as a single living macro-organism. In particular, it argued that the ensemble of living organisms has jointly evolved an ability to control the global environment — by influencing major physical parameters as the composition of the atmosphere, the evaporation rate, the chemistry of soils and oceans — so as to maintain conditions favorable to life. The idea has been supported by
Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Ma ...
who extended her
endosymbiotic theory which suggests that cell organelles originated from free living organisms to the idea that individual organisms of many species could be considered as symbionts within a larger metaphorical "super-organism".
This vision was largely a sign of the times, in particular the growing perception after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
that human activities such as
nuclear energy
Nuclear energy may refer to:
*Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity
* Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom
*Nuclear potential energy
...
,
industrialization,
pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...
, and
overexploitation of
natural resource
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...
s, fueled by
exponential population growth, were threatening to create catastrophes on a planetary scale, and has influenced many in the environmental movement since then.
History and relationship between ecology and conservation and environmental movements
Environmentalists
An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...
and other
conservationists
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the f ...
have used ecology and other sciences (e.g.,
climatology
Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...
) to support their
advocacy positions. Environmentalist views are often controversial for political or economic reasons. As a result, some scientific work in ecology directly influences policy and political debate; these in turn often direct ecological research.
The history of ecology, however, should not be conflated with that of environmental thought. Ecology as a modern science traces only from Darwin's publication of
Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
and Haeckel's subsequent naming of the science needed to study Darwin's theory. Awareness of humankind's effect on its environment has been traced to
Gilbert White
Gilbert White FRS (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a " parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his ''Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne''.
Life
White was born on ...
in 18th-century Selborne, England.
Awareness of nature and its interactions can be traced back even farther in time.
Ecology before Darwin, however, is analogous to medicine prior to Pasteur's discovery of the infectious nature of disease. The history is there, but it is only partly relevant.
Neither
Darwin nor
Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
, it is true, did self-avowed ecological studies. The same can be said for researchers in a number of fields who contributed to ecological thought well into the 1940s without avowedly being ecologists.
Raymond Pearl's population studies are a case in point. Ecology in subject matter and techniques grew out of studies by botanists and plant geographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that paradoxically lacked Darwinian evolutionary perspectives. Until Mendel's studies with peas were rediscovered and melded into the Modern Synthesis, Darwinism suffered in credibility. Many early plant ecologists had a
Lamarckian
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
view of inheritance, as did Darwin, at times. Ecological studies of animals and plants, preferably live and in the field, continued apace however.
Conservation and environmental movements - 20th Century
When the
Ecological Society of America
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a professional organization of ecological scientists. Based in the United States and founded in 1915, ESA publications include peer-reviewed journals, newsletters, fact sheets, and teaching resources. I ...
(ESA) was chartered in 1915, it already had a conservation perspective.
[
] Victor E. Shelford, a leader in the society's formation, had as one of its goals the preservation of the natural areas that were then the objects of study by ecologists, but were in danger of being degraded by human incursion. Human ecology had also been a visible part of the ESA at its inception, as evident by publications such as: "The Control of Pneumonia and Influenza by the Weather," "An Overlook of the Relations of Dust to Humanity," "The Ecological Relations of the Polar Eskimo," and "City Street Dust and Infectious Diseases," in early pages of Ecology and Ecological Monographs. The ESA's second president, Ellsworth Huntington, was a human ecologist. Stephen Forbes, another early president, called for "humanizing" ecology in 1921, since man was clearly the dominant species on the Earth.
This auspicious start actually was the first of a series of fitful progressions and reversions by the new science with regard to conservation. Human ecology necessarily focused on man-influenced environments and their practical problems. Ecologists in general, however, were trying to establish ecology as a basic science, one with enough prestige to make inroads into Ivy League faculties. Disturbed environments, it was thought, would not reveal nature's secrets.
Interest in the environment created by the American Dust Bowl produced a flurry of calls in 1935 for ecology to take a look at practical issues. Pioneering ecologist C. C. Adams wanted to return human ecology to the science. Frederic E. Clements, the dominant plant ecologist of the day, reviewed land use issues leading to the Dust Bowl in terms of his ideas on plant succession and climax.
Paul Sears
Paul Bigelow Sears (December 17, 1891 – April 30, 1990) was an American ecologist and writer. He was born in Bucyrus, Ohio. Sears attended Ohio Wesleyan University (B.Sc. in Zoology, 1913; B.A. in Economics, 1914), the University of Nebraska at ...
reached a wide audience with his book, ''Deserts on the March''. World War II, perhaps, caused the issue to be put aside.
The tension between pure ecology, seeking to understand and explain, and applied ecology, seeking to describe and repair, came to a head after World War II. Adams again tried to push the ESA into applied areas by having it raise an endowment to promote ecology. He predicted that "a great expansion of ecology" was imminent "because of its integrating tendency." Ecologists, however, were sensitive to the perception that ecology was still not considered a rigorous, quantitative science. Those who pushed for applied studies and active involvement in conservation were once more discreetly rebuffed. Human ecology became subsumed by sociology. It was sociologist
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a w ...
who brought the ideas of
George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the ...
to modern attention in the 1955 conference, "Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth." That prestigious conclave was dominated by social scientists. At it, ecology was accused of "lacking experimental methods" and neglecting "man as an ecological agent." One participant dismissed ecology as "archaic and sterile." Within the ESA, a frustrated Shelford started the Ecologists’ Union when his Committee on Preservation of Natural Conditions ceased to function due to the political infighting over the ESA stance on conservation.
In 1950, the fledgling organization was renamed and incorporated as the Nature Conservancy, a name borrowed from the British government agency for the same purpose.
Two events, however, brought ecology's course back to applied problems. One was the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
. It had become the Nuclear Energy Commission after the war. It is now the Department of Energy (DOE). Its ample budget included studies of the impacts of nuclear weapon use and production. That brought ecology to the issue, and it made a "Big Science" of it.
Ecosystem science, both basic and applied, began to compete with
theoretical ecology
Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models im ...
(then called evolutionary ecology and also mathematical ecology).
Eugene Odum
Eugene Pleasants Odum (September 17, 1913 – August 10, 2002) was an American biologist at the University of Georgia known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology. He and his brother Howard T. Odum wrote the popular ecology textbook, ''Fun ...
, who published a very popular ecology textbook in 1953, became the champion of the ecosystem. In his publications, Odum called for ecology to have an ecosystem and applied focus.
The second event was the publication of
Silent Spring
''Silent Spring'' is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading d ...
. Rachel Carson's book brought ecology as a word and concept to the public. Her influence was instant. A study committee, prodded by the publication of the book, reported to the ESA that their science was not ready to take on the responsibility being given to it.
Carson's concept of ecology was very much that of Gene Odum. As a result, ecosystem science dominated the International Biological Program of the 1960s and 1970s, bringing both money and prestige to ecology. Silent Spring was also the impetus for the environmental protection programs that were started in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and passed into law just before the first Earth Day. Ecologists’ input was welcomed. Former ESA President Stanley Cain, for example, was appointed an Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior.
The environmental assessment requirement of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), "legitimized ecology," in the words of one environmental lawyer. An ESA President called it "an ecological ‘Magna Carta.’" A prominent Canadian ecologist declared it a "boondoggle." NEPA and similar state statutes, if nothing else, provided much employment for ecologists. Therein was the issue. Neither ecology nor ecologists were ready for the task. Not enough ecologists were available to work on impact assessment, outside of the DOE laboratories, leading to the rise of "instant ecologists," having dubious credentials and capabilities. Calls began to arise for the professionalization of ecology. Maverick scientist
Frank Egler
Frank Edwin Egler (April 26, 1911 – December 26, 1996) was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of vegetation science. In addition to his groundbreaking research, he assisted Rachel Carson in preparing ''Silent Spring''.
Early li ...
, in particular, devoted his sharp prose to the task. Again, a schism arose between basic and applied scientists in the ESA, this time exacerbated by the question of environmental advocacy. The controversy, whose history has yet to receive adequate treatment, lasted through the 1970s and 1980s, ending with a voluntary certification process by the ESA, along with lobbying arm in Washington.
Post-Earth Day, besides questions of advocacy and professionalism, ecology also had to deal with questions having to do with its basic principles. Many of the theoretical principles and methods of both ecosystem science and evolutionary ecology began to show little value in environmental analysis and assessment. Ecologist, in general, started to question the methods and logic of their science under the pressure of its new notoriety.
Meanwhile, personnel with government agencies and environmental advocacy groups were accused of religiously applying dubious principles in their conservation work. Management of endangered Spotted Owl populations brought the controversy to a head.
Conservation for ecologists created travails paralleling those nuclear power gave former Manhattan Project scientists. In each case, science had to be reconciled with individual politics, religious beliefs, and worldviews, a difficult process. Some ecologists managed to keep their science separate from their advocacy; others unrepentantly became avowed environmentalists.
Roosevelt & American conservation
Theodore Roosevelt was interested in nature from a young age. He carried his passion for nature into his political policies. Roosevelt felt it was necessary to preserve the resources of the nation and its environment. In 1902 he created the federal reclamation service, which reclaimed land for agriculture. He also created the Bureau of Forestry. This organization, headed by Gifford Pinchot, was formed to manage and maintain the nations timberlands. Roosevelt signed the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities in 1906. This act allowed for him to "declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic and scientific interest that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be
national monuments." Under this act he created up to 18 national monuments. During his presidency, Roosevelt established 51 Federal
Bird Reservations, 4 National
Game Preserves, 150
National Forests, and 5
National Parks
A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individua ...
. Overall he protected over 200 million acres of land.
Ecology and global policy
Ecology became a central part of the World's politics as early as 1971,
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
launched a research program called ''
Man and Biosphere'', with the objective of increasing knowledge about the mutual relationship between humans and nature. A few years later it defined the concept of
Biosphere Reserve
A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...
.
In 1972, the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
held the first international
Conference on the Human Environment
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 5–16 in 1972.
When the United Nations General Assembly decided to convene the 1972 Stockholm Conference, taking up the offer of the Government of ...
in
Stockholm, prepared by
Rene Dubos and other experts. This conference was the origin of the phrase "
Think Globally, Act Locally
The phrase "Think globally, act locally" or "Think global, act local" has been used in various contexts, including planning, environment, education, mathematics, business and the church. For many environmental activists, the phrase has been chan ...
". The next major events in ecology were the development of the concept of biosphere and the appearance of terms "biological diversity"—or now more commonly
biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...
—in the 1980s. These terms were developed during the
Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992.
Earth Su ...
in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
in 1992, where the concept of the biosphere was recognized by the major international organizations, and risks associated with reductions in biodiversity were publicly acknowledged.
Then, in 1997, the dangers the biosphere was facing were recognized all over the world at the conference leading to the
Kyoto Protocol. In particular, this conference highlighted the increasing dangers of the
greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet's host star goes through the planet's atmosphere and heats the planet's surface, but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning directly ...
– related to the increasing concentration of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to
global changes in climate. In
Kyoto
Kyoto (; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin, Keihanshin metropolitan area along wi ...
, most of the world's nations recognized the importance of looking at ecology from a global point of view, on a worldwide scale, and to take into account the impact of humans on the Earth's environment.
See also
*
Humboldtian science
Humboldtian science refers to a movement in science in the 19th century closely connected to the work and writings of German scientist, naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. It maintained a certain ethics of precision and observation, ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
* Egerton, F. N. (2001-2016). A History of the Ecological Sciences. ''Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America'', 57 parts
link
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*von Humboldt, A. (1805). ''Essai sur la géographie des plantes, accompagné d’un tableau physique des régions équinoxiales, fondé sur les mésures exécutées, depuis le dixième degré de latitude boréale jusqu’au dixième degré de latitude australe, pendant les années 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, et 1903'' par A. De Humboldt et A. Bonpland. Paris: Chez Levrault, Schoelle et Cie. Sherborn Fund Facsimile No.1.
*von Humboldt, A. (1805). ''Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland. Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent. 5e partie. "Essai sur la géographie des plantes"''. Paris. Facs intégral de l’édition Paris 1905-1834 par Amsterdam: Theatrum orbis terrarum Ltd., 1973.
*von Humboldt, A. (1807). ''Essai sur la géographie des plantes''. Facs.ed. London 1959. His essay on "On Isothermal Lines" was published serially in English translation in the ''Edinburgh Philosophical Journal'' from 1820 to 1822.
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Ecology
Ecology
Ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...