Total human ecosystem (THE) is an ecocentric concept initially proposed by

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

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 proposed a holistic, ecocentric concept of the total human ecosystem in order to study

anthropocene ''Anthropocene'' is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which human impact on the environment, humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to ...

ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. In Naveh's words, the total human ecosystem is "the highest 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 The noosphere (alternate spelling noösphere) is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new s ...

) and natural systems (the

geophysical Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...

eco-space of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

biosphere The biosphere (), also called the ecosphere (), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth. The biosphere (which is technically a spherical shell) is virtually a closed system with regard to mat ...

). Zev Naveh (1919-2011), the major contributor to this concept, was a professor in landscape ecology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology,

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

. Until 1965 he worked as a range and pasture specialist in Israel and Tanzania. His research at the Technion was devoted to human impacts on Mediterranean landscapes,

fire ecology Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with the effects of fire on natural ecosystems. Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vit ...

and dynamic conservation management, and the introduction of drought resistant plants for multi-beneficial landscape restoration and beautification. Almo Farina, who also developed the concept from 2000 onwards, is also a professor of ecology at the Urbino University, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

Concepts and epistemology

The interaction and co-evolution of the human and natural

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and en ...

interactions are the driving forces for the current Earth system. The total human ecosystem meta-conceptional approach aims to integrate the bio-and geo-centric approaches, derived from the

natural sciences Natural science or empirical 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 ...

, and the approaches derived from the

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

and the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

in order to prevent further

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

and drive natural and human systems towards a sustainable future. A natural ecosystem within this concept is solar energy powered,

self-organizing Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...

and self-creating. The human ecosystem is

fossil energy A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geolog ...

powered by high input and throughput, and can be divided into two sub-ecosystems: urban-industrial and agro-industrial. The ecosystem is realised in space as an

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 lan ...

and the system of ecotopes is the

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

: natural, semi-natural, urban-industrial are the tangible, three-dimensional physical systems. These form the total human ecosystem. The total human ecosystem also consists of the domain of information, perceptions (in landscape ecology this is the ecofield concept),Farina, A., and A. Belgrano, 2004. The eco-field: a new paradigm for landscape ecology. Ecol. Res. 19, 107–110. knowledge, feeling and consciousness, enabling human (but also biological) self-awareness. A special case of landscapes inside of the total human ecosystem are the cultural landscapes in which the relationships between human activity (as an effective, ecology-based, land or sea stewardship) have created ecological, socioeconomic and cultural patterns and

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 handle ...

mechanisms that preserve biological and cultural diversity and maintain or even improve the ecosystem's resilience and resistance.

References

* Farina, A., 2006. Principles and Methods in Landscape Ecology: Towards a Science of the Landscape, Springer, Dordrecht, 412 p. * Marín Vanegas, D.F. (2024).
La visión sistémica del ambiente construido
una metodología transdisciplinar para la ecología humana y el aprendizaje interdisciplinar del diseño de intervención del hábitat''. Bogotá, Colombia.: Aula de Humanidades. {{Reflist Ecology Ecosystems

History of the concept

Concepts and epistemology

See also

References