Ecosystem Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Ecosystem Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Coined in 1935, the term ecosystem did not appear in titles of scientific papers until the1940s, and wasnot listed in the indexing system of Biological Abstracts until 1957. Use of the term in the scientific literature did not attain wide prominence until the 1970s. The term ecosystem originated with English ecologist Arthur Tansley (1871-1955) in the paper: “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms,”publishedin Ecology in 1935. Tansley’s basic notion was that of a system that combined living organisms, the biome, with the physical environment. What was novel about the term to ecologists wasthe incorporation of the physical environment as part of the unit of study. Ecology had so far been confined to departments of biology in the academy, and was focused on community, population, and organism studies rather than the relationship between organisms and the physical environment. Thus,the key concept conveyed by the word ecosystem is the inclusion of the physical-chemical environment as a fundamental part of the ecological unit.

Inclusion of the physical environment by the term ecosystem is probably the primary aspectof the concept that nearly all ecologists agreed on, and it is still this basic concept that lies at the root of the term’s definition (at least in its scientific usage). Part ofwhatmakesany discussion of the ecosystem concept problematic is that it is highly abstract. For example, ecosystem has often been used interchangeably with the allied concept of community (ideally conceived as only including the biological organisms in a particular location and their relationship with one another). As Golley states, for much of its history ecosystem studies have been “an exciting but ill-defined and poorly integrated body of science.” The ecosystem concept as proposed by Tansley has been described as the machine model applied to nature. Tansley’s focus was on developing the study of ecosystems along the traditional reductionist natural science model, with mathematical and experimental rigor. Tansley wanted the concept to have legitimacy as a fundamental part of naturalscience. However, the term soon became entangled with the holism or super-organism conception of biological communities in American and German ecological thought in the early 20th century.

Embellishment of the Concept

Ecologists such as Frederick Clements (1874-1945) andJohn Phillips conceived of ecological communities as super-organisms following a set path of development and maturation. Clements’s notion of a predetermined development of ecological systems (succession) that resulted in an endpoint called a climax was compared to the growth and maturation of an organism. Although amended by ecologist Robert Whittakerin 1953, the original Clemensian notion of unspoiled nature as balanced and perfect has remained ascendant in the popular consciousness. This aspect of the concept, which was to play prominently in the development of environmentalism, suggested the notion of ecosystems striving to reach an inherent perfection that was disturbed, or thrown off course, by humans. It was a fusion of a teleological notion applied to nature with that of a supposedly scientific concept. This view had much to do with the background assumptions that led to many of the world’s environmental laws and particularly protectionist laws that sought to put large areas of the planet’s surface off limits to human influence.

Tansley was opposed to this embellishment of his original concept, viewing such super-organism or holism conceptions as philosophical and even theological speculation, not science. Tansley wanted the ecosystemconceptto be taken seriously as a legitimate science and the study of ecosystems to be approached with standard scientific experiment and analysis, not conjectures about “emergent properties.” The super-organism conception of ecosystems came out of larger cultural currents in the late19th century. For example, concern with the disappearance of the rural, organic, peasant community because of the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Europe, as expressed by writers within the German Romantic tradition, influenced ecological thinking in the early 20th century. In her book Ecology in the Twentieth Century, Anna Bramwell traces this influence on ecological thought, including an analysis of how ecological holism influenced National Socialism in Germany in the1930s where concern with the organic ties between the German people and their homeland, as expressed by the motto “bloodand soil,” fueled an emphasis on ecological research within the Third Reich.

This fusion of the holism, or super-organism concept of nature with ecosystem has continued to the present day, particularly among environmentalists. In this sense, ecosystem has taken the place of Mother Nature as a moniker for the totality of nature–nature as it’s supposed to be; taking on precisely the moral and theological overtones that Tansley objected to. This aspect of the ecosystem concepthas resulted in perhaps its most important sociological influence with respect to its dominance in popular culture, outside its original scientific venue. Since the term’s inception it has carried a double valance, one being a more scientific or systems notion of the term, the other more philosophical and normative. Yet both senses of the concept often become conflated, even among ecologists.

The legacy of the ecosystem concept as envisioned by Tansley was carried forward and implemented in scientific studies by pioneering ecosystem ecologists such as Raymond Lindeman (1915-42; considered to have conducted the first ecosystem study at Cedar Bog Lake in Minnesota), Hebert Borman, Gene Likens, and Eugene and Howard Odum. Ecosystem studies became highly influenced by computer modeling, thermodynamics, and cybernetics. The dominant approach was to model the flow of energy and nutrients through a system that had semi-definite boundaries such as a lake or watershed. The diversity of organisms in these systems was simplified by the representation of trophic levels, where energy and material flow was studied with input-output models.

One of the early sources of funding for such stud ies was the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In the 1950s the AEC commissioned research on the fate of radio nucleotides in the environment as a result of atomic bomb testing and production. These studies and the funding provided a welcome boon to the fledgling field of ecosystem ecology. Early and ongoing ecosystem studies at AEC sites like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, have producedan impressive body of work in ecosystem ecology. In the 1960s, the International Biological Program (IBP) funded many large-scale ecosystem studies, ushering in the heyday of computer modeling and cybernetic theory, an endeavor that did not live up to its initial expectations.

Perhaps the most well known ecosystem ecologists of the 1960s and 1970s were the Odum brothers. Howard Odum was known for his energy models of ecosystems, including his classic study of Silver Springs in Florida, and Eugene Odum, who was probably the greatest single influence on ecologists in the second half of the 20^th century, author of Fundamentals of Ecology, which became the standard college textbook on ecological science from the1950s through the 1970s. Howard Odum focused almost exclusively on the machine metaphor of the ecosystem, looking at energy flow and trophic level relationships of whole systems and incorporating mathematical description and computer modeling of ecosystems extensively. Eugene Odum,on the other hand, while still clearly within the natural science model of the ecosystem concept promoted by Tansley, also incorporated Clemensian conceptions that stressed determinate succession and climax states.

The ecosystem concept was also important to natural resource scientists who saw a way to make more efficient use of natural systems for the management of forestry, fisheries, and wildlife. Environmental scientists also saw utility in the concept, such as the use of wetlands for wastewater treatment. However, in a good example of institutional lag, it was the 1990s before many natural resource management agencies explicitly took on the task of managing natural resources within an ecosystem paradigm. In the early 1990s, the term ecosystem management was coined in an attempt to market this new emphasis in federal resource management agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service.

Controversial Concept

The ecosystem concept has never been without controversy; not only was it poorly defined, it often took on more of the character of doctrine than science. Golley relates that ecosystem terms were often presented as pronouncements of authority, rather than scientific hypotheses to be tested, and the culture of ecosystem science tolerated little dissent. Those outside the discipline were not impressed. As Golley states, “Ecologists were not questioning the cultural paradigms, they were working within them.”By the1980s ,as the term ecosystem was becoming a household word in the popular culture through the spread of the environmental movement, professional ecologists were beginning to have serious doubts about the concept, and some were starting to question its relevance. A reformulation of the concept was in the making. Although controversy and debate has surrounded the concept since its inception, the reevaluation that began in the 1980s eventually took on the moniker of the new ecology.

One of the changes advocated in the reformulation of the concept was an emphasis on process and scale. Works such as A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems (1986) argued that an ecosystem is not a place or set of components somewhere between the size of a community and the biosphere, but rather denoted a set of relationships or processes that take place at multiple spatial and temporal scales, from the gut of a termite to the biosphere itself. As described by ecologists Timothy Allen and Thomas Hoekstra, ecosystems are “intangible” and consist of “pathways and processes and fluxes” that are “transformations of matter and energy” and more easily conceived as “temporally rather than spatially ordered.” Rather than something existing in nature, ecosystem is a more or less useful model of ecological phenomena that reveals some things and hides others.

Other changes that were taking place as part of the new ecoloy included the rise of new theories of community assembly, and rising evidence that many principles of ecosystem science lacked scientific rigor and had little empirical grounding. For example, the widely cited stability-complexity hypothesis held that complex ecosystems were more stable than simple ecosystems, even though this assertion had little empirical support. An increasing number of studies demonstrated that simple ecosystems could be very stable and complex ones highly unstable. Along with developments in systems and information theory, chaos theory ,and the highly nonlinear behavior of ecosystems, led to the conclusion by many ecosystem scientists that there could be no laws in ecology. Rather than paladins of unspoiled nature and balanced perfection, ecosystem behavior was more often nonlinear, unstable, and in constant flux , with disturbance and nonequilibrium states more common than not . Ecosystems were increasingly seen as products not of nature’s design, but chance, largely dependent on the particular history of a site.

The Clemensian notion of ecological communities that had become a part of ecosystem thinking from the term’s inception, along with associated ideas about equilibrium, holism, and determinate community composition, was being replaced in the 1980s and 1990s with the idea that chance and local context directed community structure. In the early 20^th century, Henry Gleason (1882-1975), a contemporary of Frederick Clements, had proposed a conception of the ecological community as a random assemblage of organisms that were found together in the same place purely by chance, due to having similar requirements for climateor soil. Gleason’s basic view of community structure has now largely replaced Clements’s. This Gleasonian view has been formalized in a new ecological theory known as neutral theory. Credited largely to ecologist Stephen Hubbell, neutral theory in essence states that what organisms will be found in a particular place is simply a function of the abundance of their propagules. From the Clemensian superorganism ecosystem, science has moved closer to the view that ecosystem denotes processes that are in flux, random assemblages of components, and future development not dependent on general ecological laws, but rather the largely unpredictable idiosyncrasies of a particular site.

A Paradigm Shift in Ecology

Daniel Botkin popularized what has been called the paradigm shift in ecology in the book Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. Ecosystems are indeterminate, unpredictable, nonlinear, and constantly in flux; there are no laws in ecology because ecosystem behavior is highly dependent on context, a condition that some have termed all ecology is local. Even long-term studies of a particular place have shown that generalizations are risky and that ecosystems follow indeterminate paths of change that cannot be predicted, even with many yearsof monitoring data. A response to the recognition of the idiosyncratic nature of ecological systems is the promotion of adaptive management among natural resource scientists. Adaptive management recognizes the failure of trying to implement broad stratagems of ecosystem use from general theory, and instead advocates a “learn as you go” philosophy, where management endeavors are carefully monitored, as well as the response of the ecological unit, so that learning can take place over time about the particularities of a given locality.

Another change occurring in parallel with the developing new paradigm in ecology was increasing interest by so cial scientists, particularly natural resource sociologists, in incorporating humans and the works of human culture as legitimate parts of ecosystems. Some have used the term human ecosystem, or socio-biological system, to indicate this new focus. This move to reconceptualize ecosystems as including humans and their culture is being further reinforced by environmental historians who are increasingly producing findings of the tremendous impact pre-modern humans have had on ecosystems that were once considered pristine, such as the Amazon rainforest and pre-Columbian North America.

In tandem with the new ecology, which is showing that ecosystems are not supposed to be any particular way, the latest research in environmental history is revealing an ancient dynamic interrelationship between humans and the landscapes and seascapes they inhabit. This relationship has resulted in ecosystems that are not in, or out of, some preordained configuration or balance, but simply reflect the arbitrary history of events that occurred in a particular place on the planet, whether humancaused or not.

These new developments in ecosystem science, natural resource sociology, and environmental history are revolutionizing how we understand our place in nature. This new ecosystem paradigm has implications for social policy regarding the management of natural resources and the environment. As presented in such venues as the book Defending Illusions: Federal Protection of Ecosystems, by Allen Fitzsimmons (1999), and at environmental law conferences, such as one held at Duke University in 1996, the conclusion is that many environmental laws that have the implicit goal of protecting some perfection in nature no longer conform to ecological science and the epistemology of the ecological or human sciences. Ecosystems are socially constructed. The ecosystem concept has its uses and insights; what it denotes and connotes will change through time, not only because of new discoveries in ecological science, but more importantly because of the different ways humans of the future will valueand perceive nature. What is relevant to humans now may not be in the future; the stories we tell about nature, and ecosystems, will change.

Bibliography:

Timothy Allen and Thomas Hoekstra, Toward a Unified Ecology ( Columbia University Press, 1992);
Elizabeth Bird, “The Social Construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental Problems,” Environmental Review (Winter, 1987);
Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century (YaleUniversity Press, 1989);
A. Gleason, “The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association,” Torrey Botanical Club (v.53, 1926);
F. B. Golley, A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More Than the Sum of the Parts (Yale University Press, 1993);
T.Greiderand L. Garkovich, “Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment,” Rural Sociology (v.59, 1994);
Lancett Gunderson and C.S. Holling, eds., Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Island Press 2002);
Stephen Hubbell, The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (Princeton University Press, 2001);
A. Kapustka and W.G. Landis, “Ecology: The ScienceVersus the Myth,” Human Ecology and Risk Assessment (v.4, 1998);
Roger Lincoln, Geoff Boxshall, and Paul Clark, A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (Cambridge University Press, 1998);
Naveh, “The Total Human Ecosystem: Integrating Ecology and Eonomics,” BioScience (v.50/4, 2000);
Howard Odum,”Trophic Structure and Productivity of Silver Springs, Florida,” Ecological Monographs (v.27/1, 1957);
Robert O’Neill, “IsItTime to Bury the Ecosystem Concept? (With Full Military Honors, of Course!)” Ecology (v.82/12, 2001);
Robert O’Neill, et al., A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems (Princeton University Press, 1986);
R .H. Peters, A Critiquefor Ecology (Cambridge University Press, 1991);
S. Shrader-Frechette and E.D. McCoy, “Natural Landscapes, Natural Communities, and Natural Ecosystems,” Forest and Conservation History (July 1995);
Woodley, et al., eds., Ecological Integrity and the Management of Ecosystems (St. Lucie Press, 1993);
Wu and O.L. Loucks, “From Balance of Nature to Hierarchical Patch Dynamics: A Paradigm Shift in Ecology,” The Quarterly Review of Biology (v.70/4, 1995).