The ecosystem concept-the idea that flora and fauna interact with
the environment to form an ecological complex-has long been central
to the public perception of ecology and to increasing awareness of
environmental degradation. In this book an eminent ecologist
explains the ecosystem concept, tracing its evolution, describing
how numerous American and European researchers contributed to its
evolution, and discussing the explosive growth of ecosystem
studies. Golley surveys the development of the ecosystem concept in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses the
coining of the term ecosystem by the English ecologist Sir Arthur
George Tansley in 1935. He then reviews how the American ecologist
Raymond Lindeman applied the concept to a small lake in Minnesota
and showed how the biota and the environment of the lake interacted
through the exchange of energy. Golley describes how a seminal
textbook on ecology written by Eugene P. Odum helped to popularize
the ecosystem concept and how numerous other scientists
investigated its principles and published their results. He relates
how ecosystem studies dominated ecology in the 1960s and became a
key element of the International Biological Program biome studies
in the United States-a program aimed at "the betterment of mankind"
specifically through conservation, human genetics, and improvements
in the use of natural resources; how a study of watershed
ecosystems in Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire, blazed new paths in
ecosystem research by defining the limits of the system in a
natural way; and how current research uses the ecosystem concept.
Throughout Golley shows how the ecosystem concept has been shaped
internationally by both developments in other disciplines and by
personalities and politics.
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