Von Okosystemen und der Rolle des Menschen in ihnen sprechen heute lournalisten, Politiker und viele andere Nicht-Biologen, denen noch vor wenigen lahren selbst die Okologie - die Wissenschaft von den Umweltbe- ziehungen der Lebewesen - kaum ein Begriff war. Wem die Bedrohung unserer menschlichen Umwelt und ihr Einbezogensein in natiirliche Regulations- systeme bewuBt wurde, dem konnen solche Systeme und ihre Erforschung nicht mehr gleichgiiltig sein. Ihm leuchtet auch ein, daB ohne Kenntnis "gesunder", im Gleichgewicht befindlicher Okosysteme keine Heilung "kranker", aus dem Gleichgewicht geratener, moglich ist. Aber was ist ein Okosystem? Was bedeutet sein Gleichgewicht? Wie funktioniert es und was leistet es? Solche Fragen beantwortet heute kaum ein Lexikon und nur selten ein Lehrbuch, und wenn, dann an untergeordneter Stelle. Es ist daher sehr zu begrtiBen, daB sich der Springer-Verlag bereitfand, einen Sammelband herauszugeben, der ganz der Okosystemforschung gewidmet ist. In diesem Bande wird zunachst versucht, einen Uberblick tiber die Begriffe und die verschiedenen Richtungen in der Okosystemforschung sowie tiber ihren derzeitigen Stand zu geben. Als Beispiele werden sodann einzelne Fragen- komplexe von verschiedenen Autoren eingehend dargestellt. Die Auswahl dieser Beispie1e ergab sich aus dem Programm einer Tagung der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, die im Juti 1971 in Innsbruck stattfand. "Okosystem- forschung" war hier zum ersten Mal Rahmenthema fiir einen ganzen Vortrags- tag. Aus dem anschlieBenden zweitagigen Symposium tiber "Stoffproduktion", das von der Gesellschaft fUr Angewandte Botanik veranstaltet wurde, stammen einige weitere Beitrage, die auf die Primarproduktion, d. h. auf den grund- legenden Energiegewinn der Okosysteme, ausgerichtet sind.

This book was written 30 years ago as the first synthesis of European and Anglo-American methods in vegetation ecology. Upon its publication in 1974, it rapidly became the standard text for the study of vegetation in over 60 US colleges and universities. An unsolicited review appeared in Ecology 56: 1233 (1975) with the title "Getting It All Together in Plant Synecology." The book also received wide international acceptance. "In his foreword to the 1974 edition, Raymond Fosberg referred to this book as 'by far the best work of its scope that I know.' It is still agreed that there is no comparable work. It was used as the only textbook for the first twenty offerings of one graduate course. For the past dozen years it's been moved to the recommended list because it has been out of print. There have been several vegetation science textbooks published since 1974, but their foci have been on ordination and multivariate data analysis instead of on sampling methods. No other text has covered the subject of vegetation sampling design in such depth, breadth, and impartiality as this book, Aims and Methods of Vegetation Ecology. Most of this material remains as current and topical today as it was a quarter of a century ago, because the progress that has been made in vegetation science is in the computer-based treatment of sample data, not in the creation of new sampling protocols.A new generation of vegetation ecologists can now have the same advantage - the same easy access to this classic reference work - that a past generation had in quantifying and summarizing the formidable complexity of natural, wildland vegetation." Foreword by Michael G. Barbour, Plant Ecologist, University of California at Davis, Department of Environmental Horticulture, November 2002.

English translation makes this unique book, now in its fourth edition, available to a wider audience. This book is without doubt the most important work ever published about the vegetation of central Europe and its ecology. No other book contains so much ecological information and discusses so many principles relevant not only to plant ecologists in continental Europe, but to ecologists and palaeoecologists in the British Isles and North America. Besides providing valuable syntheses of the major plant communities, Ellenberg details the ecology and environmental requirements of all the vegetation types and discusses the climatic tolerances and ecological physiology of many of the major species. The account is based upon a life time of thorough field work and experimental investigation. One of the major messages to be gleaned from the book concerns the long-lasting and considerable effects of human activity upon the vegetation, and the book therefore has much to teach about the impact of agriculture and industrial pollution and highlights the need to plan carefully for the conservation of our rich natural and semi-natural environment.