Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONCEPT OF
Eugene P. Odum
University of Georgia
I. Introduction
II. The Ecosystem Concept
III. The Human-Dominated Techno-ecosystem
GLOSSARY
autotroph Literally, a self-feeder; an organism that is
able to utilize inorganic carbon (carbon dioxide) as
the sole carbon source for growth; for example, green
plants and certain bacteria.
black box Entity that can be examined at the system
level without specifying its internal contents.
heterotroph Literally, a feeder on others; an organism
that is dependent on organic material from an external source to provide carbon for growth; for example, vertebrates.
industrialized agriculture Modern form of agriculture
that differs from traditional agriculture in the use of
elaborate and expensive machinery, the control of
pests with toxic chemicals rather than biocontrols,
fertilization by synthetic rather than organic products, excessive consumption of water, and farm ownership and management by corporations rather
than individuals.
input environment Collective term for all energy and
materials moving into a given system.
mega-city Modern city with a large, expanding population, characterized by high consumption levels of
energy, water, and food from sources outside the city.
LIVING ORGANISMS AND THEIR NONLIVING (ABIOTIC) ENVIRONMENT are inseparably interrelated
and interact with each other. An ecological system, or
ecosystem, is any unit (a biosystem) that includes all
the organisms (the biotic community) in a given area
interacting with the physical environment so that a ow
of energy leads to clearly dened biotic structures and
cycling of materials between living and nonliving parts.
An ecosystem is more than a geographical unit (or
ecoregion); it is a functional system unit with inputs
and outputs, and with boundaries that can be either
natural or arbitrary.
I. INTRODUCTION
The ecosystem is the rst unit in the molecule to ecosphere hierarchy (as shown in Fig. 1) that is complete,
305
306
ECOSYSTEM, CONCEPT OF
FIGURE 2 This ecosystem model emphasizes the external environment, which must be considered an integral part of the ecosystem
concept. See Fig. 3 for a model emphasizing internal structures
and processes.
FIGURE 1 Hierarchical organization of living systems. The ecosystem is the rst level that is complete.
that is, it has all the components, biological and physical, necessary for survival. Accordingly, it is the basic
unit around which to organize both theory and practice
in ecology. Furthermore, as the shortcomings of the
piecemeal short-term technologic and economic approaches to dealing with complex problems become
ever more evident with each passing year, management
at this level, that is, ecosystem management, emerges as
the challenge for the future.
Since ecosystems are functionally open systems, consideration of both inputs and outputs is an important
part of the concept, as shown in Fig. 2. A diversity of
species and genetic forms, together with a variety of
functions and niches, are essential properties of natural
ecosystems. Ecosystem diversity provides redundancy
in times of environmental uncertainty.
ECOSYSTEM, CONCEPT OF
307
FIGURE 3 A functional diagram of a natural ecosystem, with emphasis on internal dynamics involving energy
ow, material cycles, and storage (S), as well as food webs of autotrophs (A) and heterotrophs (H).
308
ECOSYSTEM, CONCEPT OF
quality (i.e., converted into organic matter, a more upgraded form of energy than sunlight) by the community,
but most of it is degraded and passes through and out
of the system as low-quality heat energy (heat sink).
Energy can be stored, then fed back, or exported, as
shown in the diagram, but it cannot be reused. In contrast with energy, materials, including the nutrients
necessary for life (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and
so on), and water can be used over and over again. The
efciency of recycling and the magnitude of imports
and exports of nutrients vary widely with the type of
ecosystem.
Each box in Fig. 3 is given a distinctive shape that
indicates its general function. Circles are renewable
energy sources, bullets are autotrophs, hexagons are
heterotrophs, and the round-bottomed shapes are storages (in this case of nutrients and organics). The community is depicted as a food web of autotrophs and
heterotrophs linked together with appropriate energy
ows, nutrient cycles, and storages.
Both graphic models (Figs. 2 and 3) emphasize
that a conceptually complete ecosystem includes inputs and outputs along with the system as delimited,
that is, an ecosystem IE S OE (input environment system output environment). This scheme
solves the problem of where to draw lines around
an entity that one wishes to consider, because it does
not matter very much how the box portion of the
ecosystem is delimited. Often, natural boundaries,
such as a lakeshore or forest edge, or political ones,
such as city limits, make convenient boundaries, but
limits can just as well be arbitrary so long as they
can be accurately designated in a geometric sense.
The box is not all there is to the ecosystem, because
if the box were an impervious container, its living
contents (lake or city) would die.
It is important to emphasize that it is the diversity
of ecosystem functions including microbial recycling, inputs and outputs as well as habitats and human land
uses that need to be maintained, not just the diversity
of species or biodiversity in the narrow sense.
are competitive with and parasitic on natural ecosystems. These human-made systems involve new, powerful energy sources, technology, money, and fuelpowered cities that have little or no parallel in nature.
It is imperative that techno-ecosystems interface with
natural life-support ecosystems in a more positive or
mutualistic manner than is now the case if our rapidly
growing urban-industrial society is to survive in a
nite world.
Before the industrial revolution, humans were a part
ofrather than apart fromnatural ecosystems. In the
ecosystem model of Fig. 3, humans functioned as top
predators and omnivores (the terminal H box in the
food web). Early agriculture, as is the case with traditional or preindustrial agriculture as still widely practiced in many parts of the world, was compatible with
natural systems and often enriched the landscape in
addition to providing food. But with the increasing use
of fossil fuels and atomic ssionenergy sources many
times more powerful than sunlighttogether with the
mushrooming growth of cities and increasing use of
money-based market economics as the basis for decision
making, the model of Fig. 3 is no longer adequate. We
need to create a new model for this techno-ecosystem,
a term suggested by pioneer landscape ecologist Zev
Naveh (1982).
Figure 4 is our graphic model for these new (in terms
of human history) fuel-powered systems. It includes
the four components listed earlier: powerful energy
sources, technology, money, and cities. The model
shows the inputs of the new fuel energy sources and
natural resources, and the increasing outputs of air,
water, and solid waste pollution that are very much
larger and more toxic than anything that comes out of
natural ecosystems. In Fig. 5 we add to the technoecosystem model some natural ecosystems that provide
life-supporting goods and services (breathing, drinking,
and eating!) and that maintain homeorhetic (i.e., pulsing) global balances in the atmosphere, soils, freshwater, and oceans. Note that money circulates as a twoway ow between society and human-made systems,
but not natural systems, thereby creating a vast market
failure when society fails to pay for ecosystem services.
A modern city,1 of course, is the major component
of the fabricated techno-ecosystem. It is a very energetic
hot spot that requires a large area of low-energy natural
1
The term city is used synonymously with the geographers
term standard metropolitan district (SMD), which includes industrial areas and residential suburbs that often extend far beyond ofcial
city limits.
ECOSYSTEM, CONCEPT OF
309
310
ECOSYSTEM, CONCEPT OF
words, technology has its destructive as well as benecial side. To bring the natural and technical ecosystems
into a mutualist relationship will be societys greatest
challenge in the twenty-rst century.
Bibliography
Force, J. E., and G. E. Maddie. (1997). The human ecosystem. Society
and Natural Resources 10, 369382.
Gray, P. E. (1989). The paradox of technological development. In Technology and the Environment, pp. 192205. National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C.
Lotka, A. J. (1925). Elements of Physical Biology. Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore.
Naveh, Z. (1982). Landscape ecology as an emerging branch of human
ecosystem science. Adv. Ecol. Res. 12, 189237.
Odum, H. W. (1936). Southern Regions of the United States. University
of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Odum, H. W. and H. E. Moore (1938). American Regionalism. Henry
Holt, New York.
Machlis, G. E., J. E. Force, and W. R. Birch (1997). The human
ecosystem as an organizing concept in ecosystem management.
Society and Natural Resources 10, 347367.
Sukachev, V. N. (1959). The correlation between the concepts forest
ecosystem and forest biogeocoenose and their importance for
classication of forests. IX International Botanical Congress 2, 387.
Tansley, A. G. (1935). The use and abuse of vegetational concept
terms. Ecology 16, 284307.