Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
1. Mental exercise
2. Questions and definitions
3. Different ecological perspectives
approaches and subdisciplines
Watershed Ecology
4. Ecosystems
5. The importance of scale and the
appreciation of complexity
2. Questions.
Q: What is ecology?
Take 5 minutes.
Q: What is a system?
Merriam-Websters Dictionary: a group of
units so combined as to form a whole and to
operate in unison
Well-expressed by Raymond
Lindeman (1942):
The ecosystem may be formally
defined as the system composed of
physical-chemical-biological
processes active within a spacetime unit of any magnitude, i.e. the
biotic community plus its abiotic
environment.
Q: What is an ecosystem?
A term coined by Arthur Tansley in a
paper, The Use and Abuse of
Vegetational Concepts and Terms
Ecology 16: 284-307
Tansley was reacting against some attempts to
anthropomorphize plant communities (plant
ecology originally called Plant Sociology!)
More concepts.
Reductionist vs. Holistic
Emergent property
Complexity
Non-linearity
Ecological economics
Organismic/physiological
Habitat/ecosystem
Chemical/physical
Application-oriented
Often
grouped
into guilds
At peak production, DO
supersaturates leaves to
atmosphere
At night, DO drawn down
(why?) and becomes
undersaturated taken in
from atmosphere
Oxygen
(mg/L)
Temperature
C
Oxygen
(mg/L)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
14.16
13.77
13.40
13.05
12.70
12.37
12.06
11.76
11.47
11.19
10.92
10.67
10.43
10.20
9.98
9.76
9.56
9.37
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
9.18
9.01
8.84
8.68
8.53
8.38
8.25
8.11
7.99
7.86
7.75
7.64
7.53
7.42
7.32
7.22
7.13
7.04
K.Limburg
10
6
5.5
5
5:00
0:00
9:00
19:00
4:00
14:00
23:00
8:00
18:00
3:00
13:00
22:00
17:00
agricultural
7
6
Jackson Creek
10
5:01
10:01
0:01
9:01
4:01
14:01
19:01
5
23:01
7
6.5
18:01
7.5
8:01
13:01
9
8
urbanized
19:00
14:00
9:00
4:00
23:00
18:00
13:00
8:00
17:00
3:00
19:00
14:00
9:00
4:00
23:00
18:00
8:00
13:00
3:00
22:00
6
22:00
[DO] mg/L
8.5
10
3:01
Watershed
land use
can make a
difference
22:01
Night
forested
17:01
Day
10
9.5
Mountain Brook
Organisms
differentially affect
flows of energy and
matter
scale
Scale
Complexity
Cross-systems comparisons
(Value?)
complexity
Cross-system comparisons
Value?