Ecology is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history.
An ecosystem is a system that environments and their organisms form through their interaction. The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models improve understanding of the natural world by revealing how the dynamics of species populations are often based on fundamental biological conditions and processes. Further, the field aims to unify a diverse range of empirical observations by assuming that common, mechanistic processes generate observable phenomena across species and ecological environments. Based on biologically realistic assumptions, theoretical ecologists are able to uncover novel, non-intuitive insights about natural processes. Theoretical results are often verified by empirical and observational studies, revealing the power of theoretical methods in both predicting and understanding the noisy, diverse biological world.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.
Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Landscape ecology can be described as the science of "landscape diversity" as the synergetic result of biodiversity and geodiversity.
In forestry, windthrow refers to trees uprooted by wind. Breakage of the tree bole (trunk) instead of uprooting is called windsnap. Blowdown refers to both windthrow and windsnap.
Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. It is distinct from conservation in that it attempts to retroactively repair already damaged ecosystems rather than take preventative measures. Ecological restoration can reverse biodiversity loss, combat climate change, and support local economies.
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
Edward A. Johnson is a Canadian ecologist. His research focuses on the contact between geosciences and ecology.
F. Stuart Chapin III is a professor of Ecology at the Department of Biology and Wildlife of the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska. He was President of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) from August 2010 until 2011.
Cross-boundary subsidies are caused by organisms or materials that cross or traverse habitat patch boundaries, subsidizing the resident populations. The transferred organisms and materials may provide additional predators, prey, or nutrients to resident species, which can affect community and food web structure. Cross-boundary subsidies of materials and organisms occur in landscapes composed of different habitat patch types, and so depend on characteristics of those patches and on the boundaries in between them. Human alteration of the landscape, primarily through fragmentation, has the potential to alter important cross-boundary subsidies to increasingly isolated habitat patches. Understanding how processes that occur outside of habitat patches can affect populations within them may be important to habitat management.
Patch dynamics is an ecological perspective that the structure, function, and dynamics of ecological systems can be understood through studying their interactive patches. Patch dynamics, as a term, may also refer to the spatiotemporal changes within and among patches that make up a landscape. Patch dynamics is ubiquitous in terrestrial and aquatic systems across organizational levels and spatial scales. From a patch dynamics perspective, populations, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes may all be studied effectively as mosaics of patches that differ in size, shape, composition, history, and boundary characteristics.
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (Cary Institute), formerly known as the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is an independent, not-for-profit environmental research organization dedicated to the scientific study of the world's ecosystems and the natural and human factors that influence them. The organization is headquartered in Millbrook, New York, on a 2,000-acre (810 ha) research campus. Areas of expertise include disease ecology, urban ecology, freshwater ecology and provisioning, and forest health.
Ecologically based invasive plant management (EBIPM) is a decision-making framework to improve the management of invasive plant species. When land managers are faced with infestations of invasive plants, a step by step framework to develop integrated management plans will improve their success at managing these plants. EBIPM is founded on the principles of ecology to manage invasive weed infestations and restore landscapes. The framework combines an ecosystem health assessment, a method to recognize how ecological processes affect causes of succession, ecological principles to guide the choices of tools and strategies to manage invasive plants and how to use adaptive management to generate a step-by-step decision model. The focus of EBIPM is to encourage managers to move away from simply killing the weeds and move toward management efforts that repair the underlying causes of invasion.
Seascape ecology is a scientific discipline that deals with the causes and ecological consequences of spatial pattern in the marine environment, drawing heavily on conceptual and analytical frameworks developed in terrestrial landscape ecology.
Julie Sloan Denslow is an American botanist, ecologist and biologist. She grew up in South Florida, and always loved nature. She graduated from Coral Gables Senior High School in 1960. She has contributed to the field of ecology through her work with and research of tropical ecosystems. Earlier in her career, she spent significant time in the field in tropical locations such as Costa Rica and Panama, as well as in temperate locations in Louisiana. and later on in her career she worked more in the office and classroom, but still spent the occasional day in the field. She has focused on research involving the ecology of exotic invasive plant species, and on ecosystem reactions and recovery following disturbances. Denslow is also a strong supporter of gender equality in the natural sciences, pushing for equal representation of women involved in tropical research and leadership during a 2007 Gender Committee Meeting within the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC). Her most notable contribution to tropical research is her paper "Gap Partitioning among Tropical Rainforest Trees", published in 1980.
Nancy B. Grimm is an American ecosystem ecologist and professor at Arizona State University. Grimm's substantial contributions to the understanding of urban and arid ecosystem biogeochemistry are recognized in her numerous awards. Grimm is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jiquan Chen is a landscape ecologist, primarily focused on nutrient flux, carbon cycling, bioenergy, and grassland ecology. He currently leads the LEES lab at Michigan State University.
Jianguo "Jingle" Wu (邬建国) is a Dean's Distinguished Professor of Sustainability Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. He is also known internationally for his research in landscape ecology and urban ecology. His areas of expertise include landscape ecology, biodiversity, sustainability science, ecosystem functioning and urban ecology. He is the author of over 300 publications, 14 books and has translated 1 book from English to Chinese. He has been awarded multiple awards and honors, including being elected as a Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2007 and an Ecological Society of America fellow in 2019. In 2019 and 2020, Wu was chosen as one of the most influential researchers in the world by Web of Science in the fields of Environment and Ecology (2019) and Cross-Field (2020) due to his collective published works being in the top 1% most cited over the last decade. Since 2005, Jianguo Wu has also served as the editor-in-chief of the international publication Landscape Ecology.
Timon McPhearson is an American urban ecologist, researcher, academic and author. He is Professor of Urban Ecology at The New School and the founder and director of its Urban Systems Lab. McPhearson is known for his interdisciplinary research on the interacting social-ecological-technological processes that drive urban system dynamics and impact human well-being. He is a Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre. McPhearson received the 2023 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America.
