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Concept
Systems ecology
Résumé
Systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, a subset of Earth system science, that takes a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems ecology approach is the idea that an ecosystem is a complex system exhibiting emergent properties. Systems ecology focuses on interactions and transactions within and between biological and ecological systems, and is especially concerned with the way the functioning of ecosystems can be influenced by human interventions. It uses and extends concepts from thermodynamics and develops other macroscopic descriptions of complex systems.
Systems ecology seeks a holistic view of the interactions and transactions within and between biological and ecological systems. Systems ecologists realise that the function of any ecosystem can be influenced by human economics in fundamental ways. They have therefore taken an additional transdisciplinary step by including economics in the consideration of ecological-economic systems. In the words of R.L. Kitching:
Systems ecology can be defined as the approach to the study of ecology of organisms using the techniques and philosophy of systems analysis: that is, the methods and tools developed, largely in engineering, for studying, characterizing and making predictions about complex entities, that is, systems..
In any study of an ecological system, an essential early procedure is to draw a diagram of the system of interest ... diagrams indicate the system's boundaries by a solid line. Within these boundaries, series of components are isolated which have been chosen to represent that portion of the world in which the systems analyst is interested ... If there are no connections across the systems' boundaries with the surrounding systems environments, the systems are described as closed. Ecological work, however, deals almost exclusively with open systems.
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