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ECOLOGY
1. Ecology had no firm beginnings. It evolved from the natural history of the Greeks. They first described the interrelationships between organisms and between organisms and their nonliving environment. Later foundations for modern ecology were laid in the early work of plant and animal physiologists.
2. Modern ecology is now focussed on the concept of the ecosystem, a functional unit consisting of interacting organisms and all aspects of the environment in any specific area. It contains both the nonliving and living components through which nutrients are cycled and energy flows. To accomplish this cycling and flow, ecosystems must possess a number of structured interrelationships between soil, water, and nutrients, on the one hand, and producers, consumers, and decomposers on the other.
3. One of the major problem areas of modern technological society is that of preserving a healthy environmental balance. Though man has been damaging his environment for centuries by over-cutting trees and farming too intensively, and though some protective measures, such as the establishment of national forests and wildlife sanctuaries, were taken decades ago, great increases in population and in the intensity of industrialisation are promoting a world-wide ecological crisis. This includes the dangers involved in destruction of the equatorial rain forests, the careless exploitation of minerals by open-mining techniques, and the pollution of the oceans by radioactive waste and of the atmosphere by combustion products. These include oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, which produce acid rain, and carbon dioxide, which may affect the world's climate through the so-called greenhouse effect.
4. The great public concern about pollution in the advanced nations is both overdue and welcome. Once more, however, it needs to be said that the fault for this waste-making abuse of technology lies with man himself rather than with the tools he uses. For all his intelligence, man in communities behaves with a lack of respect for his environment that is both short-sighted and potentially suicidal.
(Encyclopedia Britannica)
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