Ecology

What is ecology? Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and the environment. The word environment refers to everything around us: the air, the water and the land as well as the plants, animals, and microorganisms that inhabit them.

The modern definition of ecology is: the scientific discipline, that is concerned with the relationship between organisms and their past, present and future environments, both living and non-living. Science, of course, represents a body of knowledge about the world and all its parts. It is also a method for finding new information. Thus Ecology, or ecological science, is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. Ecologists may study individual organisms, entire forests or lakes, or even the whole earth. The measurements made by ecologists include counts of individual organisms, rates of reproduction, or rates of processes such as photosynthesis and decomposition. Ecologists often spend as much time studying nonbiological components of the environment, such as temperature or soil chemistry, as they spend studying organisms.

Ecologists are interested in where animals and plants live and how they interact with each other. They answer such questions as «What would happen to all the oak trees in a forest if the climate becomes drier?» and «Will there be more greenflies on a tree if the ladybirds are all destroyed by a disease?».

Today many people are worried about «Global Warming». They try to predict what will happen to the world, and its animals and plants, if the average temperature of the world goes up. The relationship between man and nature has become one of the major problems facing civilization today. Ecology, a vital philosophical issue, stands at the crossroads of politics, science and economics.