Definition Of Ecosystem By Odum

Even professional biologists seemed to odum to be generally under educated about how the earth s ecological systems interact with one another.

Definition of ecosystem by odum. Odum brought forward the importance of ecology as a discipline that should be a fundamental dimension of the training of a biologist. Truest to his brand of ecosystem thinking was his definition of ecology as the study of the structure and function of nature. Aquatic ecosystems differ radically from their terrestrial counterparts. Odum has defined t he ecosystem a s the basic fundamental unit of ecology which includes both the organisms and the nonliving environm ent each influencing the properties of the o ther and e ach.

Share embed odum fundamentals of ecology please copy and paste this embed script to where you want to embed. The ecosystem is the structural and functional unit of ecology where the living organisms interact with each other and the surrounding environment. Odum quantified flows of energy and matter at the ecosystem level thus documenting the general ideas proposed by clements and his contemporary charles elton see figure 3. Odum has 14 books on goodreads with 1312 ratings.

Odum adopted and developed further the term ecosystem. A system or a group of interconnected elements formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment. In other words an ecosystem is a chain of interaction between organisms and their environment. Although odum s extreme reliance on emergent properties and resuscitation of superorganismic thinking have proven problematic to many ecologists his loosening of the bonds of haeckel s focus on the organism is useful.

The term ecosystem was coined in 1935 by the oxford ecologist arthur tansley to encompass the interactions among biotic and abiotic components of the environment at a given site. In this vein odum can be understood as extending the dynamical analogies which establish the analogies between electrical mechanical acoustical magnetic and electronic systems to include ecological systems. Eugene odums fundamentals of ecology had just been published odum 1953 and while this odum professor of ecology university of georgia institute of ecology. In this model energy flows through the whole system were dependent on biotic and abiotic interactions of each individual component species inorganic pools of nutrients etc.

Odum used an analog of electrical energy networks to model the energy flow pathways of ecosystems. Later work by eugene odum and howard t. The term ecosystem was first coined by a g tansley an english botanist in 1935.