Agric

106 Introduction to Ecological Agriculture

Jayson O. Villamor, MSc
FIRST TERM LECTURE NOTES
I. Introduction
In the past century, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world,
has been characterized by enhanced productivity, the replacement of human labor by synthetic fertilizers
and pesticides, selective breeding, and mechanization. The recent history of agriculture has been closely
tied with a range of political issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified
organisms, tariffs, and farm subsidies. In recent years, there has been a backlash against the external
environmental effects of mechanized agriculture, and increasing support for the organic
movement and sustainable agriculture.

A. Background/overview of agriculture
A.1 Historical and Ecological Context of Agriculture
Agriculture involving domestication of plants and animals was developed at least 10,000 years ago,
although even earlier people began altering plant and animal communities for their own benefit through
other means such as fire-stick farming. Agriculture has undergone significant developments since the time
of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest
planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered in the wild. Independent
development of agriculture occurred in northern and southern China, Africa's Sahel, New Guinea, parts
of India and several regions of the Americas. Agricultural practices such as irrigation, crop
rotation, fertilizers, and pesticides were developed long ago but have made great strides in the past
century. The Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough
and allowed crop yields to overcome previous constraints.

A.2 Modern Agriculture: Its Features and Impacts

Industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production
of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are techno-scientific, economic,
and political. They include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology,
techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption,
the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade. These methods are
widespread
in developed
nations and
increasingly
prevalent
worldwide.
Most
of
the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced using these methods
of industrial agriculture.

Historical development and future prospects

The day of industrial agriculture more or less coincides with that of the Industrial Revolution in general.
The identification of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus (referred to by the acronym NPK) as critical
factors in plant growth led to the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers, making possible more intensive
types of agriculture. The discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition, in the first two decades
of the 20th century, led to vitamin supplements, which in the 1920s allowed certain livestock to be raised
indoors, reducing their exposure to adverse natural elements. The discovery of antibiotics and vaccines
facilitated raising livestock in concentrated, controlled animal feed operations by reducing diseases

caused by crowding. Chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise to synthetic pesticides.
Developments in shipping networks and technology have made long-distance distribution of agricultural
produce feasible.
Agricultural production across the world doubled four times between 1820 and 1975 to feed a global
population of one billion human beings in 1800 and 6.5 billion in 2002. During the same period, the
number of people involved in farming dropped as the process became more automated. In the 1930s, 24
percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002; in 1940, each
farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers. The number
of farms has also decreased, and their ownership is more concentrated. In the U.S., four companies kill 81
percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs, and produce 50 percent of chickens, cited as an
example of "vertical integration" by the president of the U.S. National Farmers' Union. In 1967, there
were one million pig farms in America; as of 2002, there were 114,000, with 80 million pigs (out of 95
million) killed each year on factory farms, according to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68
percent of eggs are produced this way.
According to Denis Avery of the agribusiness funded Hudson Institute, Asia increased its consumption of
pork by 18 million tons in the 1990s. As of 1997, the world had a stock of 900 million pigs, which Avery
predicts will rise to 2.5 billion pigs by 2050. He told the College of Natural Resources at the University of
California, Berkeley that three billion pigs will thereafter be needed annually to meet demand. He writes:
"For the sake of the environment, we had better hope those hogs are raised in big, efficient confinement
systems."

British agricultural revolution

The British agricultural revolution describes a period of agricultural development in Britain between the
16th century and the mid-19th century, which saw a massive increase in agricultural productivity and net
output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of
the workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial Revolution. How this came about is not entirely
clear.
In
recent
decades,
historians
cited
four
key
changes
in
agricultural
practices, enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation, and selective breeding, and gave credit to a
relatively few individuals.

A.3 Issues and Concerns in Agriculture

Challenges and issues
The challenges and issues of industrial agriculture for global and local society, for the industrial agriculture
sector, for the individual industrial agriculture farm, and for animal rights include the costs and benefits of
both current practices and proposed changes to those practices. This is a continuation of thousands of
years of the invention and use of technologies in feeding ever growing populations.
When hunter-gatherers with growing populations depleted the stocks of game and wild foods across the
Near East, they were forced to introduce agriculture. But agriculture brought much longer hours of work
and a less rich diet than hunter-gatherers enjoyed. Further population growth among shifting slash-andburn farmers led to shorter fallow periods, falling yields and soil erosion. Plowing and fertilizers were
introduced to deal with these problems - but once again involved longer hours of work and degradation of
soil resources (Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, Allen and Unwin, 1965, expanded and
updated in Population and Technology, Blackwell, 1980).

While the point of industrial agriculture is lower cost products to create greater productivity thus a higher
standard of living as measured by available goods and services, industrial methods have side effects both
good and bad. Further, industrial agriculture is not some single indivisible thing, but instead is composed
of numerous separate elements, each of which can be modified, and in fact is modified in response to
market conditions, government regulation, and scientific advances. So the question then becomes for
each specific element that goes into an industrial agriculture method or technique or process: What bad
side effects are bad enough that the financial gain and good side effects are outweighed? Different
interest groups not only reach different conclusions on this, but also recommend differing solutions,
which then become factors in changing both market conditions and government regulations.
An example of industrial agriculture providing cheap and plentiful food is the U.S.'s "most successful
program of agricultural development of any country in the world". Between 1930 and 2000 U.S.
agricultural productivity (output divided by all inputs) rose by an average of about 2 percent annually
causing food prices paid by consumers to decrease. "The percentage of U.S. disposable income spent on
food prepared at home decreased, from 22 percent as late as 1950 to 7 percent by the end of the
century."

Liabilities
Economic
Economic liabilities for industrial agriculture include the dependence on finite non-renewable fossil
fuel energy resources, as an input in farm mechanization (equipment, machinery), for food processing and
transportation, and as an input in agricultural chemicals. A future increase in energy prices as projected by
the International Energy Agency is therefore expected to result in increase in food prices; and there is
therefore a need to 'de-couple' non-renewable energy usage from agricultural production. Other liabilities
include peak phosphate as finite phosphate reserves are currently a key input into chemical fertilizer for
industrial agriculture.

Environment
Industrial
agriculture
uses
huge
amounts
of water, energy, and industrial
chemicals;
increasing pollution in the arable land, usable water, and atmosphere. Herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers,
and animal waste products are accumulating in ground and surface waters. "Many of the negative effects
of industrial agriculture are remote from fields and farms. Nitrogen compounds from the Midwest, for
example, travel down the Mississippi to degrade coastal fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. But other adverse
effects are showing up within agricultural production systems -- for example, the rapidly developing
resistance among pests is rendering our arsenal of herbicides and insecticides increasingly ineffective."
Chemicals used in industrial agriculture, as well as the practice of monoculture, have also been implicated
in Colony Collapse Disorder which has led to a collapse in bee populations. Agricultural production is
highly dependent on bee pollination to pollinate many varieties of plants, fruits and vegetables.

Social
A study done for the US Office of Technology Assessment conducted by the UC Davis Macrosocial
Accounting Project concluded that industrial agriculture is associated with substantial deterioration of
human living conditions in nearby rural communities. Future increase in food commodity prices, driven by
the energy price rises under peak oil and dependency of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels is expected to
lead to increase in food prices which have particular impacts on poor people. An example of this can be
seen in the 2007-2008 world food price crisis. Food price increases have a disproportionate impact on the
poor as they spend a large proportion of their income on food.

Animals
"Concentrated animal feeding operations" or "intensive livestock operations", can hold large numbers
(some up to hundreds of thousands) of animals, often indoors. These animals are typically cows, hogs,
turkeys, or chickens. The distinctive characteristics of such farms are the concentration of livestock in a
given space. The aim of the operation is to produce as much meat, eggs, or milk at the lowest possible
cost and with the greatest level of food safety.
Food and water is supplied in place, and artificial methods are often employed to maintain animal health
and improve production, such as therapeutic use of antimicrobial agents, vitamin supplements and
growth hormones. Growth hormones are not used in chicken meat production nor are they used in
the European Union for any animal. In meat production, methods are also sometimes employed to
control undesirable behaviours often related to stresses of being confined in restricted areas with other
animals. More docile breeds are sought (with natural dominant behaviours bred out for example),
physical restraints to stop interaction, such as individual cages for chickens, or animals physically
modified, such as the de-beaking of chickens to reduce the harm of fighting. Weight gain is encouraged by
the provision of plentiful supplies of food to animals breed for weight gain.
The large concentration of animals, animal waste, and dead animals in a small space poses ethical issues
to some consumers. Animal rights and animal welfare activists have charged that intensive animal rearing
is cruel to animals. As they become more common, so do concerns about air pollution and ground water
contamination, and the effects on human health of the pollution and the use of antibiotics and growth
hormones.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), farms on which animals are
intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers. Workers may develop acute and
chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal injuries, and may catch infections that transmit from animals to
human beings. These type of transmissions, however, and extremely rare, as zoonotic diseases are
uncommon.

Crops
The projects within the Green Revolution spread technologies that had already existed, but had not been
widely used outside of industrialized nations. These technologies included pesticides, irrigation projects,
and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
The novel technological development of the Green Revolution was the production of what some referred
to as miracle seeds. Scientists created strains of maize, wheat, and rice that are generally referred to as
HYVs or high-yielding varieties. HYVs have an increased nitrogen-absorbing potential compared to other
varieties. Since cereals that absorbed extra nitrogen would typically lodge, or fall over before harvest,
semi-dwarfing genes were bred into their genomes. Norin 10 wheat, a variety developed by Orville
Vogel from Japanese dwarf wheat varieties, was instrumental in developing Green Revolution wheat
cultivars. IR8, the first widely implemented HYV rice to be developed by the International Rice Research
Institute, was created through a cross between an Indonesian variety named Peta and a Chinese variety
named Dee Geo Woo Gen.
With the availability of molecular genetics in Arabidopsis and rice the mutant genes responsible (reduced
height(rht), gibberellin insensitive (gai1) and slender rice (slr1)) have been cloned and identified as cellular
signalling components of gibberellic acid, a phytohormone involved in regulating stem growth via its
effect on cell division. Stem growth in the mutant background is significantly reduced leading to the dwarf
phenotype. Photosynthetic investment in the stem is reduced dramatically as the shorter plants are

inherently more stable mechanically. Assimilates become redirected to grain production, amplifying in
particular the effect of chemical fertilisers on commercial yield.
HYVs significantly outperform traditional varieties in the presence of adequate irrigation, pesticides, and
fertilizers. In the absence of these inputs, traditional varieties may outperform HYVs. One criticism of
HYVs is that they were developed as F1 hybrids, meaning they need to be purchased by a farmer every
season rather than saved from previous seasons, thus increasing a farmers cost of production.

Sustainable agriculture
The idea and practice of sustainable agriculture has arisen in response to the problems of industrial
agriculture. Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals: environmental stewardship, farm
profitability and prosperous farming communities. These goals have been defined by a variety
of disciplines and may be looked at from the vantage point of the farmer or the consumer.

Organic farming methods

Organic farming methods combine some aspects of scientific knowledge and highly limited
modern technology with traditional farming practices; accepting some of the methods of industrial
agriculture while rejecting others. Organic methods rely on naturally occurring biological processes, which
often take place over extended periods of time, and a holistic approach; while chemical-based farming
focuses on immediate, isolated effects and reductionist strategies.
Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture is an example of this holistic approach. Integrated Multi-Trophic
Aquaculture (IMTA) is a practice in which the by-products (wastes) from one species are recycled to
become inputs (fertilizers, food) for another. Fed aquaculture (e.g. fish, shrimp) is combined with
inorganic extractive (e.g. seaweed) and organic extractive (e.g. shellfish) aquaculture to create balanced
systems for environmental sustainability (biomitigation), economic stability (product diversification and
risk reduction) and social acceptability (better management practices).

B. Relevance of Ecological Agriculture Practices to Food Security

Important elements for consideration: Food Security and
Nutrition, and Sustainable Agriculture
1. Increase investment in sustainable agriculture
Sustainable agriculture practices contribute to food security and climate resilience. Governments should
specifically reorient agriculture policies and significantly increase funding to support biodiverse,
sustainable agriculture, as recommended by the International Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). In The Future We Want, which is the outcome
document of the Rio+20 Conference, paragraphs 110-113 emphasize the importance of sustainable
agriculture and the need for increased investment in sustainable agricultural practices. Particularly, in
paragraph 111, the need to maintain natural ecological processes that support food production systems
is recognized, which is a nod towards agro-ecological principles.

Conduct in-depth assessments of agricultural conditions and policies at the national level, to
identify both barriers to a transition to sustainable agriculture and gaps in policy, and ensure
policy coherence such that sustainable agriculture is promoted and facilitated.

Focus national agriculture policy frameworks urgently and immediately on sustainable

agriculture. In particular, increase emphasis on the conservation and use of agricultural
biodiversity, building healthy soils, and developing and sharing water harvesting and other water
management techniques.

Devote a large share of the national agricultural budget to promoting sustainable agriculture. The
support should include mechanisms (both traditional extension and more far-reaching farmer-tofarmer networking methods) to train farmers in the best options for sustainable agriculture
techniques, the development of ecological infrastructure including water supply, improvement of
soil fertility, and the provision of credit and marketing.

Directly fund adoption of agroecological practices that reduce vulnerability and increase
resilience, such as soil-fertility-enriching and climate-resilient practices (e.g., use of compost to
enhance soil health, water storage and soil quality).

2. Focus on smallholder farmers and their practices

Agriculture is the most important sector in many developing countries and is central to the survival of
hundreds of millions of people. Most agricultural production in these countries involves small land
holdings, mainly producing for self-consumption. Women are the key agricultural producers and
providers. Hence agriculture is critical for food and livelihood security, and for the approximately 500
million smallholder households, totaling 1.5 billion people, and living on smallholdings of two hectares of
land or less. Smallholdings account for 85 percent of the worlds farms.
The role and needs of rural communities are recognized and rural development emphasized in paragraph
109 of The Future We Want, including the need for enhanced access by small producers to credit,
markets, secure land tenure and other services. Paragraph 109 also stresses the importance of traditional
sustainable agricultural practices, including traditional seed supply systems, including for many indigenous
peoples and local communities. This is important in light of the threats that undermine and marginalize
such systems and the increasing takeover of the seed supply by a few large multinational corporations.

Ensure enhanced access by small producers, women, indigenous peoples and people living in
vulnerable situations to credit and other financial services, markets, secure land tenure, health
care, social services, education, training, knowledge and appropriate and affordable
technologies.

Support conservation and use of local knowledge and seeds, as well as support peasant seed
systems and community seed banks. In addition, prioritize participatory and formal plant
breeding efforts to adapt seeds for future environments, particularly increased temperatures.

Improve social safety nets to enable farmers and the rural poor to cope with external shocks
climate-related disasters. This includes implementing a range of policies that support the
economic viability of smallholder agriculture and thus reduce their vulnerability, for example,
improving access to credit for smallholders; and building and reinforcing basic infrastructure,
such as water supplies and rural roads that can facilitate access to markets. Special attention and
specific support should be given to women smallholder farmers.

Strengthen small-scale farmers, womens, indigenous and community-based organizations to,

among other objectives: access productive resources, participate in agricultural decision-making
and share sustainable agriculture approaches.

3. Dismantle perverse incentives and subsidies that

promote unsustainable agriculture
Current agriculture policies are geared to promoting conventional agriculture practices that are
unsustainable. Perverse incentives, including those perpetuated under the international trade regime
governed by the World Trade Organization and bilateral free trade agreements, entrench this
unsustainable system. Agricultural incentives and subsidies therefore need to be redirected away from
destructive monocultures and harmful inputs, towards sustainable agriculture practices of the small-farm
sector. These need to be phased out in a fair and equitable manner, taking into account the impact on
small farmers in developing countries.

Avoid and phase out perverse incentives and subsidies that promote or encourage the use of
chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and fuel, or that encourage land degradation, while
ensuring that impacts on small farmers are addressed in a fair and equitable manner.

Reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers by removing tax and pricing policies that contribute to
their overuse.

Shift subsidy priorities such that the initial costs and risks of farmers transition efforts to
implement sustainable farming practices are borne by public funds.

At the international level, modify key market distortions that act as a disincentive to the
transition to sustainable agricultural practices in developing countries. These include the
significant subsidization of agricultural production in developed countries and their export to
developing countries. As long as these conditions prevail, it is difficult to imagine how
developing-country producers can implement a paradigm shift towards sustainable agriculture.

4. Implement a research and knowledge-sharing agenda

towards sustainable agriculture
Paragraph 114 of The Future We Want resolves to enhance agricultural research, extension services,
training and education to improve productivity and sustainability. National and global agricultural
research agendas have been however dominated by conventional agriculture approaches and the promise
of new technologies. Sustainable agriculture has been sidelined, yet it has thrived and has proven
successful despite the lack of public support. Research and development efforts must be refocused
towards sustainable agriculture, while at the same time strengthening existing farmer knowledge and
innovation. Moreover, current agriculture research is dominated by the private sector, which focuses on
crops and technologies from which they stand to profit most. This perpetuates industrial, inputdependent agriculture, rather than solutions for the challenges facing developing-country farmers.

Place sustainable agriculture at the forefront of the international and national agriculture
research agendas; this means providing public resources for sustainable agriculture
interventions.

Address current intellectual property systems that act as drivers towards corporate consolidation
and corporate dominance of agriculture research, including the issues of patents on living
organisms and seeds, as well as plant variety protection consistent with the strict standards of
UPOV 1991, which may also impinge on farmers rights and affect smallholder agriculture.

Generously fund efforts to conserve crop diversity, both in situ and ex situ.

Support research on sustainable agriculture approaches that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions
from agriculture, such as practices that reduce or eliminate the use of synthetic nitrogen
fertilizers.

Identify research priorities in a participatory manner, enabling farmers to play a central role in
defining strategic priorities for agricultural research; and increase networking and knowledge
sharing between farmers and researchers.

Reorient research and extension systems at the national level to support farmer-to-farmer
agroecological innovation; increase the capacities of farmer and community organizations to
innovate; and strengthen networks and alliances to support, document, and share lessons and
best practices.

Ensure farmers have access to information about sustainable agriculture practices, through both
formal and informal means, including extension services, farmers organizations, climate farmerto-farmer field schools and cross-visits.

5.

Build supportive global partnerships

A range of international institutions can make positive contributions by supporting and enabling the
adoption of sustainable agriculture. These institutions should support the range of efforts to be
undertaken at national and regional levels, and cooperate and coordinate efforts to mobilize necessary
resources at the international level. Public financing and transfer of appropriate technologies by
developed countries are needed not only for the adoption of sustainable agriculture but also to put in
place the required infrastructure, communications and other enabling conditions. Furthermore, trade
commitments made at the multilateral and bilateral levels must provide developing countries enough
policy space to enable support for the agriculture sector, expansion of local food production, and effective
instruments to provide for local and household food security, farmers livelihoods and rural development
needs. This is needed before farmers in developing countries can start investing in sustainable agriculture.
A universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system that will
promote agricultural and rural development in developing countries and contribute to world food security
is reaffirmed in paragraph 118 of The Future We Want.

Ensure sustainable, predictable and significant public funding for sustainable agriculture, rather
than speculative and volatile market-derived funding. International agencies must play an active
role in mobilizing public resources.

Increase the scale of the work to promote sustainable agriculture practices by the Rome-based
UN agencies: FAO, WFP, IFAD. This should include technical support to enable countries to
transition to and prioritize sustainable agriculture, and appropriate policy advice that supports its
implementation.

Encourage CGIAR centres to leverage research and research partnerships, and the funding
thereof, which focus on sustainable agriculture, agricultural biodiversity and small farmers in
developing countries.

Ensure the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity and related traditional
knowledge systems, including through the relevant work on agricultural biodiversity carried out
by the FAO and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Revive the work of the UN for a global framework for corporate accountability, including the
reinstatement of obligations under the aborted UN Code of Conduct on Transnational
Corporations.

Implement the outcomes/decisions of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), as the
governing body for food, agriculture and rural development policy and related financial issues at
the global level, including the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of
Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security and the outcomes of the
ongoing discussions on Responsible Agricultural Investment. (The important work and inclusive
nature of the CFS is reaffirmed in paragraph 115 of The Future We Want.)

Eliminate export subsidies in agriculture (in line with WTO Hong Kong Declaration 2005) and
substantially and effectively reduce agricultural support and subsidies in developed countries (in
line with WTO Doha Declaration 2001) so that distortions in global agricultural trade will be
reduced and developing countries farmers will have a more level playing field.

Prioritise developing countries goals of food security and protection of farmers livelihoods in
free trade agreements (FTAs). The percentage of goods to be subjected to tariff elimination by
developing countries should be adjusted if necessary to accommodate the need to exclude
sensitive agricultural products from tariff elimination. Ensure that the FTAs provide enough
policy space to allow sufficiently high tariffs on agricultural imports that enable the fulfilment of
the principles of food security, farmers livelihoods and rural development, and to allow
countries to rebuild and strengthen their agriculture sector.

Ensure that commodity markets operate in an adequately regulated manner that avoids
excessive volatility and speculative activities and serves the real needs of both producers and
consumers. Address the root causes of excessive food price volatility, including its structural
causes, and manage the risks linked to high and excessively volatile prices and their
consequences for global food security and nutrition, as well as for smallholder farmers and poor
urban dwellers (as emphasized in paragraph 116 of The Future We Want).

This Brief is based on Stabinsky, D. and Lim L.C. (2012). Ecological agriculture, climate resilience and a roadmap to get
there. TWN Environment and Development Series 14. Third World Network, Penang.

C. Basic Ecological Concepts

Ecology (from Greek: , "house"; -, "study of") is the scientific study of interactions among
organisms and their environment, such as the interactions organisms have with each other and with their
abiotic environment. Topics of interest to ecologists include the diversity, distribution, amount (biomass),
number (population) of organisms, as well as competition between them within and among ecosystems.
Ecosystems are composed of dynamically interacting parts including organisms, the communities they
make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary
production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling, and various niche construction activities, regulate the flux of
energy and matter through an environment. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life
history traits, and the variety of organisms is called biodiversity. Biodiversity, which refers to the varieties
of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services.
Ecology is an interdisciplinary field that includes biology and Earth science. The word "ecology"
("kologie") was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel (18341919). Ancient Greek
philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of ecology in their studies on natural
history. Modern ecology transformed into a more rigorous science in the late 19th
century. Evolutionary concepts on adaptation and natural selection became cornerstones of
modern ecological theory. Ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, natural
history, or environmental science. It is closely related to evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology. An
understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function is an important focus area in ecological
studies. Ecologists seek to explain:

Life processes, interactions and adaptations

The movement of materials and energy through living communities
The successional development of ecosystems, and
The abundance and distribution of organisms and biodiversity in the context of the environment.

Ecology is a human science as well. There are many practical applications of ecology in conservation
biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agroecology, agriculture, forestry,
agroforestry, fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, basic and applied
science, and human social interaction (human ecology). Organisms and resources compose ecosystems
which, in turn, maintain biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living
(biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and
produce natural capital like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber and medicine), the regulation of climate,
global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection and many
other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value. Ecosystems regenerate after a
disturbance such as fire, forming mosaics of different age groups structured across a landscape. Pictured
are different seral stages in forested ecosystems starting from pioneers colonizing a disturbed site and
maturing in successional stages leading to old-growth forests.
The scope of ecology covers a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level
(e.g., cells) to planetary scale (e.g., biosphere) phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain abiotic
resources and interacting life forms (i.e., individual organisms that aggregate into populations which
aggregate into distinct ecological communities). Ecosystems are dynamic, they do not always follow a
linear successional path, but they are always changing, sometimes rapidly and sometimes so slowly that it
can take thousands of years for ecological processes to bring about certain successional stages of a forest.
An ecosystem's area can vary greatly, from tiny to vast. A single tree is of little consequence to the
classification of a forest ecosystem, but critically relevant to organisms living in and on it. Several
generations of an aphid population can exist over the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in
turn, support diverse bacterial communities. The nature of connections in ecological communities cannot
be explained by knowing the details of each species in isolation, because the emergent pattern is neither

revealed nor predicted until the ecosystem is studied as an integrated whole. Some ecological principles,
however, do exhibit collective properties where the sum of the components explain the properties of the
whole, such as birth rates of a population being equal to the sum of individual births over a designated
time frame.

Hierarchical ecology
System behaviors must first be arrayed into levels of organization. Behaviors corresponding to higher
levels occur at slow rates. Conversely, lower organizational levels exhibit rapid rates. For example,
individual tree leaves respond rapidly to momentary changes in light intensity, CO 2concentration, and the
like. The growth of the tree responds more slowly and integrates these short-term changes.

O'Neill et al. (1986)

The scale of ecological dynamics can operate like a closed system, such as aphids migrating on a single
tree; while at the same time remain open with regard to broader scale influences, such as atmosphere or
climate. Hence, ecologists classify ecosystems hierarchically by analyzing data collected from finer scale
units, such as vegetation associations, climate, and soil types, and integrate this information to identify
emergent patterns of uniform organization and processes that operate on local to regional, landscape,
and chronological scales.
To structure the study of ecology into a conceptually manageable framework, the biological world is
organized into a nested hierarchy, ranging in scale from genes, to cells, to tissues, to organs, to organisms,
to species, to populations, to communities, to ecosystems, to biomes, and up to the level of the
biosphere. This framework forms a panarchy and exhibits non-linear behaviors; this means that "effect
and cause are disproportionate, so that small changes to critical variables, such as the number of nitrogen
fixers, can lead to disproportionate, perhaps irreversible, changes in the system properties".

Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety of life and its processes. It includes the variety of living organisms, the genetic
differences among them, the communities and ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and
evolutionary processes that keep them functioning, yet ever changing and adapting.
Noss & Carpenter
Biodiversity (an abbreviation of "biological diversity") describes the diversity of life from genes to
ecosystems and spans every level of biological organization. The term has several interpretations, and
there are many ways to index, measure, characterize, and represent its complex organization. Biodiversity
includes species diversity, ecosystem diversity, and genetic diversity and scientists are interested in the
way that this diversity affects the complex ecological processes operating at and among these respective
levels. Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem services which by definition maintain and
improve human quality of life. Preventing species extinctions is one way to preserve biodiversity and that
goal rests on techniques that preserve genetic diversity, habitat and the ability for species to migrate.
Conservation priorities and management techniques require different approaches and considerations to
address the full ecological scope of biodiversity. Natural capital that supports populations is critical for
maintaining ecosystem services and species migration (e.g., riverine fish runs and avian insect control) has
been implicated as one mechanism by which those service losses are experienced. An understanding of
biodiversity has practical applications for species and ecosystem-level conservation planners as they make
management recommendations to consulting firms, governments, and industry.

Habitat
The habitat of a species describes the environment over which a species is known to occur and the type of
community that is formed as a result. More specifically, "habitats can be defined as regions in
environmental space that are composed of multiple dimensions, each representing a biotic or abiotic
environmental variable; that is, any component or characteristic of the environment related directly (e.g.
forage biomass and quality) or indirectly (e.g. elevation) to the use of a location by the animal." For
example, a habitat might be an aquatic or terrestrial environment that can be further categorized as
amontane or alpine ecosystem. Habitat shifts provide important evidence of competition in nature where
one population changes relative to the habitats that most other individuals of the species occupy. For
example, one population of a species of tropical lizards (Tropidurus hispidus) has a flattened body relative
to the main populations that live in open savanna. The population that lives in an isolated rock outcrop
hides in crevasses where its flattened body offers a selective advantage. Habitat shifts also occur in the
developmental life history of amphibians and in insects that transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats.
Biotope and habitat are sometimes used interchangeably, but the former applies to a community's
environment, whereas the latter applies to a species' environment. Additionally, some species
are ecosystem engineers, altering the environment within a localized region. For instance, beavers
manage water levels by building dams which improves their habitat in a landscape.

Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt to and modify their environment by forming calcium carbonate skeletons. This provides
growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species.

Niche

Termite mounds with varied heights of chimneys regulate gas exchange, temperature and other environmental parameters that are
needed to sustain the internal physiology of the entire colony.

Definitions of the niche date back to 1917, but G. Evelyn Hutchinson made conceptual advances in 1957
by introducing a widely adopted definition: "the set of biotic and abiotic conditions in which a species is
able to persist and maintain stable population sizes." The ecological niche is a central concept in the
ecology of organisms and is sub-divided into the fundamental and the realized niche. The fundamental
niche is the set of environmental conditions under which a species is able to persist. The realized niche is
the set of environmental plus ecological conditions under which a species persists. The Hutchinsonian
niche is defined more technically as a "Euclidean hyperspace whose dimensions are defined as
environmental variables and whose size is a function of the number of values that the environmental
values may assume for which an organism has positive fitness."
Biogeographical patterns and range distributions are explained or predicted through knowledge of a
species' traits and niche requirements. Species have functional traits that are uniquely adapted to the
ecological niche. A trait is a measurable property, phenotype, or characteristic of an organism that may
influence its survival. Genes play an important role in the interplay of development and environmental
expression of traits. Resident species evolve traits that are fitted to the selection pressures of their local
environment. This tends to afford them a competitive advantage and discourages similarly adapted
species from having an overlapping geographic range.
The competitive exclusion principle states that two species cannot coexist indefinitely by living off the
same limiting resource; one will always outcompete the other. When similarly adapted species overlap
geographically, closer inspection reveals subtle ecological differences in their habitat or dietary
requirements. Some models and empirical studies, however, suggest that disturbances can stabilize the
coevolution and shared niche occupancy of similar species inhabiting species-rich communities. The
habitat plus the niche is called the ecotope, which is defined as the full range of environmental and
biological variables affecting an entire species.

Niche construction
Organisms are subject to environmental pressures, but they also modify their habitats. The regulatory
feedback between organisms and their environment can affect conditions from local (e.g., a beaver pond)
to global scales, over time and even after death, such as decaying logs or silica skeleton deposits from
marine organisms. The process and concept of ecosystem engineering has also been called niche
construction. Ecosystem engineers are defined as: "organisms that directly or indirectly modulate the
availability of resources to other species, by causing physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials. In
so doing they modify, maintain and create habitats."
The ecosystem engineering concept has stimulated a new appreciation for the influence that organisms
have on the ecosystem and evolutionary process. The term "niche construction" is more often used in
reference to the under-appreciated feedback mechanism of natural selection imparting forces on the
abiotic niche. An example of natural selection through ecosystem engineering occurs in the nests of social
insects, including ants, bees, wasps, and termites. There is an emergent homeostasis or homeorhesis in
the structure of the nest that regulates, maintains and defends the physiology of the entire colony.
Termite mounds, for example, maintain a constant internal temperature through the design of airconditioning chimneys. The structure of the nests themselves are subject to the forces of natural
selection. Moreover, a nest can survive over successive generations, so that progeny inherit both genetic
material and a legacy niche that was constructed before their time.

Biome
There are different methods to define the continental boundaries of biomes dominated by different
functional types of vegetative communities that are limited in distribution by climate, precipitation,
weather and other environmental variables. Biomes include tropical rainforest, temperate broadleaf and
mixed forest, temperate deciduous forest, taiga, tundra, hot desert, and polar desert. Other researchers
have recently categorized other biomes, such as the human and oceanic microbiomes. To a microbe, the
human body is a habitat and a landscape. Microbiomes were discovered largely through advances
in molecular genetics, which have revealed a hidden richness of microbial diversity on the planet. The
oceanic microbiome plays a significant role in the ecological biogeochemistry of the planet's oceans.

Biosphere
The largest scale of ecological organization is the biosphere: the total sum of ecosystems on the
planet. Ecological relationships regulate the flux of energy, nutrients, and climate all the way up to the
planetary scale. For example, the dynamic history of the planetary atmosphere's CO 2 and O2 composition
has been affected by the biogenic flux of gases coming from respiration and photosynthesis, with levels
fluctuating over time in relation to the ecology and evolution of plants and animals. Ecological theory has
also been used to explain self-emergent regulatory phenomena at the planetary scale: for example,
the Gaia hypothesis is an example of holism applied in ecological theory. The Gaia hypothesis states that
there is an emergent feedback loop generated by the metabolism of living organisms that maintains the
temperature of the Earth and atmospheric conditions within a narrow self-regulating range of tolerance.

Population ecology
Population ecology studies the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with
the environment. A population consists of individuals of the same species that live, interact and migrate
through the same niche and habitat.
A primary law of population ecology is the Malthusian growth model which states, "a population will grow
(or decline) exponentially as long as the environment experienced by all individuals in the population
remains constant." Simplified population models usually start with four variables: death,
birth, immigration, and emigration.
An example of an introductory population model describes a closed population, such as on an island,
where immigration and emigration does not take place. Hypotheses are evaluated with reference to a null
hypothesis which states that random processes create the observed data. In these island models, the rate
of population change is described by:

Where: N is the total number of individuals in the population

B is the number of births
D is the number of deaths,
b and d are the per capita rates of birth and death respectively; and
r is the per capita rate of population change.
The formula states that the rate of change in population size (dN/dT) is equal to births minus deaths
(B D).

Using these modelling techniques, Malthus' population principle of growth was later transformed
into a model known as the logistic equation:

Where: N is the number of individuals measured as biomass density,

a is the maximum per-capita rate of change; and
K is the carrying capacity of the population.
The formula states that the rate of change in population size (dN/dT) is equal to growth (aN) that is
limited by carrying capacity (1 N/K).
Population ecology builds upon these introductory models to further understand demographic processes
in real study populations. Commonly used types of data include life history, fecundity, and survivorship,
and these are analysed using mathematical techniques such as matrix algebra. The information is used for
managing wildlife stocks and setting harvest quotas. In cases when the use of null hypotheses is not
appropriate, ecologists may adopt different kinds of statistical methods, such as the Akaike information
criterion, or use models that can become mathematically complex as "several competing hypotheses are
simultaneously confronted with the data."

Metapopulations and migration

The concept of metapopulations was defined in 1969 as "a population of populations which go extinct
locally and recolonize." Metapopulation ecology is another statistical approach that is often used
in conservation research. Metapopulation models simplify the landscape into patches of varying levels of
quality, and metapopulations are linked by the migratory behaviours of organisms. Animal migration is set
apart from other kinds of movement because it involves the seasonal departure and return of individuals
from a habitat. Migration is also a population-level phenomenon, as with the migration routes followed
by plants as they occupied northern post-glacial environments. Plant ecologists use pollen records that
accumulate and stratify in wetlands to reconstruct the timing of plant migration and dispersal relative to
historic and contemporary climates. These migration routes involved an expansion of the range as plant
populations expanded from one area to another. There is a larger taxonomy of movement, such as
commuting, foraging, territorial behaviour, stasis, and ranging. Dispersal is usually distinguished from
migration because it involves the one way permanent movement of individuals from their birth
population into another population.
In metapopulation terminology, migrating individuals are classed as emigrants (when they leave a region)
or immigrants (when they enter a region), and sites are classed either as sources or sinks. A site is a
generic term that refers to places where ecologists sample populations, such as ponds or defined
sampling areas in a forest. Source patches are productive sites that generate a seasonal supply
of juveniles that migrate to other patch locations. Sink patches are unproductive sites that only receive
migrants; the population at the site will disappear unless rescued by an adjacent source patch or
environmental conditions become more favourable. Metapopulation models examine patch dynamics
over time to answer questions about spatial and demographic ecology. The ecology of metapopulations is
a dynamic process of extinction and colonization. Small patches of lower quality (i.e., sinks) are
maintained or rescued by a seasonal influx of new immigrants. A dynamic metapopulation structure
evolves from year to year, where some patches are sinks in dry years and are sources when conditions are
more favourable. Ecologists use a mixture of computer models and field studies to explain
metapopulation structure.

Community ecology

Interspecific interactions such aspredation are a key aspect of community ecology.

Community ecology examines how interactions among species and their environment affect the
abundance, distribution and diversity of species within communities.

Johnson & Stinchcomb (2007)

Community ecology is the study of the interactions among a collections of species that inhabit the same
geographic area. Research in community ecology might measure primary production in a wetland in
relation to decomposition and consumption rates. This requires an understanding of the community
connections between plants (i.e., primary producers) and the decomposers (e.g., fungi and bacteria), or
the analysis of predator-prey dynamics affecting amphibian biomass. Food webs and trophic levels are
two widely employed conceptual models used to explain the linkages among species.

Ecosystem ecology
These ecosystems, as we may call them, are of the most various kinds and sizes. They form one category
of the multitudinous physical systems of the universe, which range from the universe as a whole down to
the atom.

Tansley (1935)

A riparian forest in the White Mountains, New Hampshire (USA), an

example of ecosystem ecology

Ecosystems are habitats within biomes that form an integrated whole and a dynamically responsive
system having both physical and biological complexes. The underlying concept can be traced back to 1864
in the published work of George Perkins Marsh ("Man and Nature"). Within an ecosystem, organisms are

linked to the physical and biological components of their environment to which they are adapted.
Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems where the interaction of life processes form self-organizing
patterns across different scales of time and space. Ecosystems are broadly categorized
as terrestrial, freshwater, atmospheric, or marine. Differences stem from the nature of the unique
physical environments that shapes the biodiversity within each. A more recent addition to ecosystem
ecology is technoecosystems, which are affected by or primarily the result of human activity.

Food webs
A food web is the archetypal ecological network. Plants capture solar energy and use it to
synthesize simple sugars during photosynthesis. As plants grow, they accumulate nutrients and are eaten
by grazing herbivores, and the energy is transferred through a chain of organisms by consumption. The
simplified linear feeding pathways that move from a basal trophic species to a top consumer is called
the food chain. The larger interlocking pattern of food chains in an ecological community creates a
complex food web. Food webs are a type of concept map or a heuristic device that is used to illustrate
and study pathways of energy and material flows.

Generalized food web of waterbirds from Chesapeake Bay

Food webs are often limited relative to the real world. Complete empirical measurements are generally
restricted to a specific habitat, such as a cave or a pond, and principles gleaned from food
web microcosm studies are extrapolated to larger systems. Feeding relations require extensive
investigations into the gut contents of organisms, which can be difficult to decipher, or stable isotopes can
be used to trace the flow of nutrient diets and energy through a food web. Despite these limitations, food
webs remain a valuable tool in understanding community ecosystems.
Food webs exhibit principles of ecological emergence through the nature of trophic relationships: some
species have many weak feeding links (e.g., omnivores) while some are more specialized with fewer
stronger feeding links (e.g., primary predators). Theoretical and empirical studies identify nonrandom emergent patterns of few strong and many weak linkages that explain how ecological
communities remain stable over time. Food webs are composed of subgroups where members in a
community are linked by strong interactions, and the weak interactions occur between these subgroups.
This increases food web stability. Step by step lines or relations are drawn until a web of life is illustrated.

Trophic levels

A trophic pyramid (a) and a food-web (b) illustrating ecological relationships among creatures
that are typical of a northern Boreal terrestrial ecosystem.

The trophic pyramid roughly represents the biomass (usually measured as total dry-weight) at each level.
Plants generally have the greatest biomass. Names of trophic categories are shown to the right of the
pyramid. Some ecosystems, such as many wetlands, do not organize as a strict pyramid, because aquatic
plants are not as productive as long-lived terrestrial plants such as trees. Ecological trophic pyramids are
typically one of three kinds: 1) pyramid of numbers, 2) pyramid of biomass, or 3) pyramid of energy.
A trophic level (from Greek troph, , troph, meaning "food" or "feeding") is "a group of organisms
acquiring a considerable majority of its energy from the adjacent level nearer the abiotic source." Links in
food webs primarily connect feeding relations or trophism among species. Biodiversity within ecosystems
can be organized into trophic pyramids, in which the vertical dimension represents feeding relations that
become further removed from the base of the food chain up toward top predators, and the horizontal
dimension represents the abundance or biomass at each level. When the relative abundance or biomass
of each species is sorted into its respective trophic level, they naturally sort into a 'pyramid of numbers'.
Species are broadly categorized as autotrophs (or primary producers), heterotrophs (or consumers),
and Detritivores (ordecomposers). Autotrophs are organisms that produce their own food (production is
greater than respiration) by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis. Heterotrophs are organisms that must
feed on others for nourishment and energy (respiration exceeds production). Heterotrophs can be further
sub-divided into different functional groups, including primary consumers (strict herbivores), secondary
consumers (carnivorous predators that feed exclusively on herbivores) and tertiary consumers (predators
that feed on a mix of herbivores and predators). Omnivores do not fit neatly into a functional category
because they eat both plant and animal tissues. It has been suggested that omnivores have a greater
functional influence as predators, because compared to herbivores they are relatively inefficient at
grazing.
Trophic levels are part of the holistic or complex systems view of ecosystems. Each trophic level contains
unrelated species that are grouped together because they share common ecological functions, giving a
macroscopic view of the system. While the notion of trophic levels provides insight into energy flow and
top-down control within food webs, it is troubled by the prevalence of omnivory in real ecosystems. This
has led some ecologists to "reiterate that the notion that species clearly aggregate into discrete,
homogeneous trophic levels is fiction." Nonetheless, recent studies have shown that real trophic levels do
exist, but "above the herbivore trophic level, food webs are better characterized as a tangled web of
omnivores."

Ecological complexity
Complexity is understood as a large computational effort needed to piece together numerous interacting
parts exceeding the iterative memory capacity of the human mind. Global patterns of biological diversity
are complex. This biocomplexity stems from the interplay among ecological processes that operate and
influence patterns at different scales that grade into each other, such as transitional areas or ecotones
spanning landscapes. Complexity stems from the interplay among levels of biological organization as
energy and matter is integrated into larger units that superimpose onto the smaller parts. "What were
wholes on one level become parts on a higher one." Small scale patterns do not necessarily explain large
scale phenomena, otherwise captured in the expression (coined by Aristotle) 'the sum is greater than the
parts'.
"Complexity in ecology is of at least six distinct types: spatial, temporal, structural, process, behavioral,
and geometric."
From these principles, ecologists have identified emergent and selforganizingphenomena that operate at different environmental scales of influence, ranging from molecular
to planetary, and these require different explanations at each integrative level. Ecological complexity
relates to the dynamic resilience of ecosystems that transition to multiple shifting steady-states directed
by random fluctuations of history. Long-term ecological studies provide important track records to better
understand the complexity and resilience of ecosystems over longer temporal and broader spatial scales.
These studies are managed by the International Long Term Ecological Network (LTER). The longest
experiment in existence is the Park Grass Experiment, which was initiated in 1856. Another example is
the Hubbard Brook study, which has been in operation since 1960.

Holism
Holism remains a critical part of the theoretical foundation in contemporary ecological studies. Holism
addresses the biological organization of life that self-organizes into layers of emergent whole systems that
function according to nonreducible properties. This means that higher order patterns of a whole
functional system, such as an ecosystem, cannot be predicted or understood by a simple summation of
the parts. "New properties emerge because the components interact, not because the basic nature of the
components is changed."
Ecological studies are necessarily holistic as opposed to reductionistic. Holism has three scientific
meanings or uses that identify with ecology: 1) the mechanistic complexity of ecosystems, 2) the practical
description of patterns in quantitative reductionist terms where correlations may be identified but
nothing is understood about the causal relations without reference to the whole system, which leads to 3)
a metaphysical hierarchy whereby the causal relations of larger systems are understood without
reference to the smaller parts. Scientific holism differs from mysticism that has appropriated the same
term. An example of metaphysical holism is identified in the trend of increased exterior thickness in shells
of different species. The reason for a thickness increase can be understood through reference to
principles of natural selection via predation without need to reference or understand
the biomolecular properties of the exterior shells.

Relation to evolution
Ecology and evolution are considered sister disciplines of the life sciences. Natural selection, life
history, development, adaptation, populations, and inheritance are examples of concepts that thread
equally into ecological and evolutionary theory. Morphological, behavioural and genetic traits, for
example, can be mapped onto evolutionary trees to study the historical development of a species in
relation to their functions and roles in different ecological circumstances. In this framework, the analytical
tools of ecologists and evolutionists overlap as they organize, classify and investigate life through

common systematic principals, such as phylogenetics or the Linnaean system of taxonomy. The two
disciplines often appear together, such as in the title of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. There
is no sharp boundary separating ecology from evolution and they differ more in their areas of applied
focus. Both disciplines discover and explain emergent and unique properties and processes operating
across different spatial or temporal scales of organization. While the boundary between ecology and
evolution is not always clear, ecologists study the abiotic and biotic factors that influence evolutionary
processes, and evolution can be rapid, occurring on ecological timescales as short as one generation.

Behavioural ecology

Social display and colour variation in differently adapted species of chameleons (Bradypodion spp.).
Chameleons change their skin colour to match their background as a behavioural defence mechanism and
also use colour to communicate with other members of their species, such as dominant (left) versus
submissive (right) patterns shown in the three species (A-C) above.
All organisms are motile to some extent. Even plants express complex behaviour, including memory and
communication. Behavioural ecology is the study of an organism's behaviour in its environment and its
ecological and evolutionary implications. Ethology is the study of observable movement or behaviour in
animals.
This
could
include
investigations
of
motile sperm of
plants,
mobile phytoplankton, zooplankton swimming toward the female egg, the cultivation of fungi by weevils,
the mating dance of a salamander, or social gatherings of amoeba.
Adaptation is the central unifying concept in behavioural ecology. Behaviours can be recorded as traits
and inherited in much the same way that eye and hair colour can. Behaviours can evolve by means of
natural selection as adaptive traits conferring functional utilities that increases reproductive fitness.
Predator-prey interactions are an introductory concept into food-web studies as well as behavioural
ecology.Prey species can exhibit different kinds of behavioural adaptations to predators, such as avoid,
flee or defend. Many prey species are faced with multiple predators that differ in the degree of danger
posed. To be adapted to their environment and face predatory threats, organisms must balance their
energy budgets as they invest in different aspects of their life history, such as growth, feeding, mating,
socializing, or modifying their habitat. Hypotheses posited in behavioural ecology are generally based on
adaptive principles of conservation, optimization or efficiency. For example, "[t]he threat-sensitive
predator avoidance hypothesis predicts that prey should assess the degree of threat posed by different
predators and match their behaviour according to current levels of risk" or "[t]he optimal flight initiation
distance occurs where expected postencounter fitness is maximized, which depends on the prey's initial
fitness, benefits obtainable by not fleeing, energetic escape costs, and expected fitness loss due to
predation risk."

Symbiosis: Leafhoppers (Eurymela fenestrata) are protected by

ants(Iridomyrmex purpureus) in a symbioticrelationship.

The ants protect the leafhoppers from predators and in return the leafhoppers feeding on plants exude
honeydew from their anus that provides energy and nutrients to tending ants. Elaborate
sexual displays and posturing are encountered in the behavioural ecology of animals. The birds of
paradise, for example, sing and display elaborate ornaments during courtship. These displays serve a dual
purpose of signalling healthy or well-adapted individuals and desirable genes. The displays are driven
bysexual selection as an advertisement of quality of traits among suitors.

Social ecology
Social ecological behaviours are notable in the social insects, slime moulds, social spiders, human society,
and naked mole rats where eusocialism has evolved. Social behaviours include reciprocally beneficial
behaviours among kin and nest mates and evolve from kin and group selection. Kin selection explains
altruism through genetic relationships, whereby an altruistic behaviour leading to death is rewarded by
the survival of genetic copies distributed among surviving relatives. The social insects,
including ants, bees and wasps are most famously studied for this type of relationship because the male
drones are clones that share the same genetic make-up as every other male in the colony. In
contrast, group selectionists find examples of altruism among non-genetic relatives and explain this
through selection acting on the group, whereby it becomes selectively advantageous for groups if their
members express altruistic behaviours to one another. Groups with predominantly altruistic members
beat groups with predominantly selfish members.

Coevolution

Bumblebees and the flowers they pollinatehave coevolved so that both have
become dependent on each other for survival.

Ecological interactions can be classified broadly into a host and an associate relationship. A host is any
entity that harbours another that is called the associate. Relationships within a species that are mutually
or reciprocally beneficial are called mutualisms. Examples of mutualism include fungus-growing
antsemploying agricultural symbiosis, bacteria living in the guts of insects and other organisms, the fig
wasp and yucca moth pollination complex, lichens with fungi and photosynthetic algae, and corals with
photosynthetic algae. If there is a physical connection between host and associate, the relationship is
calledsymbiosis. Approximately 60% of all plants, for example, have a symbiotic relationship
with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi living in their roots forming an exchange network of carbohydrates
for mineral nutrients.
Indirect mutualisms occur where the organisms live apart. For example, trees living in the equatorial
regions of the planet supply oxygen into the atmosphere that sustains species living in distant polar
regions of the planet. This relationship is called commensalism because many others receive the benefits
of clean air at no cost or harm to trees supplying the oxygen. If the associate benefits while the host
suffers, the relationship is called parasitism. Although parasites impose a cost to their host (e.g., via
damage to their reproductive organs or propagules, denying the services of a beneficial partner), their net
effect on host fitness is not necessarily negative and, thus, becomes difficult to forecast. Coevolution is
also driven by competition among species or among members of the same species under the banner of
reciprocal antagonism, such as grasses competing for growth space. The Red Queen Hypothesis, for
example, posits that parasites track down and specialize on the locally common genetic defence systems
of its host that drives the evolution of sexual reproduction to diversify the genetic constituency of
populations responding to the antagonistic pressure.

Parasitism: A harvestman arachnid being parasitized bymites. The harvestman is being

consumed, while the mites benefit from traveling on and feeding off of their host.

Biogeography
Biogeography (an amalgamation of biology and geography) is the comparative study of the geographic
distribution of organisms and the corresponding evolution of their traits in space and time. The Journal of
Biogeography was established in 1974. Biogeography and ecology share many of their disciplinary roots.
For example, the theory of island biogeography, published by the mathematician Robert MacArthur and
ecologist Edward O. Wilson in 1967 is considered one of the fundamentals of ecological theory.
Biogeography has a long history in the natural sciences concerning the spatial distribution of plants and
animals. Ecology and evolution provide the explanatory context for biogeographical
studies. Biogeographical patterns result from ecological processes that influence range distributions, such
as migration and dispersal. and from historical processes that split populations or species into different
areas. The biogeographic processes that result in the natural splitting of species explains much of the
modern distribution of the Earth's biota. The splitting of lineages in a species is calledvicariance
biogeography and it is a sub-discipline of biogeography. There are also practical applications in the field of
biogeography concerning ecological systems and processes. For example, the range and distribution of

biodiversity and invasive species responding to climate change is a serious concern and active area of
research in the context of global warming.

r/K-Selection theory
A population ecology concept is r/K selection theory, one of the first predictive models in ecology used to
explain life-history evolution. The premise behind the r/K selection model is that natural selection
pressures change according to population density. For example, when an island is first colonized, density
of individuals is low. The initial increase in population size is not limited by competition, leaving an
abundance of available resources for rapid population growth. These early phases of population
growth experience density-independent forces of natural selection, which is called r-selection. As the
population becomes more crowded, it approaches the island's carrying capacity, thus forcing individuals
to compete more heavily for fewer available resources. Under crowded conditions, the population
experiences density-dependent forces of natural selection, called K-selection.
In the r/K-selection model, the first variable r is the intrinsic rate of natural increase in population size and
the second variable K is the carrying capacity of a population. Different species evolve different lifehistory strategies spanning a continuum between these two selective forces. An r-selected species is one
that has high birth rates, low levels of parental investment, and high rates of mortality before individuals
reach maturity. Evolution favours high rates of fecundity in r-selected species. Many kinds of insects
and invasive species exhibit r-selected characteristics. In contrast, a K-selected species has low rates of
fecundity, high levels of parental investment in the young, and low rates of mortality as individuals
mature. Humans and elephants are examples of species exhibiting K-selected characteristics, including
longevity and efficiency in the conversion of more resources into fewer offspring.

Molecular ecology
The important relationship between ecology and genetic inheritance predates modern techniques for
molecular analysis. Molecular ecological research became more feasible with the development of rapid
and accessible genetic technologies, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The rise of molecular
technologies and influx of research questions into this new ecological field resulted in the
publicationMolecular Ecology in 1992. Molecular ecology uses various analytical techniques to study
genes in an evolutionary and ecological context. In 1994, John Avise also played a leading role in this area
of science with the publication of his book, Molecular Markers, Natural History and Evolution. Newer
technologies opened a wave of genetic analysis into organisms once difficult to study from an ecological
or evolutionary standpoint, such as bacteria, fungi and nematodes. Molecular ecology engendered a new
research paradigm for investigating ecological questions considered otherwise intractable. Molecular
investigations revealed previously obscured details in the tiny intricacies of nature and improved
resolution into probing questions about behavioural and biogeographical ecology. For example, molecular
ecology revealed promiscuous sexual behaviour and multiple male partners in tree swallows previously
thought to be socially monogamous. In a biogeographical context, the marriage between genetics,
ecology and evolution resulted in a new sub-discipline called phylogeography.

Human ecology
The history of life on Earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.
To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been
molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life
actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented
by the present century has one species man acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.

Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring" Ecology is as much a biological science as it is a human science. Human
ecology is an interdisciplinary investigation into the ecology of our species. "Human ecology may be
defined: (1) from a bio-ecological standpoint as the study of man as the ecological dominant in plant and
animal communities and systems; (2) from a bio-ecological standpoint as simply another animal affecting
and being affected by his physical environment; and (3) as a human being, somehow different from
animal life in general, interacting with physical and modified environments in a distinctive and creative
way. A truly interdisciplinary human ecology will most likely address itself to all three." The term was
formally introduced in 1921, but many sociologists, geographers, psychologists, and other disciplines were
interested in human relations to natural systems centuries prior, especially in the late 19th century.
The ecological complexities human beings are facing through the technological transformation of the
planetary biome has brought on the Anthropocene. The unique set of circumstances has generated the
need for a new unifying science called coupled human and natural systems that builds upon, but moves
beyond the field of human ecology. Ecosystems tie into human societies through the critical and all
encompassing life-supporting functions they sustain. In recognition of these functions and the incapability
of traditional economic valuation methods to see the value in ecosystems, there has been a surge of
interest in social-natural capital, which provides the means to put a value on the stock and use of
information and materials stemming from ecosystem goods and services. Ecosystems produce, regulate,
maintain, and supply services of critical necessity and beneficial to human health (cognitive and
physiological), economies, and they even provide an information or reference function as a living library
giving opportunities for science and cognitive development in children engaged in the complexity of the
natural world. Ecosystems relate importantly to human ecology as they are the ultimate base foundation
of global economics as every commodity and the capacity for exchange ultimately stems from the
ecosystems on Earth.

Restoration and management

Ecosystem management is not just about science nor is it simply an extension of traditional resource
management; it offers a fundamental reframing of how humans may work with nature. Grumbine (1994)
Ecology is an employed science of restoration, repairing disturbed sites through human intervention, in
natural resource management, and inenvironmental impact assessments. Edward O. Wilson predicted in
1992 that the 21st century "will be the era of restoration in ecology".Ecological science has boomed in the
industrial investment of restoring ecosystems and their processes in abandoned sites after disturbance.
Natural resource managers, in forestry, for example, employ ecologists to develop, adapt, and
implement ecosystem based methods into the planning, operation, and restoration phases of land-use.
Ecological science is used in the methods of sustainable harvesting, disease and fire outbreak
management, in fisheries stock management, for integrating land-use with protected areas and
communities, and conservation in complex geo-political landscapes.

Relation to the environment

Both physical parameters and biotic attributes are dynamically interlinked, and contain resources for
organisms at any time throughout their life cycle. Like "ecology," the term "environment" has different
conceptual meanings and overlaps with the concept of "nature." Environment "... includes the physical
world, the social world of human relations and the built world of human creation." The physical
environment is external to the level of biological organization under investigation,
including abiotic factors such as temperature, radiation, light, chemistry, climate and geology. The biotic
environment includes genes, cells, organisms, members of the same species (conspecifics) and other
species that share a habitat.
The distinction between external and internal environments, however, is an abstraction parsing life and
environment into units or facts that are inseparable in reality. There is an interpenetration of cause and

effect between the environment and life. The laws of thermodynamics, for example, apply to ecology by
means of its physical state. With an understanding of metabolic and thermodynamic principles, a
complete accounting of energy and material flow can be traced through an ecosystem. In this way, the
environmental and ecological relations are studied through reference to conceptually manageable and
isolated material parts. After the effective environmental components are understood through reference
to their causes, however, they conceptually link back together as an integrated whole,
or holocoenoticsystem as it was once called. This is known as the dialectical approach to ecology. The
dialectical approach examines the parts, but integrates the organism and the environment into a dynamic
whole (orumwelt). Change in one ecological or environmental factor can concurrently affect the dynamic
state of an entire ecosystem.

Disturbance and resilience

Ecosystems are regularly confronted with natural environmental variations and disturbances over time
and geographic space. A disturbance is any process that removes biomass from a community, such as a
fire, flood, drought, or predation. Disturbances occur over vastly different ranges in terms of magnitudes
as well as distances and time periods, and are both the cause and product of natural fluctuations in death
rates, species assemblages, and biomass densities within an ecological community. These disturbances
create places of renewal where new directions emerge from the patchwork of natural experimentation
and opportunity. Ecological resilience is a cornerstone theory in ecosystem management. Biodiversity
fuels the resilience of ecosystems acting as a kind of regenerative insurance.

Metabolism and the early atmosphere

Metabolism the rate at which energy and material resources are taken up from the environment,
transformed within an organism, and allocated to maintenance, growth and reproduction is a
fundamental physiological trait.
Ernest et al., estimated that the Earth was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. As it cooled and a
crust and oceans formed, its atmosphere transformed from being dominated by hydrogen to one
composed mostly of methane and ammonia. Over the next billion years, the metabolic activity of life
transformed the atmosphere into a mixture of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. These gases
changed the way that light from the sun hit the Earth's surface and greenhouse effects trapped heat.
There were untapped sources of free energy within the mixture of reducing and oxidizing gasses that set
the stage for primitive ecosystems to evolve and, in turn, the atmosphere also evolved.

Radiation: heat, temperature and light

The biology of life operates within a certain range of temperatures. Heat is a form of energy that regulates
temperature. Heat affects growth rates, activity, behaviour and primary production. Temperature is
largely dependent on the incidence of solar radiation. The latitudinal and longitudinal spatial variation
of temperature greatly affects climates and consequently the distribution of biodiversity and levels of
primary production in different ecosystems or biomes across the planet. Heat and temperature relate
importantly to metabolic activity. Poikilotherms, for example, have a body temperature that is largely
regulated and dependent on the temperature of the external environment. In
contrast, homeotherms regulate their internal body temperature by expending metabolic energy.
There is a relationship between light, primary production, and ecological energy budgets. Sunlight is the
primary input of energy into the planet's ecosystems. Light is composed of electromagnetic energy of
different wavelengths. Radiant energy from the sun generates heat, provides photons of light measured
as active energy in the chemical reactions of life, and also acts as a catalyst for genetic mutation.

Plants, algae, and some bacteria absorb light and assimilate the energy through photosynthesis.
Organisms capable of assimilating energy by photosynthesis or through inorganic fixation
of H2S are autotrophs. Autotrophs responsible for primary production assimilate light energy which
becomes metabolically stored as potential energy in the form of biochemical enthalpic bonds.

Physical environments
Wetland conditions such as shallow water, high plant productivity, and anaerobic substrates provide a
suitable environment for important physical, biological, and chemical processes. Because of these
processes, wetlands play a vital role in global nutrient and element cycles.
Cronk & Fennessy (2001), mentioned that diffusion of carbon dioxide and oxygen is approximately 10,000
times slower in water than in air. When soils are flooded, they quickly lose oxygen, becoming hypoxic (an
environment with O2 concentration below 2 mg/liter) and eventually completely anoxic where anaerobic
bacteria thrive among the roots. Water also influences the intensity and spectral composition of light as it
reflects off the water surface and submerged particles. Aquatic plants exhibit a wide variety of
morphological and physiological adaptations that allow them to survive, compete and diversify in these
environments. For example, their roots and stems contain large air spaces (aerenchyma) that regulate the
efficient transportation of gases (for example, CO 2 and O2) used in respiration and photosynthesis.
Salt water plants (halophytes) have additional specialized adaptations, such as the development of special
organs for shedding salt and osmoregulating their internal salt (NaCl) concentrations, to live
in estuarine, brackish, or oceanic environments. Anaerobic soil microorganisms in aquatic environments
use nitrate, manganese ions, ferric ions, sulfate, carbon dioxide and some organic compounds; other
microorganisms are facultative anaerobes and use oxygen during respiration when the soil becomes drier.
The activity of soil microorganisms and the chemistry of the water reduces the oxidationreductionpotentials of the water. Carbon dioxide, for example, is reduced to methane (CH 4) by
methanogenic bacteria. The physiology of fish is also specially adapted to compensate for environmental
salt levels through osmoregulation. Their gills form electrochemical gradients that mediate salt excretion
in salt water and uptake in fresh water.

Gravity
The shape and energy of the land is significantly affected by gravitational forces. On a large scale, the
distribution of gravitational forces on the earth is uneven and influences the shape and movement
oftectonic plates as well as influencing geomorphic processes such as orogeny and erosion. These forces
govern many of the geophysical properties and distributions of ecological biomes across the Earth. On the
organismal scale, gravitational forces provide directional cues for plant and fungal growth (gravitropism),
orientation cues for animal migrations, and influence the biomechanics and size of animals. Ecological
traits, such as allocation of biomass in trees during growth are subject to mechanical failure as
gravitational forces influence the position and structure of branches and leaves. Thecardiovascular
systems of animals are functionally adapted to overcome pressure and gravitational forces that change
according to the features of organisms (e.g., height, size, shape), their behaviour (e.g., diving, running,
flying), and the habitat occupied (e.g., water, hot deserts, cold tundra).

Pressure
Climatic and osmotic pressure places physiological constraints on organisms, especially those that fly and
respire at high altitudes, or dive to deep ocean depths. These constraints influence vertical limits of
ecosystems in the biosphere, as organisms are physiologically sensitive and adapted to atmospheric and
osmotic water pressure differences. For example, oxygen levels decrease with decreasing pressure and

are a limiting factor for life at higher altitudes. Water transportation by plants is another important
ecophysiological parameter affected by osmotic pressure gradients. Water pressure in the depths of
oceans requires that organisms adapt to these conditions. For example, diving animals such
as whales, dolphins and seals are specially adapted to deal with changes in sound due to water pressure
differences. Differences between hagfish species provide another example of adaptation to deep-sea
pressure through specialized protein adaptations.

Wind and turbulence

The architecture of the inflorescence in grasses is subject to the physical pressures of wind and shaped by the forces of
natural selection facilitating wind-pollination (anemophily).

Turbulent forces in air and water affect the environment and ecosystem distribution, form and dynamics.
On a planetary scale, ecosystems are affected by circulation patterns in the global trade winds. Wind
power and the turbulent forces it creates can influence heat, nutrient, and biochemical profiles of
ecosystems. For example, wind running over the surface of a lake creates turbulence, mixing the water
column and influencing the environmental profile to create thermally layered zones, affecting how fish,
algae, and other parts of the aquatic ecology are structured.
Wind speed and turbulence also influence evapotranspiration rates and energy budgets in plants and
animals. Wind speed, temperature and moisture content can vary as winds travel across different land
features and elevations. For example, the westerlies come into contact with the coastal and interior
mountains of western North America to produce a rain shadow on the leeward side of the mountain. The
air expands and moisture condenses as the winds increase in elevation; this is called orographic lift and
can cause precipitation. This environmental process produces spatial divisions in biodiversity, as species
adapted to wetter conditions are range-restricted to the coastal mountain valleys and unable to migrate
across the xeric ecosystems (e.g., of the Columbia Basin in western North America) to intermix with sister
lineages that are segregated to the interior mountain systems.

Fire
Forest fires modify the land by leaving behind an environmental mosaic that diversifies the landscape into
different seral stages and habitats of varied quality (left). Some species are adapted to forest fires, such as
pine trees that open their cones only after fire exposure (right).
Plants convert carbon dioxide into biomass and emit oxygen into the atmosphere. Approximately 350
million years ago (at the end of the Devonian period), the amount of photosynthesis brought the
concentration of atmospheric oxygen above 17%, which allowed combustion to occur. Fire releases
CO2 and converts fuel into ash and tar. Fire is a significant ecological parameter that raises many issues

pertaining to its control and suppression. While the issue of fire in relation to ecology and plants has been
recognized for a long time, Charles Cooper brought attention to the issue of forest fires in relation to the
ecology of forest fire suppression and management in the 1960s.
Native North Americans were among the first to influence fire regimes by controlling their spread near
their homes or by lighting fires to stimulate the production of herbaceous foods and basketry materials.
Fire creates a heterogenous ecosystem age and canopy structure, and the altered soil nutrient supply and
cleared canopy structure opens new ecological niches for seedling establishment. Most ecosystems are
adapted to natural fire cycles. Plants, for example, are equipped with a variety of adaptations to deal with
forest fires. Some species (e.g., Pinus halepensis) cannot germinate until after their seeds have lived
through a fire or been exposed to certain compounds from smoke. Environmentally triggered germination
of seeds is called serotiny. Fire plays a major role in the persistence and resilience of ecosystems.

Soils
Soil is the living top layer of mineral and organic dirt that covers the surface of the planet. It is the chief
organizing centre of most ecosystem functions, and it is of critical importance in agricultural science and
ecology. The decomposition of dead organic matter (for example, leaves on the forest floor), results in
soils containing minerals and nutrients that feed into plant production.
The whole of the planet's soil ecosystems is called the pedosphere where a large biomass of the Earth's
biodiversity organizes into trophic levels. Invertebrates that feed and shred larger leaves, for example,
create smaller bits for smaller organisms in the feeding chain. Collectively, these organisms are
the detritivores that regulate soil formation. Tree roots, fungi, bacteria, worms, ants, beetles, centipedes,
spiders, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and other less familiar creatures all work to create the
trophic web of life in soil ecosystems.
Soils form composite phenotypes where inorganic matter is enveloped into the physiology of a whole
community. As organisms feed and migrate through soils they physically displace materials, an ecological
process called bioturbation. This aerates soils and stimulates heterotrophic growth and production.
Soil microorganisms are influenced by and feed back into the trophic dynamics of the ecosystem. No
single axis of causality can be discerned to segregate the biological from geomorphological systems in
soils. Paleoecological studies of soils places the origin for bioturbation to a time before the Cambrian
period. Other events, such as the evolution of trees and the colonization of land in the Devonian period
played a significant role in the early development of ecological trophism in soils.

Biogeochemistry and climate

Ecologists study and measure nutrient budgets to understand how these materials are regulated, flow,
and recycled through the environment. This research has led to an understanding that there is global
feedback between ecosystems and the physical parameters of this planet, including minerals, soil, pH,
ions, water and atmospheric gases. Six major elements (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,sulfur,
and phosphorus; H, C, N, O, S, and P) form the constitution of all biological macromolecules and feed into
the Earth's geochemical processes. From the smallest scale of biology, the combined effect of billions
upon billions of ecological processes amplify and ultimately regulate the biogeochemical cycles of the
Earth. Understanding the relations and cycles mediated between these elements and their ecological
pathways has significant bearing toward understanding global biogeochemistry.
The ecology of global carbon budgets gives one example of the linkage between biodiversity and
biogeochemistry. It is estimated that the Earth's oceans hold 40,000 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon, that
vegetation and soil hold 2070 Gt, and that fossil fuel emissions are 6.3 Gt carbon per year. There have
been major restructurings in these global carbon budgets during the Earth's history, regulated to a large

extent by the ecology of the land. For example, through the early-mid Eocene volcanic outgassing, the
oxidation of methane stored in wetlands, and seafloor gases increased atmospheric CO 2 (carbon dioxide)
concentrations to levels as high as 3500 ppm.
In the Oligocene, from 25 to 32 million years ago, there was another significant restructuring of the
global carbon cycle as grasses evolved C4 photosynthesis and expanded their ranges. This new
photosynthetic pathway evolved in response to the drop in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations below 550
ppm. The relative abundance and distribution of biodiversity alters the dynamics between organisms and
their environment such that ecosystems can be both cause and effect in relation to climate change.
Human-driven modifications to the planet's ecosystems (e.g., disturbance, biodiversity loss, agriculture)
contributes to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
Transformation of the global carbon cycle in the next century is projected to raise planetary
temperatures, lead to more extreme fluctuations in weather, alter species distributions, and increase
extinction rates. The effect of global warming is already being registered in melting glaciers, melting
mountain ice caps, and rising sea levels. Consequently, species distributions are changing along
waterfronts and in continental areas where migration patterns and breeding grounds are tracking the
prevailing shifts in climate. Large sections of permafrost are also melting to create a new mosaic of
flooded areas having increased rates of soil decomposition activity that raises methane (CH 4) emissions.
There is concern over increases in atmospheric methane in the context of the global carbon cycle,
because methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times more effective at absorbing long-wave radiation
than CO2 on a 100-year time scale. Hence, there is a relationship between global warming, decomposition
and respiration in soils and wetlands producing significant climate feedbacks and globally altered
biogeochemical cycles.

Early beginnings
Ecology has a complex origin, due in large part to its interdisciplinary nature. Ancient Greek philosophers
such as Hippocrates and Aristotle were among the first to record observations on natural history.
However, they viewed life in terms of essentialism, where species were conceptualized as static
unchanging things while varieties were seen as aberrations of an idealized type. This contrasts against the
modern understanding of ecological theory where varieties are viewed as the real phenomena of interest
and having a role in the origins of adaptations by means of natural selection. Early conceptions of
ecology, such as a balance and regulation in nature can be traced to Herodotus (died c. 425 BC), who
described one of the earliest accounts of mutualism in his observation of "natural dentistry". Basking Nile
crocodiles, he noted, would open their mouths to give sandpipers safe access to pluck leeches out, giving
nutrition to the sandpiper and oral hygiene for the crocodile. Aristotle was an early influence on the
philosophical development of ecology. He and his student Theophrastus made extensive observations on
plant and animal migrations, biogeography, physiology, and on their behaviour, giving an early analogue
to the modern concept of an ecological niche.
Ecological concepts such as food chains, population regulation, and productivity were first developed in
the 1700s, through the published works of microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (16321723) and
botanist Richard Bradley (16881732). Biogeographer Alexander von Humbolt (17691859) was an early
pioneer in ecological thinking and was among the first to recognize ecological gradients, where species
are replaced or altered in form along environmental gradients, such as a cline forming along a rise in
elevation. Humbolt drew inspiration from Isaac Newton as he developed a form of "terrestrial physics." In
Newtonian fashion, he brought a scientific exactitude for measurement into natural history and even
alluded to concepts that are the foundation of a modern ecological law on species-to-area
relationships. Natural historians, such as Humbolt, James Hutton and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (among
others) laid the foundations of the modern ecological sciences. The term "ecology" (German: Oekologie,
kologie) is of a more recent origin and was first coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in his

book Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866). Haeckel was a zoologist, artist, writer, and later in
life a professor of comparative anatomy.
By ecology, we mean the whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment including, in
the broad sense, all the "conditions of existence."... Thus the theory of evolution explains the
housekeeping relations of organisms mechanistically as the necessary consequences of effectual causes
and so forms the monistic groundwork of ecology.

Ernst Haeckel (1866)

Ernst Haeckel (left) and Eugenius Warming (right), two founders of ecology

Opinions differ on who was the founder of modern ecological theory. Some mark Haeckel's definition as
the beginning; others say it was Eugenius Warming with the writing of Oecology of Plants: An Introduction
to the Study of Plant Communities (1895), or Carl Linnaeus' principles on the economy of nature that
matured in the early 18th century. Linnaeus founded an early branch of ecology that he called the
economy of nature. His works influenced Charles Darwin, who adopted Linnaeus' phrase on the economy
or polity of nature in The Origin of Species. Linnaeus was the first to frame the balance of nature as a
testable hypothesis. Haeckel, who admired Darwin's work, defined ecology in reference to the economy
of nature, which has led some to question whether ecology and the economy of nature are synonymous.

The layout of the first ecological experiment, carried out in a grass garden at Woburn Abbey in 1816, was
noted by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species.

The experiment studied the performance of different mixtures of species planted in different kinds of
soils. From Aristotle until Darwin, the natural world was predominantly considered static and unchanging.
Prior to The Origin of Species, there was little appreciation or understanding of the dynamic and reciprocal
relations between organisms, their adaptations, and the environment. An exception is the 1789
publication Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White (17201793), considered by some to be one of
the earliest texts on ecology. While Charles Darwin is mainly noted for his treatise on evolution, he was
one of the founders of soil ecology, and he made note of the first ecological experiment in The Origin of
Species. Evolutionary theory changed the way that researchers approached the ecological sciences.
Nowhere can one see more clearly illustrated what may be called the sensibility of such an organic
complex,--expressed by the fact that whatever affects any species belonging to it, must speedily have its
influence of some sort upon the whole assemblage. He will thus be made to see the impossibility of
studying any form completely, out of relation to the other forms,--the necessity for taking a
comprehensive survey of the whole as a condition to a satisfactory understanding of any part.

II. Principles of Ecological Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is the act of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships
between organisms and their environment. The phrase was reportedly coined by Australian agricultural
scientist Gordon McClymont. It has been defined as "an integrated system of plant and animal production
practices having a site-specific application that will last over the long term:

Satisfy human food and fiber needs

Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy
depends
Make the most efficient use of non-renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where
appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls
Sustain the economic viability of farm operations
Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole

A.

Diversity (genetic, species, ecosystem)

BIODIVERSITY
Biological diversity refers to the variety of life forms found on earth, their genetic constitution and of the
ecosystem and ecological processes of which they are part (IIRR, 1993).
Agricultural biodiversity is the diversity of biological resources we have domesticated for food, clothing,
medicine, shelter and other uses (MASIPAG, undated).
Agricultural biodiversity refers to the variety and variability of animals, plants, and micro-organisms on
earth that are important to food and agriculture which result from the interaction between the
environment, genetic resources and the management systems and practices used by people (Pimbert,
1999).

Levels of Biodiversity
1. Genetic diversity

Refers to the sum total of heritable traits or characteristics contained in the genes of each living
organism.
This diversity of genetic material within a species is the reason why no two individuals are
identical.
Varieties of crops that are genetically close or identical may leave them open to devastation by
disease, insects or extreme weather conditions.

2. Species diversity

Refers to all species of plants, animals and microorganisms.

This diversity refers to the variety of different species within a given ecosystem.
A biodiverse farm has not only a diversity of wild species of plants and animals, but also a
diversity of crops and livestock.

3. Ecosystem diversity

Refers to the variety of habitats, biotic communities and ecological processes found within and
among ecosystems.
A farm can have a diversity of habitats: ponds, streams, wetlands, woods, strip of shrubs,
orchards, meadows, pastures and of course fields of crops.

Importance of Agrobiodiversity
1. Source of food, medicine, fibers, housing materials, fuel, cash, and other products of economic value.
2. Enhanced soil fertility.
3. Soil and water conservation.
4. Enhanced crop protection.
5. Pollination and dispersal.
6. It provides stability to farming systems by compensating for the losses resulting from the
failure of a particular component due to natural and man-made disturbances.
7. It provides more components for farm integration, which increases productivity and reduces inputs.
Products of animal diversity (Pimbert, 1999)
1. Food
2. Nutrients
3. Clothing
4. Utensils
5. Construction
6. Transport

7. Traction
8. Fuel
9. Fertilizer
10. Income
11. Insurance
12. Spiritual functions

How to attain agrobiodiversity?

1. Diversify farm enterprises
2. Incorporate livestock into the farm
3. Polyculture
4. Take marginal land out of production and leave for wildlife
5. Plant trees and native plants
6. Leave strips of vegetation at field edges
7. Provide sanctuaries for beneficial organisms
8. Plant cover crops
9. Use different varieties of a crop
10. Use different breed of animals
11. Use varieties with broad genetic database
12. Use conservation tillage
13. Cut use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers

Reminders
1.The choice of methods for attaining agrobiodiversity depends on conditions of
the farm and the circumstances of the farmer.
2. The reality is that the farm is a part of nature, and natural processes hold sway. In a natural ecosystem
there is no monoculture; in a natural ecosystem, biodiversity is the rule. Horne and McDermott, 2001.
3. Do not put all your eggs in one basket old saying

B.

Integrated nutrient cycling

Nutrient cycle

Composting within agricultural systems capitalizes upon the natural services of nutrient recycling in
ecosystems. Bacteria, fungi,insects, earthworms, bugs, and other creatures dig and digest the compost
Into fertile soil. The minerals and nutrients in the soil is recycled back into the production of crops.

A nutrient cycle (or ecological recycling) is the movement and exchange of organic and inorganic matter
back into the production of living matter. The process is regulated by food web pathways
that decompose matter into mineral nutrients. Nutrient cycles occur within ecosystems. Ecosystems are
interconnected systems where matter and energy flows and is exchanged as organisms feed, digest, and
migrate about. Minerals and nutrients accumulate in varied densities and uneven configurations across
the planet. Ecosystems recycle locally, converting mineral nutrients into the production of biomass, and
on a larger scale they participate in a global system of inputs and outputs where matter is exchanged and
transported through a larger system of biogeochemical cycles.
Particulate matter is recycled by biodiversity inhabiting the detritus in soils, water columns, and
along particle surfaces (including 'aeoliandust'). Ecologists may refer to ecological recycling, organic
recycling, biocycling, cycling, biogeochemical recycling, natural recycling, or just recycling in reference to
the work of nature. Whereas the global biogeochemical cycles describe the natural movement and
exchange of every kind of particulate matter through the living and non-living components of the Earth,
nutrient cycling refers to the biodiversity within community food web systems that loop organic nutrients
or water supplies back into production. The difference is a matter of scale and compartmentalization with
nutrient cycles feeding into global biogeochemical cycles. Solar energy flows through ecosystems along
unidirectional and noncyclic pathways, whereas the movement of mineral nutrients is cyclic. Mineral
cycles include carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle, water cycle, phosphorus cycle, oxygen cycle,
among others that continually recycle along with other mineral nutrients into productive ecological
nutrition. Global biogeochemical cycles are the sum product of localized ecological recycling regulated by
the action of food webs moving particulate matter from one living generation onto the next. Earths
ecosystems have recycled mineral nutrients sustainably for billions of years.
The nutrient cycle is nature's recycling system. All forms of recycling have feedback loops that use energy
in the process of putting material resources back into use. Recycling in ecology is regulated to a large
extent during the process of decomposition. Ecosystems employ biodiversity in the food webs that recycle

natural materials, such as mineral nutrients, which includes water. Recycling in natural systems is one of
the many ecosystem services that sustain and contribute to the well-being of human societies.

A nutrient cycle of a typical terrestrial ecosystem.

There is much overlap between the terms for biogeochemical cycle and nutrient cycle. Most textbooks
integrate the two and seem to treat them as synonymous terms. However, the terms often appear
independently. Nutrient cycle is more often used in direct reference to the idea of an intra-system cycle,
where an ecosystem functions as a unit. From a practical point it does not make sense to assess a
terrestrial ecosystem by considering the full column of air above it as well as the great depths of Earth
below it. While an ecosystem often has no clear boundary, as a working model it is practical to consider
the functional community where the bulk of matter and energy transfer occurs. Nutrient cycling occurs in
ecosystems that participate in the "larger biogeochemical cycles of the earth through a system of inputs
and outputs."

Complete and closed loop

All systems recycle. The biosphere is a network of continually recycling materials and information in
alternating cycles of convergence and divergence. As materials converge or become more concentrated
they gain in quality, increasing their potentials to drive useful work in proportion to their concentrations
relative to the environment. As their potentials are used, materials diverge, or become more dispersed in
the landscape, only to be concentrated again at another time and place.
Ecosystems are capable of complete recycling. Complete recycling means that 100% of the waste material
can be reconstituted indefinitely. This idea was captured by Howard T. Odum when he penned that "it is
thoroughly demonstrated by ecological systems and geological systems that all the chemical elements
and many organic substances can be accumulated by living systems from background crustal or oceanic
concentrations without limit as to concentration so long as there is available solar or other source of
potential energy". In 1979 Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen proposed a fourth law of entropy stating that
complete recycling is impossible. Despite Georgescu-Roegen's extensive intellectual contributions to the
science of ecological economics, the fourth law has been rejected in line with observations of ecological
recycling. However, some authors state that complete recycling is impossible for technological waste.

A simplified food web illustrating a three-trophic food chain (producers-herbivores-carnivores) linked to decomposers. The
movement of mineral nutrients through the food chain, into the mineral nutrient pool, and back into the trophic system illustrates
ecological recycling. The movement of energy, in contrast, is unidirectional and noncyclic.

Ecosystems execute closed loop recycling where demand for the nutrients that adds to the growth
of biomass exceeds supply within that system. There are regional and spatial differences in the rates of
growth and exchange of materials, where some ecosystems may be in nutrient debt (sinks) where others
will have extra supply (sources). These differences relate to climate, topography, and geological history
leaving behind different sources of parent material. In terms of a food web, a cycle or loop is defined as "a
directed sequence of one or more links starting from, and ending at, the same species." An example of
this is the microbial food web in the ocean, where "bacteria are exploited, and controlled, by protozoa,
including heterotrophic microflagellates which are in turn exploited by ciliates. This grazing activity is
accompanied by excretion of substances which are in turn used by the bacteria, so that the system more
or less operates in a closed circuit."

Ecological recycling
A large fraction of the elements composing living matter reside at any instant of time in the worlds biota.
Because the earthly pool of these elements is limited and the rates of exchange among the various
components of the biota are extremely fast with respect to geological time, it is quite evident that much
of the same material is being incorporated again and again into different biological forms. This
observation gives rise to the notion that, on the average, matters (and some amounts of energy) are
involved in cycles.
An example of ecological recycling occurs in the enzymatic digestion ofcellulose. "Cellulose, one of the
most abundant organic compounds on Earth, is the major polysaccharide in plants where it is part of the
cell walls. Cellulose-degrading enzymes participate in the natural, ecological recycling of plant material."
Different ecosystems can vary in their recycling rates of litter, which creates a complex feedback on
factors such as the competitive dominance of certain plant species. Different rates and patterns of
ecological recycling leave a legacy of environmental effects with implications for the future evolution of
ecosystems.

From the largest to the smallest of creatures, nutrients are recycled by their
movement, by their wastes, and by their metabolic activities.

This illustration shows an example of the whale pump that cycles nutrients through the layers of the
oceanic water column. Whales can migrate to great depths to feed on bottom fish (such as sand
lance Ammodytes spp.) and surface to feed on krill andplankton at shallower levels. The whale pump
enhances growth and productivity in other parts of the ecosystem.
Ecological recycling is common in organic farming, where nutrient management is fundamentally
different compared to agri-business styles of soil management. Organic farms that employ ecosystem
recycling to a greater extent support more species (increased levels of biodiversity) and have a
differentfood web structure. Organic agricultural ecosystems rely on the services of biodiversity for the
recycling of nutrients through soils instead of relying on the supplementation of synthetic fertilizers. The
model for ecological recycling agriculture adheres to the following principals:

Protection of biodiversity.
Use of renewable energy.
Recycling of plant nutrients.

Ecosystem engineers

An illustration of an earthworm castingtaken from Charles Darwin's publication on the movement of

organic matter in soils through the ecological activities of worms.

The persistent legacy of environmental feedback that is left behind by or as an extension of the ecological
actions of organisms is known as niche construction or ecosystem engineering. Many species leave an
effect even after their death, such as coral skeletons or the extensive habitat modifications to a wetland

by a beaver, whose components are recycled and re-used by descendants and other species living under a
different selective regime through the feedback and agency of these legacy effects. Ecosystem engineers
can influence nutrient cycling efficiency rates through their actions.
Earthworms, for example, passively and mechanically alter the nature of soil environments. Bodies of
dead worms passively contribute mineral nutrients to the soil. The worms also mechanically modify the
physical structure of the soil as they crawl about (bioturbation), digest on the moulds of organic matter
they pull from the soil litter. These activities transport nutrients into the mineral layers of soil. Worms
discard wastes that create worm castings containing undigested materials where bacteria and other
decomposers gain access to the nutrients. The earthworm is employed in this process and the production
of the ecosystem depends on their capability to create feedback loops in the recycling process.
Shellfish are also ecosystem engineers because they: 1) Filter suspended particles from the water column;
2) Remove excess nutrients from coastal bays throughdenitrification; 3) Serve as natural coastal buffers,
absorbing wave energy and reducing erosion from boat wakes, sea level rise and storms; 4) Provide
nursery habitat for fish that are valuable to coastal economies.

Background
Nutrient cycling has a historical foothold in the writings of Charles Darwin in reference to the
decomposition actions of earthworms. Darwin wrote about "the continued movement of the particles of
earth".Even earlier, in 1749 Carl Linnaeus wrote in "the economy of nature we understand the all-wise
disposition of the creator in relation to natural things, by which they are tted to produce general ends,
and reciprocal uses" in reference to the balance of nature in his book Oeconomia Naturae. In this book he
captured the notion of ecological recycling: "The 'reciprocal uses' are the key to the whole idea, for 'the
death, and destruction of one thing should always be subservient to the restitution of another;' thus
mould spurs the decay of dead plants to nourish the soil, and the earth then 'oers again to plants from
its bosom, what it has received from them. The basic idea of a balance of nature, however, can be traced
back to the Greeks: Democritus, Epicurus, and their Roman disciple Lucretius.
Following the Greeks, the idea of a hydrological cycle (water is considered a nutrient) was validated and
quantified by Halley in 1687. Dumas and Boussingault (1844) provided a key paper that is recognized by
some to be the true beginning of biogeochemistry, where they talked about the cycle of organic life in
great detail. From 1836 to 1876, Jean Baptiste Boussingault demonstrated the nutritional necessity of
minerals and nitrogen for plant growth and development. Prior to this time influential chemists
discounted the importance of mineral nutrients in soil. Ferdinand Cohn is another influential figure. "In
1872, Cohn described the 'cycle of life' as the "entire arrangement of nature" in which the dissolution of
dead organic bodies provided the materials necessary for new life. The amount of material that could be
molded into living beings was limited, he reasoned, so there must exist an "eternal circulation" (ewigem
kreislauf) that constantly converts the same particle of matter from dead bodies into living bodies." These
ideas were synthesized in the Master's research of Sergei Vinogradskii from 1881-1883.

Variations in terminology
In 1926 Vernadsky coined the term biogeochemistry as a sub-discipline of geochemistry. However, the
term nutrient cycle pre-dates biogeochemistry in a pamphlet on silviculture in 1899: "These demands by
no means pass over the fact that at places where sufficient quantities of humus are available and where,
in case of continuous decomposition of litter, a stable, nutrient humus is present, considerable quantities
of nutrients are also available from the biogenic nutrient cycle for the standing timber. In 1898 there is a
reference to the nitrogen cycle in relation to nitrogen fixing microorganisms. Other uses and variations on
the terminology relating to the process of nutrient cycling appear throughout history:

The term mineral cycle appears early in a 1935 in reference to the importance of minerals in plant
physiology: "...ash is probably either built up into its permanent structure, or deposited in some way
as waste in the cells, and so may not be free to re-enter the mineral cycle."

The term nutrient recycling appears in a 1964 paper on the food ecology of the wood stork: "While
the periodic drying up and reflooding of the marshes creates special survival problems for organisms
in the community, the fluctuating water levels favor rapid nutrient recycling and subsequent high
rates of primary and secondary production"

The term natural cycling appears in a 1968 paper on the transportation of leaf litter and its chemical
elements for consideration in fisheries management: "Fluvial transport of tree litter from drainage
basins is a factor in natural cycling of chemical elements and in degradation of the land."

The term ecological recycling appears in a 1968 publication on future applications of ecology for the
creation of different modules designed for living in extreme environments, such as space or under
sea: "For our basic requirement of recycling vital resources, the oceans provide much more
frequent ecological recycling than the land area. Fish and other organic populations have higher
growth rates, vegetation has less capricious weather problems for sea harvesting"

The term bio-recycling appears in a 1976 paper on the recycling of organic carbon in oceans:
"Following the actualistic assumption, then, that biological activity is responsible for the source of
dissolved organic material in the oceans, but is not important for its activities after death of the
organisms and subsequent chemical changes which prevent its bio-recycling, we can see no major
difference in the behavior of dissolved organic matter between the prebiotic and post-biotic oceans."

Water is also a nutrient. In this context, some authors also refer to precipitation recycling, which "is the
contribution of evaporation within a region to precipitation in that same region." These variations on the
theme of nutrient cycling continue to be used and all refer to processes that are part of the global
biogeochemical cycles. However, authors tend to refer to natural, organic, ecological, or bio-recycling in
reference to the work of nature, such as it is used in organic farming or ecological agricultural systems.

Recycling in novel ecosystems

An endless stream of technological waste accumulates in different spatial configurations across the planet
and turns into a predator in our soils, our streams, and our oceans. This idea was similarly expressed in
1954 by ecologist Paul Sears: "We do not know whether to cherish the forest as a source of essential raw
materials and other benefits or to remove it for the space it occupies. We expect a river to serve as both
vein and artery carrying away waste but bringing usable material in the same channel. Nature long ago
discarded the nonsense of carrying poisonous wastes and nutrients in the same vessels." Ecologists
use population ecology to model contaminants as competitors or predators. Rachel Carson was an
ecological pioneer in this area as her book Silent Spring inspired research into biomagification and
brought to the worlds attention the unseen pollutants moving into the food chains of the planet.
In contrast to the planets natural ecosystems, technology (or technoecosystems) is not reducing its
impact on planetary resources. Only 7% of total plastic waste (adding up to millions upon millions of tons)
is being recycled by industrial systems; the 93% that never makes it into the industrial recycling stream is
presumably absorbed by natural recycling systems. In contrast and over extensive lengths of time (billions
of years) ecosystems have maintained a consistent balance with production roughly
equaling respiratory consumption rates. The balanced recycling efficiency of nature means that
production of decaying waste material has exceeded rates of recyclable consumption into food chains
equal to the global stocks of fossilized fuels that escaped the chain of decomposition.

Pesticides soon spread through everything in the ecosphere-both human technosphere and nonhuman
biosphere-returning from the 'out there' of natural environments back into plant, animal, and human
bodies situated at the 'in here' of artificial environments with unintended, unanticipated, and unwanted
effects. By using zoological, toxicological, epidemiological, and ecological insights, Carson generated a
new sense of how 'the environment' might be seen.
Microplastics and nanosilver materials flowing and cycling through ecosystems from pollution and
discarded technology are among a growing list of emerging ecological concerns. For example, unique
assemblages of marine microbes have been found to digest plastic accumulating in the worlds oceans.
Discarded technology is absorbed into soils and creates a new class of soils called technosols. Human
wastes in the Anthropoceneare creating new systems of ecological recycling, novel ecosystems that have
to contend with the mercury cycle and other synthetic materials that are streaming into
the biodegradation chain. Microorganisms have a significant role in the removal of synthetic organic
compounds from the environment empowered by recycling mechanisms that have complex
biodegradation pathways. The effect of synthetic materials, such asnanoparticles and microplastics, on
ecological recycling systems is listed as one of the major concerns for ecosystem in this century.

Technological recycling
Recycling in human industrial systems (or technoecosystems) differs from ecological recycling in scale,
complexity, and organization. Industrial recycling systems do not focus on the employment of ecological
food webs to recycle waste back into different kinds of marketable goods, but primarily employ people
and technodiversity instead. Some researchers have questioned the premise behind these and other kinds
of technological solutions under the banner of 'eco-efficiency' are limited in their capability, harmful to
ecological processes, and dangerous in their hyped capabilities. Many technoecosystems are competitive
and parasitic toward natural ecosystems. Food web or biologically based "recycling includes metabolic
recycling (nutrient recovery, storage, etc.) and ecosystem recycling (leaching and in situ organic matter
mineralization, either in the water column, in the sediment surface, or within the sediment."

C.

Soil and water conservation

Soil conservation is a set of management strategies for prevention of soil being eroded from the Earths
surface or becoming chemically altered by overuse, acidification, salinization or other chemical soil
contamination. It is a component of environmental soil science.

Erosion barriers on disturbed slope, Marin County, California

Decisions regarding appropriate crop rotation, cover crops, and planted windbreaks are central to the
ability of surface soils to retain their integrity, both with respect to erosive forces and chemical change
from nutrient depletion. Crop rotation is simply the conventional alternation of crops on a given field, so
that nutrient depletion is avoided from repetitive chemical uptake/deposition of single crop growth.

Erosion prevention

Contour plowing, Pennsylvania 1938. The rows formed slow water run-off during rainstorms to
prevent soil erosion and allows the water time to settle into the soil.

Practices
There are also conventional practices that farmers have invoked for centuries. These fall into two main
categories: contour farming and terracing, standard methods recommended by the US Natural Resources
Conservation Service, whose Code 330 is the common standard. Contour farming was practiced by the
ancient Phoenicians, and is known to be effective for slopes between two and ten percent. Contour
plowing can increase crop yields from 10 to 50 percent, partially as a result from greater soil retention.
There are many erosion control examples such as conservation tillage, crop rotation, and growing cover
crops.
Keyline design is an enhancement of contour farming, where the total watershed properties are taken
into account in forming the contour lines. Terracing is the practice of creating benches or nearly level

layers on a hillside setting. Terraced farming is more common on small farms and in underdeveloped
countries, since mechanized equipment is difficult to deploy in this setting.
Human overpopulation is leading to destruction of tropical forests due to widening practices of slash-andburn and other methods of subsistence farmingnecessitated by famines in lesser developed countries. A
sequel to the deforestation is typically large scale erosion, loss of soil nutrients and sometimes
totaldesertification.

Perimeter runoff control

Trees, shrubs and groundcovers are effective perimeter treatment for soil erosion prevention, by insuring
any surface flows are impeded. A special form of this perimeter or inter-row treatment is the use of a
grassway that both channels and dissipates runoff through surface friction, impeding surface runoff,
and encouraging infiltration of the slowed surface water.

Windbreaks
Windbreaks are created by planting sufficiently dense rows of trees at the windward exposure of an
agricultural field subject to wind erosion. Evergreen species are preferred to achieve year-round
protection; however, as long as foliage is present in the seasons of bare soil surfaces, the effect
of deciduous trees may also be adequate.

Salinity management

Salt deposits on the former bed of theAral Sea

Salinity in soil is caused by irrigating the crops with salty water. During the evaporation process the water
from the soil evaporates leaving the salt behind causing salinization. Salinization causes the soil structure
to break down causing infertility and the plants cannot grow.
+

2+

2+

The ions responsible for salination are: Na , K , Ca , Mg and Cl . Salinity is estimated to affect about one
third of all the earths arable land. Soil salinity adversely affects the metabolism of most crops, and
erosion effects usually follow vegetation failure. Salinity occurs on drylands from overirrigation and in
areas with shallow saline water tables. In the case of over-irrigation, salts are deposited in upper soil
layers as a byproduct of most soil infiltration; excessive irrigation merely increases the rate of salt
deposition. The best-known case of shallow saline water table capillary action occurred in Egypt after the
1970 construction of the Aswan Dam. The change in the groundwater level due to dam construction led
to high concentration of salts in the water table. After the construction, the continuous high level of
the water table led to soil salination of previously arable land.

Use of humic acids may prevent excess salination, especially in locales where excessive irrigation was
practiced. The mechanism involved is that humic acids can fix both anions and cations and eliminate them
from root zones. In some cases it may be valuable to find plants that can tolerate saline conditions to use
as surface cover until salinity can be reduced; there are a number of such saline-tolerant plants, such
as saltbush, a plant found in much of North America and in theMediterranean regions of Europe.

Soil pH
Soil pH levels adverse to crop growth can occur naturally in some regions; it can also be induced by acid
rain or soil contamination from acids or bases. The role of soil pH is to control nutrient availability to
vegetation. The principal macronutrients (calcium, phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, sulfur)
prefer neutral to slightly alkaline soils. Calcium, magnesium and potassium are usually made available to
plants via cation exchange surfaces of organic material and clay soil surface particles. While acidification
increases the initial availability of these cations, the residual soil moisture concentrations of nutrient
cations can fall to alarmingly low levels after initial nutrient uptake. Moreover, there is no simple
relationship of pH to nutrient availability because of the complex combination of soil types, soil moisture
regimes and meteorological factors.

Soil organisms
When worms excrete egesta in the form of casts, a balanced selection of minerals and plant nutrients is
made into a form accessible for root uptake. US research shows that earthworm casts are five times richer
in available nitrogen, seven times richer in available phosphates and eleven times richer in
available potash than the surrounding upper150 mm of soil. The weight of casts produced may be greater
than 4.5 kg per worm per year. By burrowing, the earthworm is of value in creating soil porosity, creating
channels enhancing the processes of aeration and drainage.

Yellow fungus, a mushroom that assists in organic decay

Microorganisms
Soil microorganisms play a vital role in macronutrient wildlife. For example, nitrogen fixation is carried out
by free-living or symbiotic bacteria. These bacteria have thenitrogenase enzyme that
combines gaseous nitrogen with hydrogen to produce ammonia, which is then further converted by the

bacteria to make other organic compounds. Some nitrogen-fixing bacteria such as rhizobia live in
the root nodules of legumes. Here they form a mutualistic relationship with the plant, producing
ammonia in exchange for carbohydrates. In the case of the carbon cycle, carbon is transferred within the
biosphere as heterotrophs feed on other organisms. This process includes the uptake of dead organic
material (detritus) by fungi and bacteria in the form of fermentation or decay phenomena.

Mycorrhizae
Mycorrhizae are symbiotic associations between soil-dwelling fungi and the roots of vascular plants. fungi
helps increase the availability of minerals, water, and organic nutrients to the plant, while extracting
sugars and amino acids from the plant. There are two main types, endomycorrhizae (which penetrate the
roots) and ectomycorrhizae (which resemble 'socks', forming a sheath around the roots). They were
discovered when scientists observed that certain seedlings failed to grow or prosper without soil from
their native environment.
Some soil microorganisms known as extremophiles have remarkable properties of adaptation to extreme
environmental conditions including temperature, pH and water deprivation.

Degradation and contamination

The viability of soil organisms can be compromised when insecticides and herbicides are applied to
planting regimes. Often there are unforeseen and unintended consequences of such chemical use in the
form of death of impaired functioning of soil organisms. Thus any use of pesticides should only be
undertaken after thorough understanding of residual toxicities upon soil organisms as well as
terrestrialecological components.
Killing soil microorganisms is a deleterious impact of slash and burn agricultural methods. With the
surface temperatures generated, virtual annihilation of soil and vegetative cover organisms are destroyed,
and in many environments these effects can be virtually irreversible (at least for generations of
mankind). Shifting cultivation is also a farming system that often employs slash and burn as one of its
elements.
Systems, most of which have an adverse effect upon soil quality and plant metabolism. While the role of
pH has been discussed above, heavy metals, solvents, petroleum hydrocarbons, herbicides and
pesticides also contribute soil residues that are of potential concern. Some of these chemicals are totally
extraneous to the agricultural landscape, but others (notably herbicides and pesticides) are intentionally
introduced to serve a short term function. Many of these added chemicals have long half-lives in soil, and
others degrade to produce derivative chemicals that may be either persistent or pernicious. One
alternative to chemicals in agriculture is soil steaming. Steam sterilizes the soil by killing almost all
beneficial and harmful microorganisms. However no harmful remains are left. Soil health may even
increase since steam unlocks nutrients in the soil which may lead to better plant growth after the thermal
treatment.
Typically the expense of soil contamination remediation cannot be justified in an
agricultural economic analysis, since cleanup costs are generally quite high; often remediation is
mandated by state and county environmental health agencies based upon human health risk issues.

Mineralization
To allow plants full realization of their phytonutrient potential, active mineralization of the soil is
sometimes undertaken. This can be in the natural form of adding crushed rock or can take the form of
chemical soil supplement. In either case the purpose is to combat mineral depletion of the soil. There are
a broad range of minerals that can be added including common substances such as phosphorus and more

exotic substances such as zinc and selenium. There is extensive research on the phase transitions of
minerals in soil with aqueous contact.
The process of flooding can bring significant bedload sediment to an alluvial plain. While this effect may
not be desirable if floods endanger life or if the eroded sediment originates from productive land, this
process of addition to a floodplain is a natural process that can rejuvenate soil chemistry through
mineralization and macronutrient addition.

Water conservation
Water conservation encompasses the policies, strategies and activities to manage fresh water as a
sustainable resource to protect the water environment and to meet current and future human demand.
Population, household size and growth and affluence all affect how much water is used. Factors such
as climate change will increase pressures on natural water resources especially in manufacturing and
agricultural irrigation.

Goals
The goals of water conservation efforts include as follows:

Sustainability. To ensure availability for future generations, the withdrawal of fresh water from an
ecosystem should not exceed its natural replacement rate.
Energy conservation. Water pumping, delivery and waste water treatment facilities consume a
significant amount of energy. In some regions of the world over 15% of total electricity consumption
is devoted to water management.
Habitat conservation. Minimizing human water use helps to preserve fresh water habitats for local
wildlife and migrating waterfowl, as well as reducing the need to build new dams and other water
diversion infrastructures.

Strategies
In implementing water conservation principles there are a number of key activities that may be beneficial.
1. Any beneficial reduction in water loss, use and waste
2. Avoiding any damage to water quality.
3. Improving water management practices that reduce or enhance the beneficial use of water.

Social solutions

Drip irrigation system in New Mexico

Water conservation programs are typically initiated at the local level, by either municipal water utilities or
regional governments. Common strategies include public outreach campaigns, tiered water rates
(charging progressively higher prices as water use increases), or restrictions on outdoor water use such as
lawn watering and car washing. Cities in dry climates often require or encourage the installation
of xeriscaping or natural landscaping in new homes to reduce outdoor water usage.
One fundamental conservation goal is universal metering. The prevalence of residential water
metering varies significantly worldwide. Recent studies have estimated that water supplies are metered in
less than 30% of UK households, and about 61% of urban Canadian homes (as of 2001). Although
individual water meters have often been considered impractical in homes with private wells or in
multifamily buildings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that metering alone can
reduce consumption by 20 to 40 percent. In addition to raising consumer awareness of their water use,
metering is also an important way to identify and localize water leakage. Water metering would benefit
society in the long run it is proven that water metering increases the efficiency of the entire water system,
as well as help unnecessary expenses for individuals for years to come. One would be unable to waste
water unless they are willing to pay the extra charges, this way the water department would be able to
monitor water usage by public, domestic and manufacturing services.
Some researchers have suggested that water conservation efforts should be primarily directed at farmers,
in light of the fact that crop irrigation accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water use. The agricultural
sector of most countries is important both economically and politically, and water subsidies are common.
Conservation advocates have urged removal of all subsidies to force farmers to grow more water-efficient
crops and adopt less wasteful irrigation techniques.
New technology poses a few new options for consumers, features such and full flush and half flush when
using a toilet are trying to make a difference in water consumption and waste. Also available in our
modern world is shower heads that help reduce wasting water, old shower heads are said to use 5-10
gallons per minute. All new fixtures available are said to use 2.5 gallons per minute and offer equal water
coverage.

Household applications
Water-saving technology for the home includes:
1. Low-flow shower heads sometimes called energy-efficient shower heads as they also use less
energy,
2. Low-flush toilets and composting toilets. These have a dramatic impact in the developed world,
as conventional Western toilets use large volumes of water.
3. Dual flush toilets created by Caroma includes two buttons or handles to flush different levels of
water. Dual flush toilets use up to 67% less water than conventional toilets.
Saline water (sea water) or rain water can be used for flushing toilets.
1. Faucet aerators, which break water flow into fine droplets to maintain "wetting effectiveness"
while using less water. An additional benefit is that they reduce splashing while washing hands
and dishes.
2. Raw water flushing where toilets use sea water or non-purified water
3. Wastewater reuse or recycling systems, allowing:
Reuse of graywater for flushing toilets or watering gardens
Recycling of wastewater through purification at a water treatment plant. See
also Wastewater - Reuse
4. Rainwater harvesting
5. High-efficiency clothes washers

6.
7.
8.
9.

Weather-based irrigation controllers

Garden hose nozzles that shut off water when it is not being used, instead of letting a hose run.
using low flow taps in wash basins
Swimming pool covers that reduce evaporation and can warm pool water to reduce water,
energy and chemical costs.
10. Automatic faucet is a water conservation faucet that eliminates water waste at the faucet. It
automates the use of faucets without the use of hands.
Water can also be conserved by landscaping with native plants and by changing behavior, such as
shortening showers and not running the faucet while brushing teeth.

Use waste water for growth of plants and trees

Climate Controlled Irrigation - Automated Irrigation by using the Weather

Commercial applications
Many water-saving devices (such as low-flush toilets) that are useful in homes can also be useful for
business water saving. Other water-saving technology for businesses includes:
Waterless urinals
Waterless car washes
Infrared or foot-operated taps, which can save water by using short bursts of water for rinsing in a
kitchen or bathroom
Pressurized waterbrooms, which can be used instead of a hose to clean sidewalks
X-ray film processor re-circulation systems
Cooling tower conductivity controllers
Water-saving steam sterilizers, for use in hospitals and health care facilities.
Rain water harvesting.
Water to Water heat exchangers.

Agricultural applications

Overhead irrigation, center pivot design

For crop irrigation, optimal water efficiency means minimizing losses due to evaporation, runoff or
subsurface drainage while maximizing production. An evaporation pan in combination with specific crop
correction factors can be used to determine how much water is needed to satisfy plant
requirements. Flood irrigation, the oldest and most common type, is often very uneven in distribution, as
parts of a field may receive excess water in order to deliver sufficient quantities to other parts. Overhead
irrigation, using center-pivot or lateral-moving sprinklers, has the potential for a much more equal and
controlled distribution pattern. Drip irrigation is the most expensive and least-used type, but offers the
ability to deliver water to plant roots with minimal losses. However, drip irrigation is increasingly
affordable, especially for the home gardener and in light of rising water rates. There are also cheap

effective methods similar to drip irrigation such as the use of soaking hoses that can even be submerged
in the growing medium to eliminate evaporation.
As changing irrigation systems can be a costly undertaking, conservation efforts often concentrate on
maximizing the efficiency of the existing system. This may include chiseling compacted soils, creating
furrow dikes to prevent runoff, and using soil moisture and rainfall sensors to optimize irrigation
schedules. Usually large gains in efficiency are possible through measurement and more effective
management of the existing irrigation system.

Literature Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Agriculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_agriculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_cycling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_conservation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conservation