A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems

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Princeton University Press, 21 nov. 1986 - 253 pages
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"Ecosystem" is an intuitively appealing concept to most ecologists, but, in spite of its widespread use, the term remains diffuse and ambiguous. The authors of this book argue that previous attempts to define the concept have been derived from particular viewpoints to the exclusion of others equally possible. They offer instead a more general line of thought based on hierarchy theory. Their contribution should help to counteract the present separation of subdisciplines in ecology and to bring functional and population/community ecologists closer to a common approach.


Developed as a way of understanding highly complex organized systems, hierarchy theory has at its center the idea that organization results from differences in process rates. To the authors the theory suggests an objective way of decomposing ecosystems into their component parts. The results thus obtained offer a rewarding method for integrating various schools of ecology.

 

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Table des matières

III
3
IV
20
V
37
VI
55
VII
73
VIII
75
IX
101
X
123
XI
125
XII
159
XIII
186
XIV
213
XV
247
XVI
251
Droits d'auteur

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Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 213 - Allen, TFH, and HH Iltis. 1980. Overconnected collapse to higher levels: urban and agricultural origins, a case study.
Page 7 - Allen are among its main advocates (O'Neill et al. 1986). Central to hierarchy (observation set) theory is the notion of an observation set. O'Neill et al. describe an observation set as "a particular way of viewing the natural world. It includes the phenomena of interest, the specific measurements taken, and the techniques used to analyze the data
Page 213 - On the Mammals and Winter Birds of East Florida, with an Examination of certain assumed Specific Characters in Birds, and a Sketch of the Bird Faunae of Eastern North America.
Page 39 - ... cooperation, preserve its integral configuration of structure and behavior and tend to restore it after non-destructive disturbances." Obviously, this rules out conceptual and abstracted systems of all kinds. They do not exist in space and time, or do not entirely exist in that way, and...
Page 126 - ... it seems that species that interact feebly with others do so with a great number of other species. Conversely/ species with strong interactions are often part of a system with a small number of species ...". and it does not contradict the statement of Levins [13] that "there is often a limit to the complexity of systems".

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À propos de l'auteur (1986)

O'Neill is Senior Ecologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Informations bibliographiques