Ecosystems: Definition, Scope and Importance!
An ecosystem is a segment of nature consisting of a community of living beings and the physical environment both interacting and exchanging materials between them.
The two components of nature, organisms and the environment are not only highly complex and dynamic but also interdependent, mutually reactive and interrelated. Ecology deals with the various principles which govern relationships between organisms and their environment.
According to the French Zoologist, Isodore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, the term ecology is used for the study of the relations of the organisms within the family and society and community.
At about the same time the English naturalist, St. George Jackson Mivart coined the term hexicology, and defined as the study of the relations which exist between the organisms and their environment with respect to the nature of the locality, the temperature and the amounts of light, and their relations to other organisms as enemies, rivals, or accidental and involuntary benefactors. Thus, ecology is literally the study of organisms and their relationship with environment.
Scope and Importance:
Taylor (1936), in an attempt to define ecology, has very rightly pointed out that scope of ecology by stating that ecology is the science of all the relations of ecosystems, all organisms to all their environments.
Ecology plays an important role in agriculture crop rotation, weed control, management of grasslands, range management forestry, biological surveys, pest control, fishery biology, and in the conservation of soil, wildlife, forest, water supplies, water bodies like rivers, lakes and ponds,
Ecosystem is defined as a dynamic entity composed of a biological community and its associated abiotic environment. Often the dynamic interactions that occur within an ecosystem are numerous and complex.
Ecosystems are also always undergoing alterations to their biotic and abiotic components. Some of these alterations begin first with a change in the state of one component of the ecosystem, which then cascades and sometimes amplifies into other components because of relationships.