BIOL 1030 Chapter 50: Chapter 50 An Introduction to Ecology and the Biosphere

• School: University of Manitoba
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BIOL 1030
• Professor: Scott Kevin

Document Summary

Chapter 50 an introduction to ecology and the biosphere. Overview: the scope of ecology: ecology is the scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment. Population ecology examines factors that affect population size and composition: a community consists of all the organisms of all the species that inhabit a particular area. Ecosystem ecology studies energy flow and cycling of chemicals among the various abiotic and biotic components: a landscape or seascape consists of several different ecosystems linked by exchanges of energy, materials, and organisms. Landscape ecology deals with arrays of ecosystems and their arrangement in a geographic region: each landscape or seascape consists of a mosaic of different types of patches, an environmental characteristic ecologists refer to as patchiness. Landscape ecological research focuses on the factors controlling exchanges of energy, materials, and organisms among ecosystem patches: the biosphere is the global ecosystem, the sum of all of the planet"s ecosystems.