Talk:Ecosystem/Archive 1

An interesting link

have a look at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D6kosystem#Mosaik-Zyklus-Konzept --145.254.76.223 14:39, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC) 146.229.16.228 MH printer (in German)

But its not in spanish, Alcyone

Hi people, great discussion! Some observations here. Bcuz i love Jaime!

• The article was too much a result of several inputs. I tried to reorganize and re-edit it so as to avoid repetitions.
• In my opinion, a single species surviving in isolation from everything else can most certainly be considered an ecosystem. It is a system in which an organism lives with its physical environment. There is flow of matter and energy and continuation of life;
• I had not yet elaborated the current situation of ecosystem describtion and identification that a team of ecologists as currently working on;
• Personally, I never saw the significance of energy and matter flows in considering ecosystems. They seem to be mere components like the elements. I could imagine ecosystems with completely different environments and species composition having very similar flows of energy and matter. What for me has always been important is the composition of species and their continuation;
• The system concept should be indifferent from the point of view whether or not it has intrinsic regulatory factors, as both regulationists and stoachists recognize the existance of ecosystems. So I tried to seperate that now.
• When re-reading the article, I realized that still, the reader did not get a concept of how an ecosystem can be "visualized" and spatially separated. I took a look at our German, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese counterparts and realized that each had some important elements and concepts that were lacking in the others. Some more work is needed regarding the ideas on climax, etc. I will look into that later. Please send comments to daanv @ birdlist.org.

Cheers, Daan

Comments for consideration of the author:

"An ecosystem is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting as an ecological unit. Some consider this the basic unit in ecology: a structured functional unit in equilibrium, characterized by energy and matter flows between its constituent elements. Others consider this vision limited."

Is this vision merely limited, or is it merely fundamental, and as such comprehensive? Are populations of a single bacterium, for example, (presuming such could be found--deep in the earth, shall we speculate, that persists in dynamically stable interactions with its habitat) not ecosystems? If not, what are they, and why are they not ecosystems? Would they be if they were found with one other organism? Two? How many? At what point does a sustained population or populations become an ecosystem?

"The organisms in an ecosystem are usually well balanced with each other and their environment. This balance is achieved through various types of symbiosis, such as predation, parasitism, mutualism, commensalism, competition, and amensalism. Introduction of new elements, whether abiotic or biotic, into an ecosystem tend to have a disruptive effect. In some cases, this can lead to ecological collapse and the death of many native species. The abstract notion of ecological health attempts to measure the robustness and recovery capacity for an ecosystem."

Are "disruption" and "ecological collapse" and "the death of many native species" not euphemisims for mere change, however dramatic or faint (to the senses of the observer and her judgment)?

Reconciliator 07:31, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The concept of ecosystems

Hi folks, I am new at this. I am Daan Vreugdenhil, and have had to deal with the concept of ecosystems in the context of the Convention on Biological diversity (CBD). I did not see how to make comments in Talk, to I try to give my motivation here. There were two issues I felt important to express in this article. 1. In the context of the CBD we need an ecosystem concept that can be geographically delimited and defined by modifiers. To that end, a paragraph was needed. This par. made the observation on seperation by mountains, etc. less significant, as many other specific modefiers exist. 2. A smaller number of ecologists sees ecosystems as non-regulated non-deterministic units, without a 'balance of nature". This is an important view that should not be withheld from the reader. I have tried to explain that without showing a preference one way or the other. I hope we can reach a common dinominator through some email exchanges. You can contact me at daanv @ birdlist.org also this place rocks

Hi folks. I agree with Daan above (1). Show us the boundaries between one ecosystem and another. After this project fails, we are left with the conclusion that there is only one ecosystem and that it includes the sun. peter@managingwholes.com wot idiot wrote this, ficco.

I think we can agree that an ecosystem could be said to be a system which supports life. A system is a group of agents which cooperate to some end, in this case the support of life. What does it mean to support life then? Fundamentally to support life is to provide energy for it, to 'feed' it if you will. Therefore, an ecosystem is a group of agents which cooperate in the distribution of energy to living organisms. If this is the case, then ecosystems are fundamentally defined by how their energy, how much energy, who uses it and how. An agent in this case can be defined as some member of the system which modifies the energy in some way as it distributes it in the system. With these suppositions we could say that our solar system is an ecosystem because it is comprised of a group of agents which distribute energy to living organisms. Energy is initially created in the sun and then radiated (distributed) outwards, this is the first agent because energy is changed or created; doubtless there are many sub-agents within the sun and even in space which modify the energy in various ways. The next agent would be the earth's atmosphere because it filters the energy and diffuses it to the earth's surface. Here too there are subagents within the 'atmosphere', one agent being the outer layer which filters damaging radiation from the sun's energy while another agent would be the clouds which use the energy in storms which provide water to organisms, another agent would be the wind which uses the energy for motion creating winds which chemically stir the earth. The next major agent group would be the plants and/or the ground. Plants use the energy for themselves (thus being the object of the energy) but also use it to release necessary compounds for other life forms, thus establishing themselves as agents as well as objects. The ground is warmed by the energy allowing plants to bud and so forth and so on. As stated before, ecosystems can be differentiated by their energy. Because of this we can define an almost infinite number of ecosystems within ecosystems. Take for instance the difference between two leaves. Each leaf has its own unique colonies of bacteria and unique leaf-vein organization which utilize and distribute the sun's energy amongst themselves in entirely different ways. A more normal example would be the difference between tundra and tropical forest. In the tundra a relatively minute amount of stellar energy is passed through the atmosphere to the earth which because of this cannot produce large agents of life which in turn cannot support other kinds of life and so on whereas in the tropical rainforest a large amount of energy is distrubuted by the clouds, winds and plants among many different kinds of life. - Sir Tristram 21:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)]

Habitat

Under 'Related Terminology', the Habitat sentence says: 'refers to the type of environment that the organisms have adapted to and live in the ocean'. Why is 'in the ocean' there? 213.7.118.204 17:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Costa Rican Rain Forest and Sonoran Desert

Location: 10 degrees N+S of da equator. Costa Rica, Central America. S.W. America, next to Mexico.

A flag on the subject, Why?

Hi everyone. Um, just a question. Why is the ecology page flagged for clean-up? Thanks! :)

Hikaruhataki NARUTO RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

“...which concluded that in the past 50 years humans have altered the earth's ecosystems more than any other time in our history.” I won't dispute that humans have altered the earth's ecosystems more than any other time in history, but the term "altered" is androgynous at best, and in this context is carrying a negative connotation. I think that this statement needs to be developed a little further seeing as humans can alter an ecosystem for the better and for the worse. 72.253.15.252 06:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism: 100 times in the past four months

It seems to me that this article is vandalised more then 100 times in the past four months or so. I wonder if somebody else noticed, and don't like it, and if there is something more to do about this. - Mdd 20:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Rubbish on this page, somebody fix it please.

Somebody fix this please. if i could right now, i would, but as it stands, i don't have the time nor patience to do so at this time. - thank you.

Thanks, Unfortunately this article gets vandalized every day. More people are correcting this every day. It sometimes takes a little time. - Mdd 12:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Article semi protected

I semi projected this article, since in the past two months little has changed. This article is beeing vandalized almost on a daily base. - Mdd (talk) 22:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Of the 52 edits in the last 30 days only two seem non-vandal related (resulted in a change in the article). So that's maybe 25 vandal edits and 25 vandal revet edits (not an actual count) - which is less than one vandal edit per day average. Although troublesome, that is not a high rate of vandalism for a main topic article - and in general not enough to go for protection. I too wish vandalism were gone, but that's just one of the realities of open editing that makes Wikipedia work. Simply tacking a protect tag at the top of the article does nothing (and is rather posting an untruth, also a form of vandalism), protection requires administrative action. Thanks for your concern and well meaning action though, Vsmith (talk) 12:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree. I have been monitoring this article since I rearranged it end of August... and I am glad that many editors help referting the vandalism on this page. I was already guessing that the vandalism on this page isn't that bad. I can amige it can be a lot worse. But I mad the move, because I was rather disappointed that almost all edits seemed vandalism. - Mdd (talk) 12:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ecosystem Dynamics Section POV

This paragraph is highly POV. While it cites sources, it represents only one (narrow) view of ecosystem dynamics. It makes many assertions as if they were fact or even generally accepted theory, which they are not. For example: "Ecosystems are primarily governed by stochastic (chance) events" is a very broad assertion that is difficult to back up scientifically--in fact it is even difficult to make into a scientific hypothesis that can be empirically tested. Anyone care to clean this up? I will try my hand at it if no one else does. Cazort 21:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)