Biological Ecology

The term ecosystem is a contraction of the phrase ecological system, which encompasses biological ecology. Biological ecology has a closer affiliation with the domain of PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, yet due to the nature of ecology as a mediator of all types of geographers, biological interpretation of the Earth also contributes to the studies of cultural geography.

In studying the Earth from biological ecology perspectives, the concept of biota serves as one of the foundations of this approach. The term biota refers to the total group of plant and animal life in a region. Biota is subdivided from flora to fauna. An ecosystem includes biota, that is, all the organisms, in a given area, but it is more than a community of plants and animals.

The ecosystem as a concept is based on the holistic interactions among and between organisms. The ecosystem also involves the nonliving portion of the environment, which includes nutrients and energy, such as soil, rocks, water, sunlight, and atmosphere. Thus, an ecosystem is an essential collection of plants and animals along within the surrounding environment and all the interactions among these organisms. The energy flow among the various components of the ecosystem plays a crucial role in biological ecology, as it is responsible for determining how a biological community is built.

Another fundamental concept of biological ecology is called a BIOME. A biome provides us with the most appropriate scale for understanding world distribution patterns of species and identifies recognizable assemblage of plants and animals through interaction with its environment. A biome is usually classified on the basis of its dominant vegetation along with the bulk of the biomass, which is the total weight of all organisms in the biome, as well as the most obvious and conspicuous visible component of the landscape, such as tropical RAINFOREST, DESERT, and TUNDRA.

The survival of plants and animals depends on an intimate and sometimes precarious set of relationships with other elements of the environment. Throughout environmental relationships, there are two major factors at work: intraspecific competition, which happens among members of the same species, and interspecific competition, which exists among members of different species. Both plants and animals compete with one another in search of light, water, nutrients, and favorable habitat in a dynamic environment. There are recognizable and predictable patterns of biotic distributions based on environmental relationships.

Various climatic factors play a dominant role as the most prominent environmental constraints on biological ecology at almost any scale. The four major components of CLIMATE are light, moisture, temperature, and wind. Light and photosynthesis are responsible for activating plants to produce stored chemical energy, and light also has a significant influence on determining the shapes and sizes of plants.

Moisture is the second climatic factor to characterize biological ecology. The broad distribution patterns of the biota are mostly determined by the level of moisture. The process of biotic evolution has been characterized by the adaptation of plants and animals to scarcity, abundance, or excess in moisture availability. In biological ecology, moisture is often synonymous with water.

Although the availability of water is largely determined by these atmospheric conditions, it is not always dependent on climate alone, as the relationship with precipitation evaporation should also be observed. Air and soil temperature are also important to biotic distribution patterns. Moderate temperatures attract more species of both plants and animals that cannot survive in cold regions. Wind assists in creating ecosystems by influencing biotic distributions with its physical strength of causing biota frying and sometimes even violently uprooting trees. On the positive side, wind sometimes aids the dispersal of biota by carrying pollen, seeds, lightweight organisms, and flying creatures to contribute to biological diversity in an area.

Characteristics of soil that vary from one region to another and its relationship with local organisms are known as edaphic factors. Edaphic factors bring major influence to biotic distributions. These factors have a direct and immediate impact on flora, but the impact is usually indirect on fauna thanks to most animals’ mobility. As long as we live on the Earth, soil is a major component of the habitat of any vegetation, and its characteristics significantly determine rooting capabilities and nutrient supply through soil texture and structure, human existence, chemical composition, and relative abundance of soil organisms.

Political Ecology

Political ecology studies how political and cultural processes shape society (human)-nature (environment) relationships. In many cases, people have a strong attachment to their habitat through the building of cultures. Political ecology can be considered as a marriage of geography and anthropology and is characterized as an interdisciplinary approach rather than a unified methodology associated with one specific discipline.

Environmental changes affected by political phenomena in indigenous or ethnic societies are typically common subjects in political ecology, but recently, the approach is increasingly applied toward industrialized societies to analyze diversities of human relationship and conceptualization of nature based on geopolitics and several other prominent theories.

Although geopolitics is often singularly associated with political geography, the idea of geopolitics is inseparable from the importance of terrain, soils, climate, natural resources, and other elements of the physical environment to our political society. The term geopolitics is often used to describe the influence of habitat on political entities. On the other hand, political authorities have powerful potentials to modify environment through the scheme-organized alteration of the landscape and even in the name of environmental protection. In these ways, political entities influence and are influenced by the physical surroundings, and here again, we come across with a two-way relationship between human and environment.

In the past, a country’s survival was enhanced by “folk fortress,” which is a natural stronghold, such as surrounding mountain ranges, deserts, or seas; bordering marshes or dense forests; or outward-facing ESCARPMENTs.

The folk fortress was a valuable natural protection of the city and people by shielding an entire country or at least its core area. Without natural defense, for example, Korea, a land bridge leading from CHINA to JAPAN, has repeatedly been threatened by both neighbors. Korea’s history tells us how difficult it is for a country without natural protection to maintain its independence and sovereignty. Distribution of terrain is closely related to the concept of the folk fortress. We agree that an ideal country has mountains and hills around its edges and plains in the interior to provide sufficient fortification and comfortable space for people’s settlement to facilitate defense and to heighten identity of a cohesive country. FRANCE comes very close to the ideal in terms of its physical setting, but very few countries in the world enjoy similar environmental boundaries.

Other desirable borders are mountain ridges because they stand out on the landscape and cross thinly populated countrysides. In contrast, not all the topographical features are helpful in making of efficient borders and a cohesive country. Rivers usually do not serve as ideal borders because their nature of changing course and flowing through densely settled valleys, create potential problems for the countries on either bank.

An undesirable arrangement of physical features are called environmental barriers and may disrupt a country’s internal unity and isolate one part of a country from another. Environmental barriers grow separatist sentiments easily, such as internal mountain ranges in the case of PERU and SPAIN that provide guerrillas with potential bases. Both Peru and Spain have problems of internal unity, and it can be said that this is partly because of their unfavorable physical settings.

In comparison, seacoasts serve as the most efficient borders for making independent countries, as is represented by AUSTRALIA. The Australian seacoasts provide excellent natural boundaries against expansive or acquisitive neighbors. However, we should not forget that there are always exceptions to these generalizations, such as HAWAII, CUBA, and the PHILIPPINES. These interactions between human territoriality and topographical arrangements recur in several theories in political ecology as well as political geography.

Increasingly today across the world, the term political ecology has a far more restricted meaning than the scope discussed above. It refers to a form of political activism dealing with the issue of disputes of who controls natural resources and who makes the political decisions that impact the habitat and indigenous population. Power games and the politically charged environmental consequences of the struggle between haves and have-nots become the center of the new political ecology. Many political actions and decisions have a significant impact upon habitat, and warfare is the most devastating of all political phenomena. War destroys resources systematically, and it is unfortunate that warfare has been a favored practice to resolve political conflicts throughout history.

From an ecological perspective, environmental catastrophe goes on as a result of modern high-tech warfare, which destroys the delicate balance between human and habitat. Even military exercises and various tests affect habitat severely, as is the case with a drastic oil spill. The first world’s desire to control resources and territories often resulted in destruction of habitats and the displacement of indigenous peoples by the people of political economic power.

The lumber industry, commercial fishing, the development of open lands, and other enterprises are often seen as ecologically destructive, although these are not always directly involved with politics. It is time for us to rethink human involvement with habitat from an ecological point of view, and political ecology gives us fundamental insights to deal with this world. The United States is one of the countries that has a Green Party to pursue a political-ecological agenda, and the existence of this political party represents increasing concern of human impact.

Ethnic Ecology

Ethnic ecology studies how certain ethnic groups interact with their habitat through the process of making cultural landscapes. Ethnicity has a close link to cultural ecology as much as folk cultures do, and a strong correlation exists between people and physical environment in ethnic culture regions, in ethnic migration, and in survival of ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are occasionally created in a remote place from their source region. This is often caused by migration and/or relocation diffusion. Since those groups settled in distance, cultural preadaptation must be considered as an ecological element. 

Preadaptation is a process based on a collection of adaptive traits, such as behaviors, ideas, and practices, possessed by a group prior to migration. This ability gives them the chance to survive in the new environment after migration or relocation diffusion. Preadaptation mostly occurs in groups migrating to an environmentally similar place to their original home, and the adaptive strategy from their source region should work effectively in the new destination.

Environmental perception of the new land is another key to understanding ethnic ecology. There is a general tendency for immigrants to unconsciously associate their new home with their abandoned homeland, thus finding the new home more similar to their original home than reality. In other words, they emphasize the similarities and minimize the differences between old and new homes, and this perception often causes some extent of distortion.

This perceptional process occasionally caused problems for ethnic farming groups, particularly early Western European immigrants to Americas. Sometimes crops that thrived well in the old homeland were not adaptive to the particular American environmental setting. This collapse in agriculture and farming resulted in economic breakdown, and it is often the case that the ethnic settlement was deserted. This result can be referred as an example of cultural maladaptation.

Ecology

ECOLOGY IS THE study of the interaction between an organism and its physical environment. Human ecology specifically focuses on humans as a group of organisms and their mutual relationships within the habitat. The term ecology has its origin in two ancient Greek words: oikos (house or habitat) and logia (words or teaching). Thus, the concept of ecology has its origin the Greek oikologia, and could be rendered “teaching about the habitat.” This article explores three dimensions of ecology in order: human ecology, political ecology, and biological ecology. The central theme that unites these three subsets is how humans interact with the Earth.

Often, the term human ecology is used interchangeably with cultural ecology. The human geographers find dialectical relationships between people and nature and consider cultures as a meeting ground of the two major elements of ecology: humans and environments. Each culture grows in a specific natural environment along with each human group and its living on the Earth.

Thus, it is crucial for human geographers and cultural geographers to study interactions between humans and environment to understand spatial variations of culture, its development, and distributions. Human ecology consists of these two approaches: 1) how an environment impacts and shapes a culture; and 2) the human influence on the habitat and making of cultural landscape through culture building. Employing these approaches, human ecology encompasses several branches and concepts, and this article discusses a few of them to facilitate understanding of the dialectical human-environment relationships.

Cultural ecology studies the mutual influences between human groups and the environment. Cultural

ecology often qualifies culture as an effective mediator or medium for humans to facilitate their adaptation to physical environments. This process is called an adaptive system, and cultural ecologists render this system cultural adaptation. In this venue, cultural ecologists recognize the importance of studying plant and animal adaptations to understand human-environment relationships. Cultures are the basis of successful human adaptation to environment and its change through time. 

Historically, food, clothing, shelter, and knowledge served to reduce human difficulties to subsist in the midst of powerful nature. These cultural traits are examples of an adaptive strategy, and the strategy includes almost all aspects of our culture that enables us to prosper on the Earth. Although cultures function as a meeting ground between human and environment, we should note that the same or similar physical environment produces no identical cultures. This fact indicates that each group of people employs the unique strategy to survive in its natural setting. The interaction between the unique cultural traits and surrounding environmental conditions always result in a making of individual adaptive processes. Thus, we can observe an omnipresent two-way relationship between human and environment.

The approach and themes within cultural ecology often function as the crossroads of cultural and physical geographers, and it is closely identified with four schools of thought: environmental determinism, possibilism, environmental perception, and humans as modifiers of the Earth.

All of the four pillars are particularly revealed in the studies in ethnic geography, folk geography, and the examination of ecology in popular cultures is another vital perspective in geography as an academic discipline today.

Generally, folk groups are more involved with their physical environments, thus tend to establish an intimate relationship with nature. Therefore, cultural ecology as a geographical discipline maintains a relatively close association with folk geography. Folk adaptive strategies are based on sustainability and are usually the opposite from those of popular culture. Sustainability is judged by how people use natural products and consume energy in a way that does not destroy the environment.

Ecological Niches

IN CONTEMPORARY ecology, the term ecological niches is referred to as the position occupied by representatives of any life form (usually alive) in biocenosis, and, at the same time, the smallest unit of a habitat that is occupied by an organism. The notion reflects an organism’s or species’s place in the community, taking into account not only its tolerance to natural (physical) agents, but its interaction with other organisms as well. The ecological niche concept originated as an attempt to describe the general role of species in the community and to differentiate on a theoretical level population, community, and ecological systems. The term had been introduced in 1917 by J. Grinnell, who interpreted it in a spatial sense as the ultimate distributional unit of a species. Later C. Elton (1927) concentrated mainly on niche functional aspects when describing an organism’s place in its biotic environment in connection with its nutrition and animals.

The middle of 20th century marked a multidimensional approach to the niche concept in the works of L. Ramensky (1924), E. Odum (1968), and others. The multidimensional approach to niche comprehension allows scientists to conceive how species are connected with each other and, in such a way, enhances the understanding of a community’s internal organization. Further development of the niche concept is connected with the name of G. Hutchinson. In 1957, he interpreted niche as hyperspace, in frameworks of which conditions of the ambient allow unrestrictedly durable existence of specimen or species. According to Hutchinson, niche is defined by a general set of environment variables, to which species must be adapted (physically, chemically, biotically) and in which a species population lives and replaces itself indefinitely. 

Such niches could be described mathematically with the help of quantitative characteristics of every environment’s variable spatial coordinates. Hutchinson distinguished fundamental (now often called potential) niche (the whole set of optimal conditions that could be occupied by a species in its enemies’ absence) and realized niche (a real set of conditions in which a species usually exists).

Today, a niche is often regarded as a way by which a species population fits into a certain community and in such a context concentrates on a species’s connections in one community. So the niche concept also is concerned with the functional role of an organism in community (for example, its trophic status) and its position in relation to external factors of its habitat (such as temperature, humidity, etc.). It is especially useful for understanding the current distribution of sources among all niche inhabitants.

The latest developments in the framework of ecological niches are connected with a discussion about

their attribution as a basic property of community or species. Some researchers believe that any niche is generated by its inhabitants, and its features are defined by the role that its creator is playing in its environment. Others regard niche as a community attribute and deny its significance in any other context. They reveal the phenomenon of ecological equivalence (or the principle of convergent evolution): A niche is created by biotic and abiotic ecosystem components and exists a priori. It becomes filled in the course of a species’s adaptations taking place during evolutionary changes; such species’ adaptations should be similar even if these species are not interrelated.

NICHE CHARACTERISTICS

Theoretical and empirical development of the ecological niche concept has put forward a series of niche characteristics, a major part of which is defined by function of utilization (or species activity distribution) along the resources’ gradient. Most important among niche characteristics are the principle of competitive exclusion, niche width, niche axes, niche dynamics, niche interlocation, and so on.

The principle of competitive exclusion (or Gause principle) was proposed in the 1920s as the result of experimental investigations by G. Gause and J. Grinnel. Accordingly, two ecologically identical species could not survive simultaneously at the same place, or a niche is occupied by only one species. It was mathematically confirmed by the equation of Lotka-Volterra and has become one of the basic principles of ecology. In connection with the niche concept, attention should be paid to its corollary: If two species co-exist, they should differ ecologically, so every species has its own niche.

Niche width (or its size) notion is inherent to a multidimensional approach to niche interpretation. It its framework, it is defined as a general amount of all diversity of different features used by the population. Most often, it is identified through species activity distribution (resources utilization spectrum). Niche axes is a relatively new notion with a minimally independent set of limits in relation to species factors. It describes a series of important variables, such as form of population response to the axis challenge, relative width of species distribution along certain axes, grade of species overlapping, species’s relative position along the axis, and other factors.

The niche dynamics concept envisions investigation of niche changes in at least three contexts. In an evolutionary framework, short-term, life cycle, and generational changes could be distinguished. The width of a realized niche also changes in response to competition and in relation with resource level. Community space changes in accordance with daily or seasonal rhythms. The niche interlocation concept describes niche differences, first of all, with time and place of activity and with ways of other species’ communication. In such a context, scientists have distinguished occasional (nonoverlapping), discrete, and overlapping niches.

Easter Island

POLITICALLY, EASTER ISLAND has belonged to CHILE since 1888, though it lies some 2,200 mi (3,500 km) west of the coast of Chile and just south of the TROPIC OF CAPRICORN in the PACIFIC OCEAN. Its nearest neighbor is PITCAIRN ISLAND 1,132 mi (1,819 km) to the west. The major settlement is Hanga Roa. Easter Island enjoys a subtropical climate tempered by oceanic influences; the annual temperature ranges from 86 degrees F (30 degrees C) in January/February to 57 degrees F (14 degrees C) in July and the annual precipitation is 45.2 in (114 cm).

The island has an area of 64 square mi (166 square km) that is triangular in shape and composed of volcanic rocks. There are three extinct volcanic peaks, the highest is Maunga Terevaka at 2,086 ft (652 m) and between which there are gently rolling lava hills. Two of the volcanic peaks have lakes in their craters that are sources of fresh water. Geologically, the island is young, having been formed by volcanic eruption on the Nazca Plate, a crustal “hot spot,” in the last 2 to 5 million years. The rocks are andesites and basalts, which have produced alkaline to neutral soils rich in clays and loams. The consolidated volcanic ash, or tuff, in the volcanic crater of Rano Raraku provided the material for the monoliths, or statues of large heads known as Moai, which are located along the coast and for which the island is famous.

DEFORESTATION

The current vegetation is grass savanna and is devoid of natural forest/woodland, though there is convincing evidence that several species of trees and woody shrubs were once present, including at least one tree palm. Deforestation had occurred by the time Europeans arrived and its completeness is considered to represent an ecological disaster; certainly soil EROSION is a problem in places.

The island was first seen by the Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1722, an occasion that gave the island its name. There have never been any native mammals but there are indigenous insects, one species of lizard and several land birds, though at least six of the latter have become extinct from human impact. Some afforestation in the interior of the island has been undertaken featuring eucalyptus species, and rodents such as rats and mice have become naturalized.

The origin of the Easter Islanders has been controversial. The anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, proposed that they originated in PERU and built a balsa raft. He imitated their journey with native boats and sailed from Peru to the island to prove that the trip was possible. However, it is now accepted that they originated in Polynesia, possibly from the Marquesas Islands, and arrived on Easter Island about 600 years ago. The Moais, huge native statues, of which there are more than 1,000, were erected between 1000 and 1650 C.E.

They are a major tourist attraction and there are rock paintings (petroglyphs) which also depict human life. The Rapa Nui National Park, covering most of the island, was established in 1935 to protect the archaeological remains. The islanders used Rongorongo script, the sole written language of Oceania.

Today, the population is about 3,000, having recovered from a major decline following initial contact

with Europeans which brought disease and slavery. Tourism is a major source of work and income. There is a rich artistic tradition involving carvings, tattooing, and music.

East Timor

THE ISLAND OF Timor, in the Indonesian archipelagos, is no stranger to struggle. Disputed between the Dutch and Portuguese since the late 1500s, the island was officially split when the eastern portion declared independence from PORTUGAL in 1975, only to be immediately claimed by INDONESIA, setting off 25 years of violence and destruction.

The Democratic Republic of East Timor (or Timor Leste) forms the eastern half of the island of Timor, the easternmost (and largest) of the Lesser Sunda islands (in fact, “timor” simply means “east” in Malayan languages). The new nation also includes an enclave in the western half of the island (Oecussi-Ambeno), and an island off the northern coast, Ataúro. Timor is located about 620 mi (1,000 km) east of JAVA, and about 300 mi (450 km) northwest of AUSTRALIA. The island is volcanic in origin and its terrain is mostly mountainous, with difficult access due to steep coasts and coral reefs. 

Timor thus remained little explored until the later 20th century, and European influence was restricted to a few coastal settlements (mostly on the north coast) dependent on plantations of coffee, rice, sugar, and coconuts. The interior mountains contain considerable minerals, including gold, manganese, and marble, but these are largely unexplored. The discovery of large reserves of offshore petroleum and natural gas promises much for the future of the country, but is also a continuing source of tension between rival claims of the Indonesian and Australian governments.

Both Portuguese and Dutch trading posts were established on Timor in the 16th century, but it was not until 1913 that the Dutch formally recognized the Portuguese position in the eastern half of the island. Long after the Dutch East Indies became independent as Indonesia in 1949, the Portuguese colony of Timor declared itself independent in 1975. It was immediately occupied by Indonesia, however, and forced to assimilate with the rest of the island. After 20 years of violence resulting in the loss of between 100,000 and 300,000 lives (killed or missing), a United Nations-supervised referendum in 1999 resulted in renewed independence in May 2002, and East Timor became a new

nation in September 2002.

The country’s capital, Díli, built by the Portuguese in the 1620s, is located on the northern coast of the island and is being rebuilt after near complete destruction in 1999. At independence, East Timor was one of the world’s poorest nations, with 70 percent illiteracy, 12 percent infant mortality, and an average life expectancy below 50 years. The country relies mostly on exports of timber and coffee, while it waits for resolution of its struggles with Australia over exploitation rights of the Timor Gap, the region of seabed off the southeast coast with large fossil fuel reserves. A settlement between Australia and Indonesia was reached over this prize in 1989, when East Timor was still under Indonesian occupation, and Australia is now unwilling to give up concessions to an area potentially yielding $29 billion in revenues. This conflict remained unresolved in 2004.