Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/37

What is the Environment? 3WHAT IS THE ENVIRONMENT?


 * Defining Ecology and the Environment in Terms of the Human Landscape
 * Analysing the Landscape
 * The Human Landscape: Economic Activity and Society
 * Landscapes are Alive
 * Ecosystems
 * Terms used in the Description of Ecosystems
 * Plants and Animals in Ecosystems
 * The Dynamics of Ecosystems and Viability
 * Real Ecology: Human Society

3.1DEFINING ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN TERMS OF THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE

The world in which we live has been shaped by mankind. It is a human landscape. Thus an understanding of our world depends upon an understanding of ecology. After all:

#

If you have a basic knowledge of geography and biology you will have no trouble in understanding ecology. It is not a difficult or inaccessible science and anyone who takes an interest in their surroundings and tries to understand it, is an Ecologist. A good forester, farmer or planter is an Ecologist. Nonetheless there are a number of definitions and concepts which are central to the ecological debate: they are easy to understand and we all have to know their common names for ease of communication. These will be discussed below.

Ecology is a young science which has developed out of natural history as a result of the need to understand, explain and solve the problems of mankind's increasingly damaging impact on the environment. In essence:

#

But this begs the question: what is the Environment, which everyone talks so much about?

#

That is, of course, the Environment without people, where vegetation is able to reach its state of climax for a given climate. This could be rain-forests on the West African coast, pine forests on the Siberian plain or the lime forest in much of Southern England.

But people have to be brought into the environmental equation. Our unnatural technology significantly influences the development of the climax vegetation or else destroys it altogether. The influence is clear in urban and agricultural landscapes, less obvious in inaccessible forests, which seem to be entirely natural. But even here, mankind has had a significant impact. 35