The rise of ecosystem ecology and its applications to environmental challenges

Before the 1970s, different disciplines had their own narrow perspectives of what ecologists and natural resource managers now call “ecosystems” and landscapes. For example, in these earlier days ecologists studied and measured things they could see, touch, count, weigh, or map. Ecologists speculated about plant succession and animal dynamics. Rangeland and pasture scientists and managers were concerned with forage and animal production. Foresters studied board feet (or meters) of timber, tree reproduction, and harvesting techniques from forest stands. Hydrologists studied millimeters of precipitation, water yield from watersheds, and the effects of various manipulations on water yield. Each of these disciplines mostly measured livings things above ground or water. Ecosystems were viewed as “black boxes”, if recognized at all. These disciplinary perspectives or “silo” views of systems meant little collaboration among scientific specialties. Ecology as a discipline was changing during the 1950s and 1960s. E. P. Odum and his brother H. T. Odum were beginning to conceptualize energy flow in “ecosystems”, and H. T. Odum was formulating early ideas about “systems ecology” (Odum, 1971). F. H. Bormann and G. E. Likens were formulating ideas about forested watersheds as “ecosystems” (Likens et al., 1977). This was the same period when “systems theory” was being developed by von Bertalanffy (1968), Forrester (1968), George van Dyne, Bernard Patten, Jerry Olson (Coleman, 2010), and others. The latter three introduced a new scientific paradigm: systems ecology (systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, taking a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems). It can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology that contributed heavily to ecosystem science as we know it today (Fig. 1). Also, in the late 1960s and early 1970s period, a new public and institutional awareness of compelling environmental problems was emerging worldwide. The need for interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving was becoming recognized. The stage was set for the initiation of the new problem-solving paradigm, ecosystem science – the right science at the right time.