Question

essay on ecosystem....​

Answer 1

Answer:

The term ‘ecosystem’ was first used by A.G. Tansley in 1935 who defined ecosystem as ‘a particu­lar category of physical systems, consisting of organ­isms and inorganic components in a relatively stable equilibrium, open and of various sizes and kinds’.According to Tansley the ecosystem is comprised of two major parts viz., biome (the whole complex of plants and animals of a particular spatial unit) and habitat (physical environment) and thus ‘all parts of such an ecosystem-organic and inorganic, biome and habitat-may be regarded as interacting factors which, in a mature ecosystem, are in approximate equilib­rium, it is through their interactions that the whole system is maintained’. F.R. Fosberg (1963) has defined ecosystem as ‘a function­ing, interacting system composed of one or more living organisms and their effective environment, both physical and biological’.According to R.L. Linderman (1942) the term ecosystem applies to ‘any system composed of physical-chemical-biological processes, within a space-time unit of any magnitude’. In E.P. Odum’s view (1971)’living organisms and their non-living (aboitic) environment are inseparably interrelated and interact upon each other.Any unit that includes all of the organisms (i.e., the community) in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined trophic struc­ture, biotic diversity and material cycle (i.e., exchange of materials between living and non-living parts) within the system is an ecological system or ecosystem’.