When you think of an ecosystem--the cycle and balance of life, growth, and death of organisms in a given environment--do you see an ocean, beach, dunes, plants, animals, and tides in your mind? Do you see a forest with plants reaching for the light, rain dripping through leaves, leaf litter rotting on the ground and organisms at work or play on, in, and around the plants? Whatever your vision, where are you? Is the system "out there" or does it encompass you so that you turn to see what parts are above, behind, to the side, or beneath you? It has only been since the ecosystem approach that we have begun to envision ourselves as part of the environment. Human ecology begins to emphasize that which we have ignored in the past--we are part of this system--not separate and distinct manipulators of the environment destined to control and transform. Indeed, we have transformed our physical space not believing there is a limit to what nature can repair.

Where did the idea of our separateness come from? Part of being human is the need to explain our origins and to maintain--at least in our minds--some power over the risk of natural disasters and vicissitudes of the weather. Religion explains this and offers protection through magic manipulation or supplication. Does not the Old Testament tell its readers that man shall have dominion over all the earth. God in his beneficence will protect us? The Biblical model might be:

 

With this perspective, some humans carried the idea of dominion over into explorations of the New World and included people. When the first voyages of discovery began in the 15th century, European adventurers, discoverers and explorers viewed the inhabitants of the New World as sub-human or savages. They displayed humans in the royal court as curiosities along with the exotic plants and animals they found. They thought their moral imperative was to "civilize" the world and make farmers of indigenous people. The voracious European appetite soon exploited the vast array of natural resources in the new land or turned to plantation economy to provide food for the Old World. Native people either over hunted animals to supply the Old World or were forced to farm and give up their nomadic live. Soon settlers began to transform nature and replaced native flora and fauna with those they were familiar with from their old country, such as wheat farming and cattle and sheep raising. Clearly humans were concerned more with supplying goods and food, which seemed to be in an inexhaustible supply.

It was not until Charles Darwin's book, Origin of the Species, was published in 1859 that the scientific world began to understand of how organisms experience their environment. Darwin made little mention of including humans in that evolutionary mix, because to do so at that time would have been heresy. The concept of evolution was slowly accepted over the next one hundred years--and it is still dismissed by some of the general population.

At the beginning of the 20th Century physical anthropologist began to investigate human adaptation to the environment. If animals evolved in relationship to their environment, the human form was subject to the same laws. New research by physical anthropologists focused on human adaptation to the environment by measuring and comparing different geographic populations.

Bergman's and Allen's rule (Jurmain and Nelson 1994:147-149) demonstrated the greater adaptive benefit of having long limbs and lineal bodies in equatorial regions for heat loss in hot climates. Round bodies and shorter appendages were adaptive in colder climates. A round body looses less heat where needed in cold climates. The rules neatly fit the distribution of lineal Maasai in Africa and round bodies of the Inuit in polar regions.

Other biological studies concentrated on the science of parts of the biological system and gave little attention to the relationship of the parts to the whole. Reductionism saw the development of specialized fields of study which focused on parts of the body, the individual species, and the social component of groups of animals without looking at the interaction or the integration of the components to the larger scale or the interplay of different hierarchical systems within our biosphere. These specialized scientists were unable to respond to large-scale problems or to work effectively among disciplines--each field believing that the answer to problems were to be found within their specialty.

ODUM AND THE NEW ECOLOGY

Eugene P. Odum was the first to propose the "new ecology" in 1953. He proposed that ecology, like a forest was more than "just a collection of trees." That no one discipline was sufficient to understand much less apply solutions to any level of the physical hierarchy of life without including multiple disciplines, such as economics, politics, biology, social sciences and others. Ecology was not to be identified as natural science but as the examination of natural organisms within the greater system. The word "ecology" comes from the Greek root oikos meaning house. Odum suggested that the house was the biosphere and humans their habits and actions were part of the biosphere system. Odum suggests that the biosphere house be considered by region or ecological zone to make the interrelatedness more prominent.

He further proposed two revolutionary ideas that:

. . . (i) principles [of ecology] were presented in a whole-to-part progression with consideration of the ecosystem level as the first rather than the last chapter, and (ii) energy was . . . the common denominator for integrating biotic and physical components into functional wholes (1977:1290).

Because Odum believed that scientists were territorial and had difficulty working together, he thought they would have better collaborative results if they shared a common idea or theory, especially a controversial one which would challenge their skills. He emphasized the inclusion of the social sciences, particularly economics and political science, in the milieu. He need not stop there but include anthropology, sociology, psychology, and geography as essential in dealing with the human cost and perspective.

He uses the coral reef at the Eniwetok Atoll as an example:

A joint research study on a coral reef by my brother and me in 1954 can perhaps serve as an illustration of how ecoswystem-level study can reveal emergent properties which tend to be missed in piecemeal study. At Eniwetok Atoll we measured the metabolism of the intact reef by monitoring oxygen changes in the water flow. We also did a detailed trophic analysisas a means of charting major energy flows, and were able to construct an energy budget for the whole system. It become evident from the latter that corals and associated algae were much more closely linked metabolically than had previously been supposed, and that the inflow of nutrients and animal food from surrounding ocean waters was inadequate to support the reef if corals and other major components were functioning as independent populations. We theorized that the observed high rate of primary production for the reef as a whole was an emergent property resulting from symbiotic linkages that maintain efficient energy exchange and nutrient recycling between plant and animal components. Our work created considerable controversy and stimulated a number of investigations. Teams of researchers with expertise in chemistry, microbiology invertebrate zoology, and other fields descended into the reefs, but remained loosely united in their interest in testing directly or indirectly basic hypotheses about the reef as an ecosystem.

Odom ponders, "What significance do our discoveries have for urban industrial man?" He suggests we look at human agriculture as an energy use and recycle ecosystem. Because they are reciprocal systems the system needs to be long term energy use and recycle exchange rather than exhaustive, extractive and immediate.

ECOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Inspired by the work of Eugene Odum on the ecosystem approach, anthropologists wove culture into the ecosystem perspective. Roy Rapport's study, Pigs for the Ancestors, incorporated the ecosystem approach by examining the ritual cycle of the Tsmbaga of New Guinea Highlands. The ritual cycles relate to "the cycles of pig poulation growth, the fallow cycles of swidden [slash and burn agriculture], and cyclical patterns of warfare and peace" (Moran 1998:15). When the pig population became too plentiful to feed because food had to be transported from the fields far away, war broke out, war was ended, and pigs were slaughtered for a grand feast. The environment cycle and culture were bound through ritual. The ecosystem approach became a common denominator for studies of our physical world.

Even more recently physical or ecological anthropology have expanded the ecosystem approach to include nutrition, disease, genetics, urban or rural residence, socio-economic status, and stress. Themes include environmental physiology, growth and development, and genetics and demography. By looking at nutrient and energy flow, we are tied more to our ecosystem. Evolutionary ecology examines human systems over time and health ecology looks beyond disease and wellness to the social, political, economic and biological interaction, which impact health status. Increasingly ecological anthropology looks at humans in an integrated, multidisciplinary perspective. This bio-cultural approach might be modeled this way:

 

ECOSYSTEM MODEL

 

To examine the ecosystem or bio-cultural approach to the human condition, several studies place human and human practices squarely into the ecosystem and uncover the consequences of some of our practices. Students may select from the following list or find others themselves.

POSSIBLE PAPERS:

Issues concerning the Great Barrier Reef as an ecosystem.

Issues concerning the Florida Reef as an ecosystem.

Issues concerning the SW Florida riverin3/estuary/gulf ecosystem.

Social trends in breast/bottle feeding and the unintended consequences of switching to bottle feedings as a social practice (Jelliffe and Jelliffe 1972)

Health consequences from the urban environment (Harrison and Gibson 1976; Harrison and Jeffries 1977).

Humans, resource distribution and optimal foraging strategies (Smith 1982; Winterhalter 1980)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Braund, K. E. H. 1993. Deerskins and Duffles. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press

Darwin, Charles. 1958 (original 1859). Origin of Species. New York: New American Library.

Jurmain, Robert, and Harry Nelson. 1994. Introduction to Physical Anthropology. Sixth Edition. Minneapolis/St. Paul: West Publishing Co.

Moran, Emilo. ed. 1998. The Ecosystem Approach in Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rapport, Roy. 1967. Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Odum, Eugene P. 1977. The Emergence of Ecology as a New Integrative Discipline. Science 195 (4284): 1289-1293.

Topics to look up. Order through Interlibrary Loan.

Jelliffe, D. B., and E. F. P. Jelliffe. 1972. Lactation, Conception and Nutrition of the Nursing Mother and Child. Journal of Pediatrics 81:829-833.

Harrison, G.A. and J. B. Gibson.(editors). 1976. Man in Urban Environments. London and New Your: Oxford University Press.

Compare with earlier text

A Civic Biology

Harrison, G. A. and D. J. Jeffries. 1977. Human Biology in Urban Environments: A Review of Research Strategies. In Human Population Problems in the Biosphere: Some Research Strategies and Designs, edited by P. T. Baker. MAB Technical Notes, 3. Paris: UNESCP. Pp. 65-82.

Smith. E. A. 1982. Evolutionary ecology and the Analysis of Human Social Behavior. In Rethinking Adaptation: from Deterministic to Interactive Models, edited by R. Dyson-Hudson and M. A. Little. Boulder: Westview Press.

Winterhalter, 1980. Optimal Foraging

Odum, H. T. 1971. Environment, Power, and Society. New York: Wiley (Interscience)