Systems Ecology

Systems ecology studies an ecosystem as a whole, integrated system governed by the flow of energy and the cycling of matter among its living and non-living parts, rather than studying its component populations separately. Eugene Odum laid the framework in his 1953 textbook Fundamentals of Ecology, and in 1964, as president of the Ecological Society of America, he announced systems ecology by name as a distinct research program, arguing that the ecosystem, not the individual species, is the basic unit of nature.