Ecology Can Be Loosed Defined

Ecology can be loosed defined as the study of the distribution and abundance of living organism and such distributions are affected by interactions between organisms and their environment. The implicit reason that is included within environmental science is that ecology looks at the broad overview of how life is organized on this planet and the environments that they occupy.

Ecology is an inter-disciplinary study because just like environmental science it uses principles from "an array of disciplines." Ecology is specifically important to environmental science because it is the study of the relationships between organisms and their natural environments. This is fundamental to the understanding of environmental science as a whole. In fact, ecology could be said to be the core science that impacts our knowledge of environmentalism.

Through understanding ecology and the practices behind it, one can explore the quantitative understanding of biodiversity and how populations function within environments (barrameda, npg). Since these are the basic tools necessary to understand and measure the most fundamental aspects of the environment, ecology becomes an intrinsic part of most environmental science curriculums

Ecology is especially useful in environmental science because it takes a relationship perspective when scientifically examining the environment. This is especially important in examining the relationships between individuals within certain species as well as the organizational methods and activities of the species within a community setting (barrameda, npg). It is precisely because ecology takes a close examination of a quantitative approach to organisms and their behavior within their environment that it is considered the backbone of environmental science.

The field of ecology has expanded at an exponential pace in the last half of the 20th century, although ecology's roots can be dated back to the time of Greek inquiries into science. It wasn't however until the beginning of the 20th century that major interest within ecology and new technology helped to jumpstart this particular branch of science. Part of the reason for the growth of ecology is the increase in knowledge in many other disciplines such as geology, geography, chemistry, physics, etc. (botany, npg). Since ecology is an interdisciplinary study that transcends biology, its growth and prominence can be attributed to the expansion of human knowledge in many different areas of science. The study of ecology is expanding at a furious pace for several reasons. First, the definition of ecology has been expanded to cover much more territory than it formerly dictated. While in the 18th and 19th centuries, ecology was relegated to the study of marine life and other aspects of nautical application of environmental science, in the current state, ecology is applied to all forms of organisms (botany, npg). This dramatic expansion of its definition and scope is what has fueled the rapid growth within the field and the rich results that it has garnered.

One of the fundamental shifts within ecology in the modern era is the inclusion of human ecology within the discipline. While human ecology itself has been included within the study of ecology for well over half a century, it only gained prominence in the late 1970s. Human ecology deals with how humans as organisms affect the environment as well as other organisms. This field is perhaps the most important development to environmental science in the past century precisely because now we have a much deeper understanding of how and why humanity influences the natural environment around us, deeply contributing to our awareness and knowledge of environmental damage and the harmful affects of pollution. Overall, it is evident that ecology has expanded at a tremendous pace because it has increased the scope that the field itself examines. By including human ecology as one of its disciplines, ecology now takes on significance not only as a scientific field but in both economic and political terms as well.