fundamentals of ecology by eugene p odum

Odum built his study of ecosystem ecology on this holistic perspective of nature. Shelford instilled in Odum such concepts as the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts that nature tends toward stability in its mature stages and that ecology is the study of large-scale systems and the interrelationships therein. Odum’s involvement with holistic science continued to develop under the influence of Victor Shelford, who viewed ecology as the study of biotic communities.

This curiosity in physiology challenged him not only to study functions within an organism but also to study how organisms function in their environment as a whole. This investigation, published in Ecological Monographs (1941), attests his early interest in physiological ecology. Odum was the recipient of numerous awards in ecological education, including the Educator-of-the-Year in 1983 awarded by the National Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Educator Award in 1992 from the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and the Distinguished Service Award in 1998 from the United States International Association of Landscape Ecology.įocused on the heart rate of birds in his Ph.D. “Great Ideas in Ecology for the 1990s,” published in BioScience (1992), placed his understanding of and goals for ecology during the last decade of the twentieth century in a public forum. These books were intended to provide a clear understanding of current and future challenges for public consideration in order to move toward sustainable societies. For example, in 1989 he published Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems (second and third editions were published, respectively, in 19) and in 1998 a book entitled Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicaments. In later years of his life Odum authored several books and publications that focused attention on Earth as a life-support system.

In an award-winning video Eugene Odum: An Ecologist’s Life, Odum is depicted as providing a commensurate education, whether through invited speaking engagements with citizens, discussions with community organizations, or dialogue with individual students walking across a university campus. Fundamentals of Ecology was ranked first in a survey of the membership of the American Institute of Biological Sciences as the book that had the greatest impact on career training in the biological sciences (Barrett and Mabry, 2002). Of Georgia, was published after Odum’s death (at the age of 88).

Fundamentals of ecology by eugene p odum