Biological Ecosystems
What is Biological Ecosystems?
Picture a giant, cosmic game of "connect the dots," but instead of dots, you've got a bunch of living things—from the tiniest microbes to the mightiest mammals—all hanging out together in one big, happy, and slightly dysfunctional family. That, is a biological ecosystem! In this grand, interconnected web of life, every single organism has a role to play.
“An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life. Ecosystems contain biotic or living, parts, as well as abiotic factors, or nonliving parts. Biotic factors include plants, animals, and other organisms. Abiotic factors include rocks, temperature, and humidity. Ecosystems can be very large or very small. Tide pools, the ponds left by the ocean as the tide goes out, are complete, tiny ecosystems.” - National Geographic
From the bacteria breaking down dead stuff to the plants soaking up sunlight and the animals chowing down on each other, every living thing is a crucial piece of the ecological puzzle. So, the next time you're out in nature, take a moment to appreciate the mind-boggling complexity of the biological ecosystem around you. And if you ever feel small or insignificant, just remember: you're an essential part of this wacky, wonderful, and endlessly fascinating thing we call life!
Learn more about Biological Systems (coming soon)
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What do a tide pool on the California coast and the Amazon rainforest of South America have in common? Despite being many orders of magnitude different in size, both are examples of ecosystems—communities of organisms living together in combination with their physical environment.
Learn more at the Khan Academy
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“The rapid anthropogenic climate change experienced in the early twenty-first century is intimately entwined with the health and functioning of the biosphere. Climate change is impacting ecosystems through changes in mean conditions and in climate variability, coupled with other associated changes such as increased ocean acidification and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. It also interacts with other pressures on ecosystems, including degradation, defaunation and fragmentation. There is a need to understand the ecological dynamics of these climate impacts, to identify hotspots of vulnerability and resilience and to identify management interventions that may assist biosphere resilience to climate change”. - Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions
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Biological Ecosystems are a vital element when you start a Life-Centered Design project. One of the first things you do when you design in a life-centered way is map the ecosystem of your project, idea or question. And that is both the human and the biological ecosystem. We can only design sustainable and/or regenerative designs when we take nature into account in our design projects. One way we do that is by using an ecosystem mindmap.
Understand your ecosystem through Life-Centered Design.
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