Earth at the Crossroads: Understanding the Ecology of a Changing Planet

Every plant, microorganism, and animal on Earth exists within an ecosystem: a complex network of interdependent relationships in which each individual strand is important and contributes to the success of the whole. Ecosystems, in turn, interact with one another to form the biosphere: the zone of life on our planet. But these systems, so important to the world around us, are far from stable. Instead, ecosystems are constantly changed by the pressures of biological, geological, and physical forces. In addition, the rapid growth of human populations and their attendant technologies has created unprecedented forces of ecological change. Only when you look beyond the individual level and observe how populations of different species interact with themselves, with other species, and with their physical environment, as well as how they respond and adapt to change, can you fully understand how life truly works.