Albert Einstein proposed that E=mc2 to describe the motion of particles moving near the speed of light. Physics is an exact science.
Ecology is a fuzzy science. It offers no simple equations. For example, hunting and fishing often deplete population of a wild species, so one might expect that stopping the exploitation or removing another predator would allow it to recover, but not necessarily. A moratorium on cod fisheries did not lead to a recovery because marine biologists did not have adequate information about their favourite food, small crustaceans called copepods, or the population of jellyfish, which competes for this food. Research funding usually becomes available only after things start to go wrong, when the environment has already been exploited. Environmental assessments allow scientists to study the environment before it changes.
Ecologists might find that the health of a habitat depends on any number of factors, but changing one of them will rarely achieve the expected effect because any number of other factors will go undetected. Ecology has few rules, and most of them have exceptions. This uncertainty puzzles people and leads them to suspect that ecology is a mythology. Certain principles do, however, guide natural systems.
- The largest ecological system, the ecosystem, consists of an intricate network of interrelated parts.
- The network structure includes both biotic (animals, plants, fungi and microbes) and abiotic (soil, air, water, etc.) components.
- The network structure contains a series of nested systems like Russian matryoshka dolls. A river, for example, is nested within a larger watershed, which is nested within the global hydrosphere. Each system and its network of relationships function as a whole, while at the same time being connected to a greater system. The planet itself is nested within a larger system, with which it interacts.
- Networks control the flow of energy and nutrients within each system.
- Solar energy drives the overall cycles of energy and nutrient flow. Producers such as plants turn it into sugar or other forms usable to other organisms,
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