Total human ecosystem

Total human ecosystem (THE) is an eco-centric concept.

History of the concept

Naveh and Lieberman (1994) and Naveh (2000) proposed the holistic, eco-centric concept of the Total Human Ecosystem in order to study the anthropocene ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management, within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. This concept (or better meta-concept) integrates human systems (the technosphere, but also in the conceptual space of human noosphere) and natural systems (the geophysical eco-space of the Earth biosphere) and their total environment at the highest co-evolutionary complexity level of the global ecological hierarchy. Naveh (2005) defines the concept of Total Human Ecosystem as:

<The Total Human Ecosystem (THE), integrating humans with all other organisms and their total environment at the highest level of the global hierarchy, should become the unifying holistic paradigm for all synthetic "eco-disciplines">.

Zev Naveh (1919-2011) was Professor in landscape ecology at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Until 1965 he worked as a range and pasture specialist in Israel and Tanzania. His research at the Technion was devoted to human impacts on Mediterranean landscapes, fire ecology and dynamic conservation management, and the introduction of drought resistant plants for multi-beneficial landscape restoration and beautification.[1]

Almo Farina is Professor of Ecology at the Urbino University, Faculty of Environmental Sciences (Urbino, Italy).

Concepts and epistemology

The interaction and co-evolution of the human and natural ecosystem interactions are the driving forces for the current Earth System. The Total Human Ecosystem meta-conceptional approach have to integrate the bio-and geo-centric approaches, derived from the natural sciences, and the approaches derived from the social sciences and the humanities in order to prevent further environmental degradation and drive natural and human systems towards a sustainable future.

A natural ecosystem within this concept is solar- energy powered, self-organizing and self-creating (autopoietic). A human ecosystem is fossil energy powered by high input and throughput and can be divided in urban-industrial ecosystem or agro-industrial. The ecosystem is realised in space as ecotope and the system of ecotopes is the landscape: natural, semi-natural, urban-industrial are the tangible, three-dimensional physical systems of our Total Human Ecosystem. The THE also consists of the domain of information, perceptions (in landscape ecology this is the ecofield concept, sensu Farina, 2000; Farina and Belgrano, 2004), knowledge, feeling and consciousness, enabling human (but also biological) self-awareness. A special case of landscapes inside of the Total Human Ecosystem are the cultural landscapes (Farina, 2000), in which the relationships between human activity (as an effective, ecology based, land or sea stewardship) and the environment have created ecological, socioeconomic and cultural patterns and feedback mechanisms that preserve biological and cultural diversity and maintain (or better improves) ecosystem resilience and resistance.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Naveh, Z. Transdisciplinary challenges in landscape ecology and restoration ecology - An Anthology. (Springer 2007)
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