ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to present an ecological perspective on sustainable development with a focus on terrestrial ecosystems. An ecosystem a collection of interacting components and their interactions that includes ecological or biological components. A key idea is that an ecosystem includes the physical or abiotic environment in addition to the biological components. The ecological perspective is one of three key conceptual issues or sets of objectives with potentially important operational implications for sustainable development. Ecologists stress preserving the integrity of ecological systems that are critical for the overall stability of our global ecosystem and deal in measurement units of physical, chemical and biological entities. The primary goal of the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) is to track the condition of the ecological resources in the United States. EMAP is concentrating on ecological sustainability. EMAP is developing a set of indicators that will describe the condition of ecological resources.
