ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of major findings from the "new ecology". It examines three of ecological postulates in greater detail: generalized carrying capacity; area biodiversity relations, that is, biological diversity as a function of geographical area and isolation; and biodiversity-stability relations, that is, biological diversity confers ecological stability. The "new ecology" offers a sort of shorthand for a significant reorientation that has occurred in the field of biological ecology. The emergence of the "new ecology" may be traced to empirical and theoretical advances and the rise of new metaphors. The "new ecology" also deploys spatial scale in its redefinition of the ecological processes that shape biophysical environments. Ecological concepts in human geography have been used to interpret two types of relations between organisms and the environment. In human geography's version of systems ecology, the notion of adaptation or "adaptedness" considered human practices and, in some cases, beliefs as ecosystem functions.
