ABSTRACT
Explicit considerations of scale are increasingly a part of the process by which ecologists approach a variety of ecological issues and problems, and hierarchy theory is commonly used to address questions of scale. The concept of ecosystem is both widely understood and “diffuse and ambiguous”. The ecosystem may be specific or generic, referring to a particular ecosystem or some ecosystem type. A distinction can be made between a population-community approach to ecosystems and a process-functional approach. The ecosystem is often identified as one level in an ecological or biological hierarchy extending from cells to biosphere. Integrity generally refers to the soundness or completeness of something, the state of being whole and unimpaired. A change in structure, with little or no change in function, might be viewed as an insignificant loss of ecosystem integrity. The scale of an ecosystem refers to the spatial and temporal dimensions of the ecosystem.
