ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ecosystems, human sociocultural systems, some parallels and differences between the evolution of ecosystems and human systems, environmental social sciences, particularly economics and sociology, and some of the human driving forces of environmental and ecosystem change. An ecosystem is the most basic unit of ecological analysis, which includes all the varieties and populations of living things that are interdependent in a given environment. The environment includes the earth, but an ecosystem means the “community” of things that live and interact in parts of the geophysical environment. Every organism has nutrient needs that the ecosystem and its physical environment must provide for it to thrive. Many people who understand human social evolution as a story of continual progress fail to appreciate the role that environmental degradation has played. The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s was noted to illustrate the biotic vulnerability of agricultural monocultures.
