GEOGRAPHY AND ECOLOGY: THE CONCEPT OF THE COMMUNITY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

A major problem in the field of geography is to find some principle of selection providing a coherent theme for teaching and research. A geography of living things might provide such a principle in addition to those already employed, for it could focus attention especially on the study of communities, regarding the areas they occupy as functional regions. Communities so conceived would be regarded as organized groups of men, animals, plants or soils, or combinations of them. Developments in ecological studies, particularly community ecology and biogeography, make such a study possible; and with its stress on relationships, such as energy balance, biogeochemical cycles, limiting factors, and population dynamics, a geography of communities would be closely linked with other expanding fields of knowledge. It would be particularly susceptible to treatment by quantitative techniques and its biological emphasis would concentrate on the chief elements linking man and other creatures with their environment.

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