Elements of Ecology

Thomas M. Smith, Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, received his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Tennessee in 1982. The main focus of his research over the past two decades has been to develop an individual based theory of community and ecosystems dynamics. As part of this work he has served on numerous national and international panels that have addressed the potential influence of human activities on the global environment. He has authored over 70 publications based on his research, and he has been recognized as one of the most cited scientists in the field of global change research.

Thomas’s work has taken him to over 70 countries and 6 continents. He has served on the faculty of the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), Australian National University (Canberra, Australia), as well as the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA, USA). In addition, he has held research scientist positions at both Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, TN, USA) and the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria). His has over 20 years of experience teaching the science of ecology to both science and non-science majors.

Robert L. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Wildlife Biology from Cornell University. He is Professor Emeritus of Ecology at West Virginia University. He has spent over 30 years teaching Ecology and conducting field research throughout the world.

His teaching responsibilities have involved mostly undergraduate courses in general ecology and graduate courses in population ecology and wildlife management. His research has included forest-fire related problems in southern West Virginia, vegetational development and succession on abandoned and reclaimed surface mines, the relation between forest vegetational structure and the forest bird community, and forest habitat assessment and habitat evaluation procedures based on vegetational structure.

Smith has served as a consultant to congressional committees, workshops on environmental education and energy and environmental problems, the National Landmarks program of the U.S. Department of Interior, National Research Council Task Forces on wildlife and fisheries issues and ecological classification systems for implementing environmental quality evaluation procedures.

Brief Contents

• Chapter 1: The Nature of Ecology
• Chapter 2: Climate
• Chapter 3: The Aquatic Environment
• Chapter 4: The Terrestrial Environment
• Chapter 5: Adaptation and Natural Selection
• Chapter 6: Plant Adaptations to the Environment
• Chapter 7: Animal Adaptations to the Environment
• Chapter 8: Properties of Populations
• Chapter 9: Population Growth
• Chapter 10: Life History
• Chapter 11: Intraspecific Population Regulation
• Chapter 12: Species Interactions, Population Dynamics, and Natural Selection
• Chapter 13: Interspecific Competition
• Chapter 14: Predation
• Chapter 15: Parasitism and Mutualism
• Chapter 16: Community Structure
• Chapter 17: Factors Influencing the Structure of Communities
• Chapter 18: Community Dynamics
• Chapter 19: Landscape Dynamics
• Chapter 20: Ecosystem Energetics
• Chapter 21: Decomposition and Nutrient Cycling
• Chapter 22: Biogeochemical Cycles
• Chapter 23: Terrestrial Ecosystems
• Chapter 24: Aquatic Ecosystems
• Chapter 25: Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems
• Chapter 26: Large-Scale Patterns of Biological Diversity
• Chapter 27: Global Climate Change

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