Ecosytem Paradigm
ECOSYSTEM
Digression in Biology
Originally found in biology, the term „ecology“ refers to the relationships of organisms with each other and their surroundings. This relationship is further defined through ecological levels of organization, expanding the perspective from the smallest frame, the organism, to the largest, the biosphere.
An organism is a living entity capable of development, growth, and self-regulation. When multiple individuals of the same species establish relationships, they form a population. This population transforms into a community when different species coexist in the same area and engage in interactions and interrelations, such as animals and plants benefiting from one another. The relationships between organisms, populations, and communities are formed based on their biotic functionality, with organisms categorized into producers (e.g., vegetation), consumers (e.g., animals), and decomposers, which break down organic components into inorganic forms.
Organisms also depend on abiotic factors to fulfill their needs, such as sunlight, oxygen, water, and temperature. The integration of these factors with organisms, populations, and communities, including both biotic and abiotic elements, constitutes an ecosystem.
Ecosystems typically cover a wider geographical area than a community, such as a forest or grassland. Ecosystems can be natural (terrestrial, lentic, and lotic) or artificially managed systems, such as agricultural lands and urban areas. In addition to regulating resources, ecosystems provide essential services, including consumables like food and water and psychological benefits, such as recreational spaces for stress relief.
Healthy ecosystems sustain themselves, offer human services, and contribute to larger ecological structures like biomes and, ultimately, the biosphere. Due to their extensive scale and synergies, ecosystems nurture biodiversity and influence climate. Their health is crucial for maintaining regenerative capacities that foster diverse habitats. Studies, including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment from 2005, indicate that human activities have degraded 60% of ecosystems globally.
The rapid evolution of humanity into the Anthropocene has further escalated the collapse of these systems and biodiversity loss.
A shift in how humans perceive and interact with ecosystems is essential. Humans and human-related environments do not exist separately from ecosystems but are an integral part of them.
Ecosystem Ideation
Ecosystems naturally exhibit resilient structural integrity, symbiotic relationships, and regenerative processes, which not only thrive and evolve under optimal conditions but also adapt to challenging environmental changes. This inherent adaptability makes the ecosystem itself an ideal conceptual foundation.
Following extensive analyses of the existing and influencing stakeholders—human, water, flora, and fauna—and the transformation of these stakeholders into equal protagonists, we embark on a conceptual investigation of the roles these protagonists play in ecosystem adaptation. Utilizing the resilience and strength of the natural ecosystem, which are crucial in today’s environment, the protagonists aim to emulate these symbiotic relationships with each other, thereby creating an overall functioning, equitable, and interconnected system for both human and non-human protagonists.
The ultimate goal is the automatic implementation of accessible and naturally occurring co-existence between the elements, ensuring that each subsystem contains all four elements. These subsystems symbolize the community of the ecological organization, thriving from the symbiosis within the overall system. Just as a real ecosystem consists of a variety of species and their populations, the four elements—water, flora, fauna, and human—represent the individual species populations in our conceptual model. These populations contain the individual organisms, here defined as the previously identified protagonists.
In each subsystem, the main protagonist takes on the role of a keystone species, enabling the other elements and exerting a disproportionately large effect on the elements of the subsystem, thereby defining the main protagonist. To ensure equality and equal representation of all former stakeholder categories, the main protagonists rotate their element from subsystem to subsystem, resulting in a diverse ecosystem consisting of water, human, flora, and fauna subsystems.
This conceptualized ecosystem encompasses eight subsystems, addressing the demands and needs of all elements of the site, as well as the relationships between the existing programs and the adapted programs, such as the future culture center.
THE EDGE EFFECT
& Ecotones In Ecology
In the early mornings, when most species are active and undisturbed, hunters often position themselves where a forest and a field meet. This choice is strategic, not coincidental, due to the unique characteristics of these spaces.
“Game is a phenomenon of edges. It occurs where the types of food and cover it needs come together, i.e., where their edges meet. Every grouse hunter knows this when he selects the edge of a woods, with its grape tangles,
haw-bushes, and little grassy bays, as the likely place to look for birds.”16
The point where two or more ecosystems converge provides a unique habitat for its biotic components. The example of a forest ecosystem meeting a grassland ecosystem illustrates this effect. Species physically transition into the other ecosystem and share space, food sources, and developmental abilities, extending their reach beyond their native ecosystem. This overlap of species from adjacent ecosystems is known as the edge effect, which scientifically exhibits a higher range of species diversity and thus greater biodiversity.
Ecosystems do not create straight or orthogonal lines that define borders. Instead, nature blends these borders, transitioning and fading out at the edges. Seeds sprawl from forest pines; birds extend their habitats to food sources at the edge of a field meeting the forest; microclimates and temperatures change gradually from one ecosystem to another; a river habitat transitions through
riparian vegetation into a neighboring artificially cultivated field. This spatial transition from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems is called an ecotone.
Larger ecotones include species that not only overlap from one ecosystem to another, as seen in the edge effect, but also foster entirely unique species in the ecotone habitat, in addition to the overlapping edge species. An example is species that find what they need to live and thrive in a floodplain or wetland habitat, where aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems share their edges.
A vital component for ecological design is learning from and utilizing the abilities of ecosystems for further integration. The edge effect and ecotones, with their thresholds, transition spaces, and unique qualities in diversity, are key factors for adaptation and enhancing the overall functionality of symbiotic
systems.15
The ecosystem is localized on the site, with each system graphically distinguished by individual hatches. Spatial analyses have determined where the existing protagonists, such as the beaver, currently inhabit. Therefore, the beaver habitat subsystem has its starting point at the previously identified location, allowing it to extend and evolve its habitat in correlation with its other elements as well as the rest of the ecosystem.
Other subsystems are newly implemented on the site and are designed to interact with existing elements or adapt unutilized spaces.
In ecological organization, a subsystem or community typically has a smaller-scale starting point where its core elements are implemented. This foundational setup allows the subsystem to further develop and integrate within the larger ecosystem.
Over time, the subsystems on the site will have evolved and become interconnected. This temporal progression solidifies the functionality and symbiosis of each system. Initially established to function independently, the subsystems will have matured in their primary roles, becoming resilient in relation to other elements within their communities.
At this stage, the subsystems engage in further interconnected overlaps and established synergies with other subsystems, enhancing the overall structure and resilience of the entire ecosystem.
The spatial and functional overlaps between systems create what is known as the edge effect. In this context, the edge effect does not solely bring together the biodiversity of different subsystems, but it also fosters a multitude of different functionalities and relationships. These dynamics, which would not have been visible or experienced without the development and overlap of the subsystems, enrich the ecosystem with greater diversity and potential for innovative interactions.