The mountains of Ecuador as a birth place of ecology and endangered landscape

Abstract

In the era of space travel, ecology has continued to gain relevance as the science of the ‘spaceship Earth’. In this context, it can be said to have a mission, which is to understand the complex network of the life-support systems that keep biospheric processes operating in a way suitable to sustaining living organisms and their environment (Odum & Sarmiento 1997). With the realization that ecology, in the broad sense, provides the means to understand the mechanics of nature, scholars are using ecological understanding at the interfaces of disciplines to: (1) prevent and reverse the demise of biodiversity in marine and terrestrial ecoregions (conservation biology), (2) reduce impacts of population pressure on the resource base of people (ecological anthropology), (3) establish more parsimonious economic activities to ensure optimum yields for the long term (ecological economics), (4) plan for an appropriately-equitable and socially-integrative sustainable development (environmental design), (5) restore degraded ecosystems and landscapes (restoration ecology), and (6) model hypothetical future scenarios where predictions from ecological theory may prove valuable for the future of mankind (environmental planning).