Biocoenosis

Articles

• Biocoenosis
  3 March 2009, by F.A.

  Biocoenosis : the expression of "mutualism" in the biosphere A biocoenosis can be defined as a community (the etymological meaning of the suffix –coenosis) of living beings (the prefix bio-) belonging to different species and associated by way of inter-species interdependence or mutualism that can be studied and modelled, as in the classic representations of food chains and trophic networks. If it is today used mainly to refer to the living fraction of an ecosystem (the biotope (...)

• Biome
  3 March 2009, by F.A.

  The term biome, coined in the United States in the 1910 to 1920s following work by English-language ecologists (Carpenter, Forbes, Shelford, Clements), exemplifies an ecological trend that does not solely focus on knowledge of plant communities. Animal communities and their trophic relationships with plant communities (phyto-coenoses) are also taken into account in an "ecology of biotic successions". For Shelford (1931, in Acot, 1988) the biome has the status of a fundamental ecological (...)

• Hydrosystem
  1 September 2010, by L.T.

  The term hydrosystem can be loosely defined as a system made up of water and the associated aquatic environments within a delimited geographical entity. This term, which has been in existence for some forty years, has considerably evolved in meaning. These changes can be approached from a thematic angle on the one hand, and from a spatial viewpoint on the other. For its thematic evolution, the term appeared at the start of the 1960s among English-language geo-morphologists. It was the (...)

• Biosphere
  31 July 2012, by F.A.

  According to François Ramade (2002), the biosphere can be defined "in the simplest manner as the region on the planet where life is possible, and where all living beings are found". This concept, alongside that of the ecosystem, has given ecology its dimension as a global science of the environment. Curiously, geographers have not made much use of this notion, with the exception of bio-geographers (Braque 1988, Rougerie 1988). In recent years this focus has not been widely returned to. (...)