Biome

Articles

• 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 (...)

• 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. (...)