The Whole Earth Catalog ( WEC ) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998.
111-413: The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency , ecology , alternative education , " do it yourself " (DIY), and holism , and featured the slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead,
222-582: A Whole Seed Catalog, with a title and cover image inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog . Kevin Kelly, mentioned above for his role in editing later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog , maintains a web site—Cool-Tools.org—that publishes reviews of "the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas." He also published
333-540: A 2 disc sample album The Whole Burbank Catalog . The cover parodied the publication's artwork. Self-sufficiency Self-sustainability and self-sufficiency are overlapping states of being in which a person , being , or system needs little or no help from, or interaction with others. Self-sufficiency entails the self being enough (to fulfill needs), and a self-sustaining entity can maintain self-sufficiency indefinitely. These states represent types of personal or collective autonomy . A self-sufficient economy
444-465: A dramatic effect on community structure. Hunting of sea otters, for example, is thought to have led indirectly to the extinction of the Steller's sea cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas ). While the keystone species concept has been used extensively as a conservation tool, it has been criticized for being poorly defined from an operational stance. It is difficult to experimentally determine what species may hold
555-428: A dramatic impact on the ecology of individual species or whole ecosystems. For instance, the replacement of an ant species by another (invasive) ant species has been shown to affect how elephants reduce tree cover and thus the predation of lions on zebras . A trophic level (from Greek troph , τροφή, trophē, meaning "food" or "feeding") is "a group of organisms acquiring a considerable majority of its energy from
666-412: A flattened body relative to the main populations that live in open savanna. The population that lives in an isolated rock outcrop hides in crevasses where its flattened body offers a selective advantage. Habitat shifts also occur in the developmental life history of amphibians, and in insects that transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. Biotope and habitat are sometimes used interchangeably, but
777-477: A good overview of the available tools and resources, and for the word, and copies, to get out to everyone who needed them. From 1974 to 2003, the Whole Earth principals published a magazine, known originally as CoEvolution Quarterly . When the short-lived Whole Earth Software Review (a supplement to The Whole Earth Software Catalog ) failed, it was merged in 1985 with CoEvolution Quarterly to form
888-454: A great wave of convention-challenging experimentalism and a do-it-yourself attitude associated with "the counterculture," and tended to appeal not only to the intelligentsia of the movement, but to creative, hands-on, and outdoorsy people of many stripes. Some of the ideas in the Catalog were developed during Brand's visits to Drop City . With the Catalog opened flat, the reader might find
999-648: A higher degree of survivability. However, just as many oppose this, arguing that it is not self-sustainability that is essential for survivability, but on the contrary specialization and thus dependence. Consider the first two examples presented above. Among countries, commercial treats are as important as self-sustainability. An autarky is usually inefficient. Among people, social ties have been shown to be correlated to happiness and success as much as self-sustainability. Ecology Ecology (from Ancient Greek οἶκος ( oîkos ) 'house' and -λογία ( -logía ) 'study of')
1110-612: A higher one." Small scale patterns do not necessarily explain large scale phenomena, otherwise captured in the expression (coined by Aristotle) 'the sum is greater than the parts'. "Complexity in ecology is of at least six distinct types: spatial, temporal, structural, process, behavioral, and geometric." From these principles, ecologists have identified emergent and self-organizing phenomena that operate at different environmental scales of influence, ranging from molecular to planetary, and these require different explanations at each integrative level . Ecological complexity relates to
1221-444: A keystone role in each ecosystem. Furthermore, food web theory suggests that keystone species may not be common, so it is unclear how generally the keystone species model can be applied. Complexity is understood as a large computational effort needed to piece together numerous interacting parts exceeding the iterative memory capacity of the human mind. Global patterns of biological diversity are complex. This biocomplexity stems from
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#17327718301021332-408: A keystone species can result in a community collapse just as the removal of the keystone in an arch can result in the arch's loss of stability. Sea otters ( Enhydra lutris ) are commonly cited as an example of a keystone species because they limit the density of sea urchins that feed on kelp . If sea otters are removed from the system, the urchins graze until the kelp beds disappear, and this has
1443-603: A large format book in 2013— Cool Tools A Catalog of Possibilities —which draws on the many reviews published over the years on that web site. The format, size, and style of the book reflect and pay homage to the original Whole Earth Catalog . In 1970, on April Fool's Day, the Whole Earth Restaurant opened at UC Santa Cruz . It was an early source of "whole foods" in Northern California until it closed in 2002. In 1972 Warner Bros. Records release
1554-741: A legacy niche that was constructed before their time. Biomes are larger units of organization that categorize regions of the Earth's ecosystems, mainly according to the structure and composition of vegetation. There are different methods to define the continental boundaries of biomes dominated by different functional types of vegetative communities that are limited in distribution by climate, precipitation, weather, and other environmental variables. Biomes include tropical rainforest , temperate broadleaf and mixed forest , temperate deciduous forest , taiga , tundra , hot desert , and polar desert . Other researchers have recently categorized other biomes, such as
1665-439: A linear successional route, changes might occur quickly or slowly over thousands of years before specific forest successional stages are brought about by biological processes. An ecosystem's area can vary greatly, from tiny to vast. A single tree is of little consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem, but is critically relevant to organisms living in and on it. Several generations of an aphid population can exist over
1776-439: A macroscopic view of the system. While the notion of trophic levels provides insight into energy flow and top-down control within food webs, it is troubled by the prevalence of omnivory in real ecosystems. This has led some ecologists to "reiterate that the notion that species clearly aggregate into discrete, homogeneous trophic levels is fiction." Nonetheless, recent studies have shown that real trophic levels do exist, but "above
1887-516: A mix of herbivores and predators). Omnivores do not fit neatly into a functional category because they eat both plant and animal tissues. It has been suggested that omnivores have a greater functional influence as predators because compared to herbivores, they are relatively inefficient at grazing. Trophic levels are part of the holistic or complex systems view of ecosystems. Each trophic level contains unrelated species that are grouped together because they share common ecological functions, giving
1998-420: A new appreciation for the influence that organisms have on the ecosystem and evolutionary process. The term "niche construction" is more often used in reference to the under-appreciated feedback mechanisms of natural selection imparting forces on the abiotic niche. An example of natural selection through ecosystem engineering occurs in the nests of social insects , including ants, bees, wasps, and termites. There
2109-435: A population-level phenomenon, as with the migration routes followed by plants as they occupied northern post-glacial environments. Plant ecologists use pollen records that accumulate and stratify in wetlands to reconstruct the timing of plant migration and dispersal relative to historic and contemporary climates. These migration routes involved an expansion of the range as plant populations expanded from one area to another. There
2220-455: A previous project by Stewart Brand . In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, one of the first images of the "Whole Earth" . He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford -educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there
2331-401: A region), and sites are classed either as sources or sinks. A site is a generic term that refers to places where ecologists sample populations, such as ponds or defined sampling areas in a forest. Source patches are productive sites that generate a seasonal supply of juveniles that migrate to other patch locations. Sink patches are unproductive sites that only receive migrants; the population at
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#17327718301022442-774: A research project at Berkeley University and publish a feminist catalog inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog, the New Woman's Survival Catalog , which gathers feminist initiatives in different domains (art, communication, work, money, self-help , self-defense...) in the USA. In 1969, a store which was inspired by (but not financially connected with) The Whole Earth Catalog, called the Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley, California . It closed in 1998. In 1970
2553-517: A seasonal influx of new immigrants. A dynamic metapopulation structure evolves from year to year, where some patches are sinks in dry years and are sources when conditions are more favorable. Ecologists use a mixture of computer models and field studies to explain metapopulation structure. Community ecology examines how interactions among species and their environment affect the abundance, distribution and diversity of species within communities. Johnson & Stinchcomb (2007) Community ecology
2664-456: A species describes the environment over which a species is known to occur and the type of community that is formed as a result. More specifically, "habitats can be defined as regions in environmental space that are composed of multiple dimensions, each representing a biotic or abiotic environmental variable; that is, any component or characteristic of the environment related directly (e.g. forage biomass and quality) or indirectly (e.g. elevation) to
2775-402: A specific habitat, such as a cave or a pond, and principles gleaned from small-scale studies are extrapolated to larger systems. Feeding relations require extensive investigations, e.g. into the gut contents of organisms, which can be difficult to decipher, or stable isotopes can be used to trace the flow of nutrient diets and energy through a food web. Despite these limitations, food webs remain
2886-531: A store called the "Whole Earth Provision Co.", inspired by the catalog, opened in Austin, Texas. It has six stores in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. In late 2006, Worldchanging released their 600-page compendium of solutions, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century , which Bill McKibben , in an article in the New York Review of Books called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for
2997-446: A valuable tool in understanding community ecosystems. Food webs illustrate important principles of ecology : some species have many weak feeding links (e.g., omnivores ) while some are more specialized with fewer stronger feeding links (e.g., primary predators ). Such linkages explain how ecological communities remain stable over time and eventually can illustrate a "complete" web of life. The disruption of food webs may have
3108-399: A wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level (e.g., cells ) to a planetary scale (e.g., biosphere ) phenomena . Ecosystems, for example, contain abiotic resources and interacting life forms (i.e., individual organisms that aggregate into populations which aggregate into distinct ecological communities). Because ecosystems are dynamic and do not necessarily follow
3219-485: Is a central concept in the ecology of organisms and is sub-divided into the fundamental and the realized niche. The fundamental niche is the set of environmental conditions under which a species is able to persist. The realized niche is the set of environmental plus ecological conditions under which a species persists. The Hutchinsonian niche is defined more technically as a " Euclidean hyperspace whose dimensions are defined as environmental variables and whose size
3330-504: Is a function of the number of values that the environmental values may assume for which an organism has positive fitness ." Biogeographical patterns and range distributions are explained or predicted through knowledge of a species' traits and niche requirements. Species have functional traits that are uniquely adapted to the ecological niche. A trait is a measurable property, phenotype , or characteristic of an organism that may influence its survival. Genes play an important role in
3441-414: Is a larger taxonomy of movement, such as commuting, foraging, territorial behavior, stasis, and ranging. Dispersal is usually distinguished from migration because it involves the one-way permanent movement of individuals from their birth population into another population. In metapopulation terminology, migrating individuals are classed as emigrants (when they leave a region) or immigrants (when they enter
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3552-461: Is an emergent homeostasis or homeorhesis in the structure of the nest that regulates, maintains and defends the physiology of the entire colony. Termite mounds, for example, maintain a constant internal temperature through the design of air-conditioning chimneys. The structure of the nests themselves is subject to the forces of natural selection. Moreover, a nest can survive over successive generations, so that progeny inherit both genetic material and
3663-404: Is another statistical approach that is often used in conservation research . Metapopulation models simplify the landscape into patches of varying levels of quality, and metapopulations are linked by the migratory behaviours of organisms. Animal migration is set apart from other kinds of movement because it involves the seasonal departure and return of individuals from a habitat. Migration is also
3774-419: Is defined as the ratio between the amount of locally produced energy that is locally consumed, either directly or after storage, and the total consumption. A system is self-sustaining (or self-sufficient) if it can maintain itself by independent effort. The system self-sustainability is: Self-sustainability is considered one of the "ilities" and is closely related to sustainability and availability . In
3885-438: Is greater than respiration) by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis . Heterotrophs are organisms that must feed on others for nourishment and energy (respiration exceeds production). Heterotrophs can be further sub-divided into different functional groups, including primary consumers (strict herbivores), secondary consumers ( carnivorous predators that feed exclusively on herbivores), and tertiary consumers (predators that feed on
3996-467: Is one that requires little or no trade with the outside world and is called an autarky . Self-sustainability is a type of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed other than what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals. Examples of attempts at self-sufficiency in North America include simple living , food storage , homesteading , off-the-grid , survivalism , DIY ethic , and
4107-649: Is something we do in common, interactively. The broad interpretation of "tool" coincided with that given by the designer, philosopher, and engineer Buckminster Fuller , though another thinker admired by Brand and some of his cohorts was Lewis Mumford , who had written about words as tools. Early editions reflected the considerable influence of Fuller, particularly his teachings about " whole systems ," " synergetics ," and efficiency or reducing waste. By 1971, Brand and his co-workers were already questioning whether Fuller's sense of direction might be too anthropocentric. New information arising in fields like ecology and biospherics
4218-590: Is the Park Grass Experiment , which was initiated in 1856. Another example is the Hubbard Brook study , which has been in operation since 1960. Holism remains a critical part of the theoretical foundation in contemporary ecological studies. Holism addresses the biological organization of life that self-organizes into layers of emergent whole systems that function according to non-reducible properties. This means that higher-order patterns of
4329-460: Is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment . Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population , community , ecosystem , and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography , evolutionary biology , genetics , ethology , and natural history . Ecology is a branch of biology , and is the study of abundance , biomass , and distribution of organisms in
4440-413: Is the biosphere: the total sum of ecosystems on the planet. Ecological relationships regulate the flux of energy, nutrients, and climate all the way up to the planetary scale. For example, the dynamic history of the planetary atmosphere's CO 2 and O 2 composition has been affected by the biogenic flux of gases coming from respiration and photosynthesis, with levels fluctuating over time in relation to
4551-522: Is the study of the interactions among a collection of species that inhabit the same geographic area. Community ecologists study the determinants of patterns and processes for two or more interacting species. Research in community ecology might measure species diversity in grasslands in relation to soil fertility. It might also include the analysis of predator-prey dynamics, competition among similar plant species, or mutualistic interactions between crabs and corals. These ecosystems, as we may call them, are of
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4662-556: Is used for managing wildlife stocks and setting harvest quotas. In cases where basic models are insufficient, ecologists may adopt different kinds of statistical methods, such as the Akaike information criterion , or use models that can become mathematically complex as "several competing hypotheses are simultaneously confronted with the data." The concept of metapopulations was defined in 1969 as "a population of populations which go extinct locally and recolonize". Metapopulation ecology
4773-538: The Whole Earth Review (edited at different points by Jay Kinney , Kevin Kelly , and Howard Rheingold ), later called Whole Earth Magazine and finally just Whole Earth . The last issue, number 111 (edited by Alex Steffen ), was meant to be published in Spring 2003, but funds ran out. The Point Foundation , which owned Whole Earth , closed its doors later that year. The Whole Earth website continues
4884-657: The Contemporary Affairs category. It was the first time a catalog had ever won such an award. Brand's intent with the catalog was to provide education and "access to tools" so a reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." J. Baldwin was a young designer and instructor of design at colleges around the San Francisco Bay: San Francisco State University (then San Francisco State College),
4995-646: The San Francisco Art Institute , and the California College of the Arts (then California College of Arts and Crafts). As he recalled in the film Ecological Design (1994), "Stewart Brand came to me because he heard that I read catalogs. He said, 'I want to make this thing called a "whole Earth" catalog so that anyone on Earth can pick up a telephone and find out the complete information on anything. ... That's my goal.'" Baldwin served as
5106-465: The WEC legacy of concepts in popular discourse, medical self-care, community building, bioregionalism, environmental restoration, nanotechnology, and cyberspace. As of January 2022, the website appears to be offline. Recognizing the "developed country" focus of the original WEC, groups in several developing countries have created "catalogs" of their own to be more relevant to their countries. One such effort
5217-715: The Whole Earth Software Catalog , a compendium for which Doubleday had bid $ 1.4 million for the trade paperback rights. The 1986 publication of The Essential Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-385-23641-7 ) preceded the 1989 Electronic Whole Earth Catalog on CD-ROM, which used HyperCard , an early form of hypermedia developed by Apple Computer . Dedicated editions were published for communications tools Signal in 1988, new age topics The Fringes of Reason in 1989, and ecological matters Whole Earth Ecolog in 1990. Published in 1994, The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-06-251059-2 )
5328-405: The abundance or biomass at each level. When the relative abundance or biomass of each species is sorted into its respective trophic level, they naturally sort into a 'pyramid of numbers'. Species are broadly categorized as autotrophs (or primary producers ), heterotrophs (or consumers ), and Detritivores (or decomposers ). Autotrophs are organisms that produce their own food (production
5439-442: The back-to-the-land movement . Practices that enable or aid self-sustainability include autonomous building , permaculture , sustainable agriculture , and renewable energy . The term is also applied to limited forms of self-sustainability, for example growing one's own food or becoming economically independent of state subsidies . The self-sustainability of an electrical installation measures its degree of grid independence and
5550-540: The economics literature, a system that has the quality of being self-sustaining is also referred to as an autarky . Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky would be a state that could defend itself without help from another country. According to the Idaho Department of Labor , an employed adult shall be considered self-sufficient if
5661-436: The logistic equation by Pierre Verhulst : where N(t) is the number of individuals measured as biomass density as a function of time, t , r is the maximum per-capita rate of change commonly known as the intrinsic rate of growth, and α {\displaystyle \alpha } is the crowding coefficient, which represents the reduction in population growth rate per individual added. The formula states that
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#17327718301025772-551: The Earth and atmospheric conditions within a narrow self-regulating range of tolerance. Population ecology studies the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the wider environment. A population consists of individuals of the same species that live, interact, and migrate through the same niche and habitat. A primary law of population ecology is the Malthusian growth model which states, "a population will grow (or decline) exponentially as long as
5883-526: The Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog . ... No topic was too esoteric, no degree of enthusiasm too ardent, no amateur expertise too uncertified to be included. ... This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the Whole Earth Catalogs disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the Whole Earth Catalogs did,
5994-702: The WEC, borrowed WEC production equipment for a week in 1970 and produced the first book on building geodesic domes . A year later, in 1971, Kahn again borrowed WEC equipment (an IBM Selectric Composer typesetting machine and a Polaroid MP-5 camera on an easel), and spent a month in the Santa Barbara Mountains producing Domebook 2 , which went on to sell 165,000 copies. With production of DB 2, Kahn and his company Shelter Publications followed Stewart Brand's move to nationwide distribution by Random House . In 1973, Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are part of
6105-756: The best tools and books the editors could find were collected and listed, along with images, reviews and uses, prices, and suppliers. The reader was also able to order some items directly through the catalog. Later editions changed a few of the headings, but generally kept the same overall framework. The Catalog used a broad definition of "tools". There were informative tools, such as books, maps, professional journals, courses, and classes. There were well-designed special-purpose utensils, including garden tools, carpenters' and masons' tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials, tents, hiking shoes, and potters' wheels. There were even early synthesizers and personal computers. The Catalog' s publication coincided with
6216-492: The chief editor of subjects in the areas of technology and design, both in the catalog itself and in other publications which arose from it. True to his 1966 vision, Brand's publishing efforts were suffused with an awareness of the importance of ecology , both as a field of study and as an influence upon the future of humankind and emerging human awareness. From the opening page of the 1969 Catalog : The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it,
6327-744: The context of the environment. It encompasses life processes, interactions, and adaptations ; movement of materials and energy through living communities; successional development of ecosystems; cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species ; and patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes. Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology , wetland management, natural resource management ( agroecology , agriculture , forestry , agroforestry , fisheries , mining , tourism ), urban planning ( urban ecology ), community health , economics , basic and applied science , and human social interaction ( human ecology ). The word ecology ( German : Ökologie )
6438-714: The diversity of life from genes to ecosystems and spans every level of biological organization. The term has several interpretations, and there are many ways to index, measure, characterize, and represent its complex organization. Biodiversity includes species diversity , ecosystem diversity , and genetic diversity and scientists are interested in the way that this diversity affects the complex ecological processes operating at and among these respective levels. Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem services which by definition maintain and improve human quality of life. Conservation priorities and management techniques require different approaches and considerations to address
6549-530: The dynamic resilience of ecosystems that transition to multiple shifting steady-states directed by random fluctuations of history. Long-term ecological studies provide important track records to better understand the complexity and resilience of ecosystems over longer temporal and broader spatial scales. These studies are managed by the International Long Term Ecological Network (LTER). The longest experiment in existence
6660-399: The early stance of emphasizing individualism should be replaced with one favoring community . He had originally written that "a realm of intimate, personal power is developing"; regarding this as important in some respects (to wit, the soon-emerging potentials of personal computing), Brand felt that the overarching project of humankind had more to do with living within natural systems, and this
6771-456: The ecology and evolution of plants and animals. Ecological theory has also been used to explain self-emergent regulatory phenomena at the planetary scale: for example, the Gaia hypothesis is an example of holism applied in ecological theory. The Gaia hypothesis states that there is an emergent feedback loop generated by the metabolism of living organisms that maintains the core temperature of
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#17327718301026882-434: The energy is transferred through a chain of organisms by consumption. The simplified linear feeding pathways that move from a basal trophic species to a top consumer is called the food chain . Food chains in an ecological community create a complex food web. Food webs are a type of concept map that is used to illustrate and study pathways of energy and material flows. Empirical measurements are generally restricted to
6993-488: The engineering-efficiency tone of Fuller's ideas. The Whole Earth Epilog published in 1974 was intended as a "volume 2" to the Last Whole Earth Catalog , which itself was revised as The (Updated) Last Whole Earth Catalog in 1975. The Next Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-394-70776-1 ) in 1980 was well received, and an updated second edition followed in 1981. The 1980s also saw two editions of
7104-460: The environment experienced by all individuals in the population remains constant." Simplified population models usually starts with four variables: death, birth, immigration , and emigration . An example of an introductory population model describes a closed population, such as on an island, where immigration and emigration does not take place. Hypotheses are evaluated with reference to a null hypothesis which states that random processes create
7215-451: The equilibrium, r / α {\displaystyle r/\alpha } as K , which is known as the "carrying capacity." Population ecology builds upon these introductory models to further understand demographic processes in real study populations. Commonly used types of data include life history , fecundity , and survivorship, and these are analyzed using mathematical techniques such as matrix algebra . The information
7326-546: The family income exceeds 200% of the Office of Management and Budget poverty income level guidelines. In peer-to-peer swarming systems, a swarm is self-sustaining if all the blocks of its files are available among peers (excluding seeds and publishers). Whereas self-sustainability is a quality of one's independence, survivability applies to the future maintainability of one's self-sustainability and indeed one's existence. Many believe that more self-sustainability guarantees
7437-472: The first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. In subsequent issues, its production values gradually improved. Its outsize pages measured 11×14 inches (28×36 cm). Later editions were more than an inch thick. The early editions were published by the Portola Institute , headed by Richard Raymond. The so-called Last Whole Earth Catalog (June 1971) won the first U.S. National Book Award in
7548-589: The flux of energy and matter through an environment. Ecosystems have biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living ( biotic ) and abiotic components of the planet. Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine), the regulation of climate , global biogeochemical cycles , water filtration , soil formation , erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value. The scope of ecology contains
7659-400: The former applies to a community's environment, whereas the latter applies to a species' environment. Definitions of the niche date back to 1917, but G. Evelyn Hutchinson made conceptual advances in 1957 by introducing a widely adopted definition: "the set of biotic and abiotic conditions in which a species is able to persist and maintain stable population sizes." The ecological niche
7770-544: The former relates only to the physical modifications of the habitat whereas the latter also considers the evolutionary implications of physical changes to the environment and the feedback this causes on the process of natural selection. Ecosystem engineers are defined as: "organisms that directly or indirectly modulate the availability of resources to other species, by causing physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials. In so doing they modify, maintain and create habitats." The ecosystem engineering concept has stimulated
7881-518: The full ecological scope of biodiversity. Natural capital that supports populations is critical for maintaining ecosystem services and species migration (e.g., riverine fish runs and avian insect control) has been implicated as one mechanism by which those service losses are experienced. An understanding of biodiversity has practical applications for species and ecosystem-level conservation planners as they make management recommendations to consulting firms, governments, and industry. The habitat of
7992-408: The herbivore trophic level, food webs are better characterized as a tangled web of omnivores." A keystone species is a species that is connected to a disproportionately large number of other species in the food-web . Keystone species have lower levels of biomass in the trophic pyramid relative to the importance of their role. The many connections that a keystone species holds means that it maintains
8103-406: The human and oceanic microbiomes . To a microbe , the human body is a habitat and a landscape. Microbiomes were discovered largely through advances in molecular genetics , which have revealed a hidden richness of microbial diversity on the planet. The oceanic microbiome plays a significant role in the ecological biogeochemistry of the planet's oceans. The largest scale of ecological organization
8214-512: The iPod generation." The editor of Worldchanging has since acknowledged the Catalog as a prime inspiration. Whole Arctic Catalog was written by Pamela Richot and Published in Backet 3: At Extremes in 2015 to draw attention to threats to the arctic region specifically, similarly to how The Whole Earth Catalog drew attention to global environmental threats. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds publishes
8325-404: The interplay among ecological processes that operate and influence patterns at different scales that grade into each other, such as transitional areas or ecotones spanning landscapes. Complexity stems from the interplay among levels of biological organization as energy, and matter is integrated into larger units that superimpose onto the smaller parts. "What were wholes on one level become parts on
8436-412: The interplay of development and environmental expression of traits. Resident species evolve traits that are fitted to the selection pressures of their local environment. This tends to afford them a competitive advantage and discourages similarly adapted species from having an overlapping geographic range. The competitive exclusion principle states that two species cannot coexist indefinitely by living off
8547-456: The large page on the left full of text and intriguing illustrations from a volume of Joseph Needham 's Science and Civilization in China , showing and explaining an astronomical clock tower or a chain-pump windmill, while on the right-hand page are a review of a beginners' guide to modern technology ( The Way Things Work ) and a review of The Engineers' Illustrated Thesaurus . On another spread,
8658-424: The last 1974 edition of the Catalog (#1180 October 1974 titled Whole Earth Epilog ) and makes it his own final recommendation: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." In 2009, Kevin Kelly stated: For this new countercultural movement , information was a precious commodity. In the '60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. ... [The WEC ] was a great example of user-generated content , without advertising, before
8769-402: The latter focuses on materials and energy fluxes. System behaviors must first be arrayed into different levels of the organization. Behaviors corresponding to higher levels occur at slow rates. Conversely, lower organizational levels exhibit rapid rates. For example, individual tree leaves respond rapidly to momentary changes in light intensity, CO 2 concentration, and the like. The growth of
8880-424: The lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, supports diverse bacterial communities. The nature of connections in ecological communities cannot be explained by knowing the details of each species in isolation, because the emergent pattern is neither revealed nor predicted until the ecosystem is studied as an integrated whole. Some ecological principles, however, do exhibit collective properties where
8991-432: The lower adjacent level (according to ecological pyramids ) nearer the abiotic source." Links in food webs primarily connect feeding relations or trophism among species. Biodiversity within ecosystems can be organized into trophic pyramids, in which the vertical dimension represents feeding relations that become further removed from the base of the food chain up toward top predators, and the horizontal dimension represents
9102-558: The most various kinds and sizes. They form one category of the multitudinous physical systems of the universe, which range from the universe as a whole down to the atom. Tansley (1935) Ecosystems may be habitats within biomes that form an integrated whole and a dynamically responsive system having both physical and biological complexes. Ecosystem ecology is the science of determining the fluxes of materials (e.g. carbon, phosphorus) between different pools (e.g., tree biomass, soil organic material). Ecosystem ecologists attempt to determine
9213-456: The nature of the unique physical environments that shapes the biodiversity within each. A more recent addition to ecosystem ecology are technoecosystems , which are affected by or primarily the result of human activity. A food web is the archetypal ecological network . Plants capture solar energy and use it to synthesize simple sugars during photosynthesis . As plants grow, they accumulate nutrients and are eaten by grazing herbivores , and
9324-573: The niche is called the ecotope , which is defined as the full range of environmental and biological variables affecting an entire species. Organisms are subject to environmental pressures, but they also modify their habitats. The regulatory feedback between organisms and their environment can affect conditions from local (e.g., a beaver pond ) to global scales, over time and even after death, such as decaying logs or silica skeleton deposits from marine organisms. The process and concept of ecosystem engineering are related to niche construction , but
9435-531: The number of nitrogen fixers , can lead to disproportionate, perhaps irreversible, changes in the system properties." Biodiversity refers to the variety of life and its processes. It includes the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities and ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and evolutionary processes that keep them functioning, yet ever-changing and adapting. Noss & Carpenter (1994) Biodiversity (an abbreviation of "biological diversity") describes
9546-399: The observed data. In these island models, the rate of population change is described by: where N is the total number of individuals in the population, b and d are the per capita rates of birth and death respectively, and r is the per capita rate of population change. Using these modeling techniques, Malthus' population principle of growth was later transformed into a model known as
9657-406: The organization and structure of entire communities. The loss of a keystone species results in a range of dramatic cascading effects (termed trophic cascades ) that alters trophic dynamics, other food web connections, and can cause the extinction of other species. The term keystone species was coined by Robert Paine in 1969 and is a reference to the keystone architectural feature as the removal of
9768-543: The point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG. The 1968 catalog divided itself into seven broad sections: Within each section,
9879-468: The published work of George Perkins Marsh ("Man and Nature"). Within an ecosystem, organisms are linked to the physical and biological components of their environment to which they are adapted. Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems where the interaction of life processes form self-organizing patterns across different scales of time and space. Ecosystems are broadly categorized as terrestrial , freshwater , atmospheric, or marine . Differences stem from
9990-502: The rate of change in population size ( d N ( t ) / d t {\displaystyle \mathrm {d} N(t)/\mathrm {d} t} ) will grow to approach equilibrium, where ( d N ( t ) / d t = 0 {\displaystyle \mathrm {d} N(t)/\mathrm {d} t=0} ), when the rates of increase and crowding are balanced, r / α {\displaystyle r/\alpha } . A common, analogous model fixes
10101-424: The same limiting resource ; one will always out-compete the other. When similarly adapted species overlap geographically, closer inspection reveals subtle ecological differences in their habitat or dietary requirements. Some models and empirical studies, however, suggest that disturbances can stabilize the co-evolution and shared niche occupancy of similar species inhabiting species-rich communities. The habitat plus
10212-399: The site will disappear unless rescued by an adjacent source patch or environmental conditions become more favorable. Metapopulation models examine patch dynamics over time to answer potential questions about spatial and demographic ecology. The ecology of metapopulations is a dynamic process of extinction and colonization. Small patches of lower quality (i.e., sinks) are maintained or rescued by
10323-524: The study of ecology into a conceptually manageable framework, the biological world is organized into a nested hierarchy , ranging in scale from genes , to cells , to tissues , to organs , to organisms , to species , to populations , to guilds , to communities , to ecosystems , to biomes , and up to the level of the biosphere . This framework forms a panarchy and exhibits non-linear behaviors; this means that "effect and cause are disproportionate, so that small changes to critical variables, such as
10434-432: The sum of the components explain the properties of the whole, such as birth rates of a population being equal to the sum of individual births over a designated time frame. The main subdisciplines of ecology, population (or community ) ecology and ecosystem ecology , exhibit a difference not only in scale but also in two contrasting paradigms in the field. The former focuses on organisms' distribution and abundance, while
10545-476: The summer of 1969 while on a conservation speaking tour out west," where the Sierra Club was active, and where young minds had been broadened and stimulated by such influences as the catalog. Despite this popular and critical success, particularly among a generation of young hippies and survivalists, the catalog was not intended to continue in publication for long, just long enough for the editors to complete
10656-670: The tree responds more slowly and integrates these short-term changes. O'Neill et al. (1986) The scale of ecological dynamics can operate like a closed system, such as aphids migrating on a single tree, while at the same time remaining open about broader scale influences, such as atmosphere or climate. Hence, ecologists classify ecosystems hierarchically by analyzing data collected from finer scale units, such as vegetation associations , climate, and soil types , and integrate this information to identify emergent patterns of uniform organization and processes that operate on local to regional, landscape , and chronological scales. To structure
10767-466: The truck, hoping to tour the country doing educational fairs. The truck was not only a store, but also an alternative lending library and a mobile microeducation service. Kevin Kelly , who would edit later editions of the catalog, summarizes the very early history this way: 'Here's a tool that will make drilling a well, or grinding flour, easier,' Brand would tell [the hippies,] pointing it out in his catalog of recommended tools. But his best selling tool
10878-415: The underlying causes of these fluxes. Research in ecosystem ecology might measure primary production (g C/m^2) in a wetland in relation to decomposition and consumption rates (g C/m^2/y). This requires an understanding of the community connections between plants (i.e., primary producers) and the decomposers (e.g., fungi and bacteria). The underlying concept of an ecosystem can be traced back to 1864 in
10989-439: The use of a location by the animal." For example, a habitat might be an aquatic or terrestrial environment that can be further categorized as a montane or alpine ecosystem. Habitat shifts provide important evidence of competition in nature where one population changes relative to the habitats that most other individuals of the species occupy. For example, one population of a species of tropical lizard ( Tropidurus hispidus ) has
11100-477: The user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed: CATALOG listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff. We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to
11211-452: The vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. This is why, while not a regularly published periodical, numerous editions and updates were required to keep price and availability information up to date. In his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech , Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to "a sort of Google in paperback form, before Google came along." The title Whole Earth Catalog came from
11322-474: The verso reviews books on accounting and moonlighting jobs, while the recto bears an article in which people tell the story of a community credit union they founded. Another pair of pages depict and discuss different kayaks, inflatable dinghies, and houseboats. The catalog was published sporadically after 1972. An important shift in philosophy in the Catalogs occurred in the early 1970s, when Brand decided that
11433-571: The web does better. Looking back and discussing attitudes evident in the early editions of the catalog, Brand wrote, "At a time when the New Left was calling for grassroots political (i.e., referred) power, Whole Earth eschewed politics and pushed grass-roots direct power—tools and skills." As an early indicator of the general Zeitgeist, the catalog's first edition preceded the original Earth Day by nearly two years. The idea of Earth Day occurred to Senator Gaylord Nelson , its instigator, "in
11544-477: Was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be. Andrew Kirk in Counterculture Green notes that the Whole Earth Catalog was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store" which was a 1963 Dodge truck. In 1968, Brand, who was then 29, and his wife Lois embarked "on a commune road trip" with
11655-672: Was an adaptation of the WEC (called the "Liklik Buk") written and published in the late 1970s in Papua New Guinea; by 1982 this had been enlarged, updated, and translated (as "Save Na Mekem") into the Pidgin language used throughout Melanesia , and updates of the English "Liklik Buk" were published in 1986 and 2003. In the United States, the book Domebook One was a direct spin-off of the WEC. Lloyd Kahn , Shelter editor of
11766-593: Was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel . The science of ecology as we know it today began with a group of American botanists in the 1890s. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection are cornerstones of modern ecological theory . Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living ( abiotic ) components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production , nutrient cycling , and niche construction , regulate
11877-477: Was persuasive. By the mid-1970s, much of the Buddhist economics viewpoint of E. F. Schumacher , as well as the activist interests of the biological species preservationists , had tempered the overall enthusiasm for Fuller's ideas in the catalog. Still later, the amiable-architecture ideas of people like Christopher Alexander and similar community-planning ideas of people like Peter Calthorpe further tempered
11988-439: Was placed at the back of the catalog, hampering a valuable Catalog function: nudging publishers to keep seminal works in print . Three books were serialized in the pages of the WEC, printing a couple of paragraphs per page. This made reading the catalog a page-by-page experience. Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech . When I
12099-570: Was subtitled Access to Tools and Ideas for the Twenty-First Century . A slender 30th Anniversary Celebration was published in 1998 as part of Issue 95 of the Whole Earth magazine ( ISSN 0749-5056 ), reprinting the original WEC along with new material. An important edit to this reprint was a limitation placed by book publishers who "begged" the Catalog not to promote titles they no longer carry. All such information
12210-524: Was the catalog itself, annotated by him, featuring tools that didn't fit into his truck. The "Truck Store" finally settled into its permanent location in Menlo Park , California . Instead of bringing the store to the people, Brand decided to create "accumulatively larger versions of his tool catalog" and sell it by mail so the people could contact the vendors directly. Using the most basic typesetting and page-layout tools, Brand and his colleagues created
12321-400: Was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog , which was one of the bibles of my generation ... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Then at the very end of this commencement speech Jobs quotes explicitly the farewell message placed on the back cover of
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