A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology ? More than the Sum of the Parts (Paper) : Yale University Press : 9780300066425 : 0300066422 : 01 Apr 1996 : The ecosystem concept?the idea that flora and fauna interact with the environment to form an ecological complex?has long been central to the public perception of ecology and to increasing awareness of environmental degradation. In this book an eminent ecologist explains the ecosystem concept, tracing its evolution, describing how numerous American and European researchers contributed to its evolution, and discussing the explosive growth of ecosystem studies. Golley surveys the development of the ecosystem concept in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses the coining of the term ecosystem by the English ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley in 1935. He then reviews how the American ecologist Raymond Lindeman applied the concept to a small lake in Minnesota and showed how the biota and the environment of the la