Ecological engineering is the creation of a community of plants, animals, microbes, and inanimate and technological components, so that they provide services. An example of such an engineered ecosystem is an in-vessel composter, in which a community of microbes breaks down organic waste into a soil-like product and the vessel controls the microbes’ environment to keep them happy.
A different view of ecological engineering is the study of existing ecosystems to learn how materials and energy flow through them. We use this knowledge to improve the design of technological systems. An example of such ecosystem-inspired design is the passive ventilation of a building based on the principle of convective airflow through termite mounds.
Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems. They are made of very many components that self-organize, interacting with one another and their surroundings in complicated and surprising ways, and giving rise to fascinating spatial and temporal patterns across different scales. All living things are complex systems; plants, for instance, are made of trillions of cells organized into specialized tissues, which use gradients in electromagnetic energy (light) and chemical concentrations to grow. Ecosystems are large-scale complex adaptive systems that include very many individual organisms.
