WELCOME TO THE DEPARTMENT OF
ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY
FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
AND MANAGEMENT
Introduction to Human Ecology
• Definition
• Relation between Ecology and Human Ecology
• Eco system
• Human activities impact of the ecosystem.
• How to minimize human impact on ecology?
• What does human ecology help us understand?
• What is The Society for Human Ecology (SHE)?
• Importance of Ecology.
Definition
• Human Ecology is the study about humans. Human
ecology is a depiction of our place within a reality.
• It can also be defined as a tiny branch of human
knowledge.
• Human ecology is the study of relationships between
humans and nature, all closely linked in a network of
interactions.
• Human ecology is composed of concepts from
ecology like interconnectivity, community behaviour,
and spatial organization.
• A number of social scientists expanded human
ecology to include also the physical
environment's impact on people.
• In the Human Ecology Programmed, the
humans are seen as a part of ecosystems.
Basically, human ecology encompasses what
humans require to be physically and
psychologically prosperous and healthy.
• It also includes how humans care about their
children, elders, families and how they plan
their living and working environment.
• On the whole, anything that assists people to
live a healthy and prosperous life is human
ecology. Human ecology is a wide-ranging
meadow with a wealthy history and an
incredible prospect.
Relation between Ecology and Human
Ecology
• Ecology is the discipline of interactions
between living beings and their environment or
surroundings.
• The term ecology was coined by a well-known
German biologist, Ernst Haeckel in 1866 in his
reference to the economy of nature.
• Nevertheless, ecology has its origin going
back to the Greeks and developments in
natural history science.
• Human ecology is about relationships between people
and their environment.
• In human ecology, the environment is believed as an
ecosystem.
• An ecosystem is each and everything in a particular
area, such as the
• air,
• soil,
• water,
• living organisms and physical structures, including
the whole ecosystem constructed by humans.
• The living components of an ecosystem are its
biological community. They are:

Microorganisms

Plants

Animals (including humans).
Ecosystem
• Ecosystems can be any size.
• A small pond in a forest is an ecosystem, and the
entire forest is an ecosystem.
• A single farm is an ecosystem, and a rural land is an
ecosystem.
• Villages, towns and large cities are ecosystems. An
area of thousands of square kilometers is an
ecosystem, and the planet earth is an ecosystem
• While humans are elements of the ecosystem, it is
practical to assume the human environment interaction
as interaction between the human social system and the
rest of the ecosystem.
• The social system is all about people, their population and
the psychology and social organization that shape their
behavior.
• The social system is a core perception in human ecology,
as human activities that affect the ecosystems are powerfully
prejudiced by the society in which humans survive.
• The ecosystem offers services to the social system by
moving materials, energy and information to the social
system to meet people’s requirements.
• These ecosystem services comprise water, fuel, food,
materials for clothing, construction materials and recreation.
Human activities impact on the
ecosystem.
• Matter, energy and information move from social system to
ecosystem as a result of human activities that impact the
ecosystem:



Humans affect ecosystems when they make use of resources
such as water, fish, timber and farm animals grazing fields.
Humans return the materials to ecosystems as waste, after
using materials from ecosystems.
Humans deliberately change or reorder the present ecosystems,
or produce new ones, to improve their requirements.
• By means of machines or human effort, people use energy
to modify or create ecosystems by moving materials within
them or between them.
• They transfer information from social system to
ecosystem whenever they modify, reorganize, or create an
ecosystem.
• The crop that a farmer plants, the spacing of plants in the
field, alteration of the field’s biological community by
weeding, and modification of soil chemistry with fertilizer
applications are not only material transfers but also
information transfers as the farmer restructures the
organization of his farm ecosystem.
How to minimize human impact on
ecology?
• The crisis of deforestation in Bangladesh offers an
instance of human activities that create a sequence of
effects from side to side through the ecosystem and
social system.
• The following story shows how a new technology
(biogas generators) can help to solve an
environmental problem.
• Over centuries, people in Bangladesh have cut
branches from trees and bushes to provide fuel for
cooking their food.
• The resulting increase in population leads to more
demand for fuel. Intensive collection of cooking fuel
has a number of serious effects in the ecosystem.
• Using cow dung as fuel reduces the quantity of dung
available for use as manure on farm fields, and food
production declines.
• This sequence of effects involving human population
growth, deforestation, fuel shortage and lower food
production is a cruel cycle that is hard to escape.
• Though, biogas generators are a new
technology that can help to improve the
situation.
• A biogas generator is a large tank in which
people place human waste, animal dung and
plant residues to rot.
• The rotting process creates a large quantity of
methane gas, which can be used as fuel to
cook food. When the rotting is finished, the
plant and animal wastes in the tank can be
removed and put on farm fields as fertilizer.
• Due to the radical increase in Bangladesh’s
population during the past 50 years, many forests
have disappeared in recent years, as people have cut
so many trees and bushes for cooking fuel.
• At present, there are not enough trees and bushes to
provide all the fuel that people need.
• People have responded to this ‘energy crisis’ by
having their children search for anything that can be
burned, such as twigs, crop residues (bits of plants
left in farm fields after the harvest) and cow dung.
Fuel collection makes children even more valuable to
their families, so parents have more children.
What does human ecology help us
understand?
• Typically, human ecology:




Studies the interactions between people and their
environment
Inspects social, cultural, and psychological factors in the
maintenance of ecosystems
Examines the effects of population density on health,
social organization, and environmental quality
Lectures to the adaptive problems in urban environments
and the interrelationship between technological and
environmental changes.
What is The Society for Human Ecology
(SHE)?
• The Society for Human Ecology (SHE) is a global
interdisciplinary professional society that encourages
the use of an ecological perspective in research,
education, and application.
• SHE is an associate of INTECOL (International
Association for Ecology) and Ecological Society of
America (ESA) and works in an association with other
national and regional human ecology organizations all
over the world.
Importance of Ecology.
• Ecology is of utmost importance to all species
including us. We, like all other animals depend
on this earth for everything; food, water,
shelter.
• Everything on this earth depends on something
else but ecology is so dynamic that even the
smallest perturbation can upset everything.
• A good example is global warming. Many
people think that 2 degrees over a decade is a
small amount of time. Nothing in ecology is
small, the repercussions are severe.
• Plants need a certain temperature to thrive,
warming of the earth can upset this and also
upset life and mating cycles. We depend on
those animals to eat and certain animals also
survive on those animals
• In addition, human interference with the
ecology of certain places can also exacerbate
the problem of natural disasters. When we log
on mountain sides and hills, we destabilize
soils and the topology of the landscape.
• Heavy rains which would originally cause
some kind of erosion would now cause
landslides that could engulf roads and cause
hazards to villages or towns and people that
live in those areas.
• In addition, chaparral forests in California are
a type of terrestrial biome. If we do not
understand the fact that these trees will
constantly be subjected to fires, then people
will build luxurious houses in these areas
(which they are already doing),
• and when wildfires rage through the area, they will
want insurance and money to rebuild.
• The fact is, houses are not supposed to be built in
those areas in the first place, and if they are, insurance
companies should not be shelling out money to the rich
and misinformed who choose to live in such a biome.
• So you see, Ecology is important to us financially,
aesthetically, and also for our simple survival on this
planet. Hence, it should be taken with utmost
importance not only for us but for our next generation.