Ecosystem ecology addresses the interactions
among organisms and their environment as an
integrated system through study of the factors
that regulate the pools and fluxes of materials
and energy through ecological systems. The
spatial scale at which we study ecosystems is
chosen to facilitate the measurement of important
fluxes into, within, and out of the ecosystem.
The functioning of ecosystems depends
not only on their current structure and environment
but also on past events and disturbances
and the rate at which ecosystems
respond to past events. The study of ecosystem
ecology is highly interdisciplinary and builds on