Wageningen, Netherlands

Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC)

Table of contents

⇑Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC) at Wageningen University & Research

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: agriculture, forestry and fishery, veterinary
University website: www.wageningenur.nl/nl.htm
Type: Doctoral programme (promotie)
Field: Agricultural and life sciences
Academic degree: Doctor (PhD)
Duration: 4 years

⇑Definitions and quotes

Conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources (in an efficient or ethical manner), or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Ecology
Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, "house", or "environment"; -λογία, "study of") is the branch of biology which studies the interactions among organisms and their environment. Objects of study include interactions of organisms with each other and with abiotic components of their environment. Topics of interest include the biodiversity, distribution, biomass, and populations of organisms, as well as cooperation and competition within and between species. Ecosystems are dynamically interacting systems of organisms, the communities they make up, and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem processes, such as primary production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling, and niche construction, regulate the flux of energy and matter through an environment. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits. Biodiversity means the varieties of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services.
Resource
A resource is a source or supply from which a benefit is produced. Resources can be broadly classified on the basis upon their availability they are renewable and non renewable resources. They can also be classified as actual and potential on the basis of level of development and use, on the basis of origin they can be classified as biotic and abiotic, and on the bases of their distribution, as ubiquitous and localized( private resources ,community own ,resources ,natural resources ,international resources) .An item becomes a resource with time and developing technology. Typically resources are materials, energy, services, staff, knowledge, or other assets that are transformed to produce benefit and in the process may be consumed or made unavailable. Benefits of resource utilization may include increased wealth or wants, proper functioning of a system, or enhanced well being. From a human perspective a natural resource is anything obtained from the environment to satisfy human needs and wants. From a broader biological or ecological perspective a resource satisfies the needs of a living organism (see biological resource).
Production
Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.
Immanuel Wallerstein (1979) The Capitalist World-Economy. p. 15.
Production
But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary.
John Desmond Bernal (1959) Marx and Science. p. 39.
Ecology
If we have been slow to develop the general concepts of ecology and conservation, we have been even more tardy in recognizing the facts of the ecology and conservation of man himself. We may hope that this will be the next major phase in the development of biology. Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces.
Rachel Carson, "Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958).
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