Numerology 

View the post "4 laws of ecology that everyone needs to know." Barry Commoner's environmental laws

A prominent American ecologist and conservationist Barry Commoner formulated four "laws of ecology", which he successfully applied to explain the current ecological situation. Think carefully about their content.

1. Everything is connected to everything(or "everything affects everything"). This is a very laconic paraphrase of the law of materialistic dialectics about the universal interconnection and interdependence of objects and phenomena in nature and society. F. Engels wrote: “After all, nothing happens in nature in isolation. Each phenomenon affects the other, and vice versa.

This "law" reflects the colossal number of connections between the billions of living beings inhabiting the biosphere and their environment, between the biosphere and society, between the components of various ecosystems, the biosphere and the sun. Unexpected chains of connections are known. Let's give examples. Immoderate deforestation causes forests causes: decrease in forest cover - increase surface runoff– decrease in groundwater reserves – soil washout – shallowing and silting of rivers and lakes – reduction in the area of ​​floodplains – reduction in productivity of land, fodder lands – decrease in livestock productivity – shortage of food products.

2. Everything has to go somewhere. This is a paraphrase of the law of conservation of matter and energy: nothing disappears without a trace. Once in the environment, the substance (garbage) passes from one form to another, moves from place to place, from one ecosystem to another, from area to area, often concentrated along food chains. Everything that a person throws away during the production process in external environment, sooner or later enters the human body through food, air and water, causing numerous diseases, premature aging and death.

4. Nothing comes for free. All good things have to be paid for. global system one. A gain in one place is followed by a loss in another. In each specific case, the ratio of gain and loss will be different, there may be very large deviations in one direction or another. Thus, the flooding of floodplain meadows during the construction of a hydroelectric power station makes it necessary to spend a large number of energy for fodder production on irrigated lands. The immoderate intake of water from rivers during land irrigation reduces the flow of these rivers, causes shallowing and drying up of them, as well as those inland water bodies into which these rivers flow. As a result, desertification of landscapes around shallowed or disappeared water bodies often occurs. Nature is so complex and perfect that "almost every step we take forward brings both benefit and harm."

Thus, the skillful use of the most general laws of philosophy, physics, and ecology allows not only to explain the current ecological situation, but also helps to change and regulate it.

Conversation "How to behave in nature?" (for students in grades 6–7)

Target: evoke a sense of belonging of each student to the state environment nature, the inner need to work on resolving its problems.

Guidelines: The room where the conversation is held should be appropriately designed: it can be an exhibition of protected plants and animals listed in the Red Book, herbariums of poisonous plants, an exhibition indoor plants, colorful posters.

Dear Guys! There is probably no person on Earth who would not be interested in animal life, would not admire the beauty of rivers, flowering meadows and would not strive to learn as much as possible about nature. After all, man himself is a part of nature, he must take care of nature, preserve it and increase it. However, in our technological age, millions of people live in an environmentally harmful environment. The Chernobyl tragedy created huge zones of radiation contamination. Water and air contain many toxic substances, especially in large industrial cities. Soils are polluted and destroyed; foodstuffs contain chemical compounds harmful to the human body; degradation of the biosphere continues, many species of plants and animals die out.

It is time for every person to think about how to preserve and preserve our nature. To begin with, each student must master environmental knowledge, learn how to behave correctly in nature, know the laws of nature and remember that at present life is a universal value. Now let's get acquainted with the rules of behavior in nature:

1. Do not litter in the forest! Know that the paper you left in the forest will rot only after a few years, and broken glass can cause a fire, a plastic bag is destroyed within 226 years.

2. Do not tear flowers in large armfuls! This leads to a decrease in their number.

Remember, it takes 7-8 years for a plant to grow from lily of the valley seeds!

3. Don't make noise in the forest! Do not turn on the tape recorder at full power; bumblebees, bees, wasps, beetles and other insects will not be able to take off from the large vibration of the air. Noise also frightens birds and animals.

4. You can't tame wild animals without knowing how to take care of them.

5. Birds - winged protection of forests, gardens, parks. Do not touch bird nests, chicks; Birds don't like being disturbed. In one day, a titmouse can destroy more than five hundred insects.

6. Protect anthills, make special fences. The forest cannot live without ants!

7. Do not leave unburned fires in the forest! Remember that one tree can make a million matches, and one match can destroy a million trees.

8. Remember that it is currently forbidden to collect insect collections. Such beautiful butterflies, like a dead head, black Apollo, blue sash, admiral and others are listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus. Protect them!

9. Remember that the Red Book of Belarus includes following plants: white water lily, forest anemone, European bathing suit, small egg capsule, high primrose, valerian dioecious, bell rapunzel and other species. Study them and protect them, they are on the verge of extinction!

10. Remember poisonous plants: henbane, dope, hemlock, crow's eye, wolf's bast. They must be handled with care!

11. Remember this poem by P. Brovka and think about its content:

Everything is so wounded in the forest,

As after the days of the war.

Here, neither spruce nor pine can be found surviving.

A birch was stabbed with a knife by a live-eater.

It seems to me that from under the bark my tear flows.

From this human callousness

My soul hurts

Under the crippled oak tree, it's not the wind that moans - it's me.

Here the anthill is set on fire

blasphemous hand,

It seems to me that it’s not him, but my house is on fire,

They left, offending beauty, confusing the forest comfort,

Not hearing that all the leaves are shedding tears behind their backs.

In the second part of the conversation, the teacher invites students to get acquainted with the theses of environmental morality and decipher their meaning:

P every person has the right to a favorable living environment;

P nature must be loved and protected, it is our mother and breadwinner;

P even the most advanced technology cannot replace nature;

P violating the coherence and beauty of nature, it is difficult to hope for its full restoration;

P took from nature - compensate three times, cut down a tree - plant three;

P measure seven times and do not do that, the consequences of which for nature you do not know;

P in a sick nature one cannot remain healthy;

P only talk about guard little nature, need to act;

P do not kill the living;

P don't pick the flowers - the plants need them.

At the end of the conversation, a summary of the significance of nature for each person is summed up.

Laws of ecology — general patterns and principles of interaction between human society and the natural environment.

The significance of these laws lies in the regulation of the nature and direction human activity within ecosystems different levels. Among the laws of ecology formulated by different authors, the most famous are four aphorisms of the American environmental scientist Barry Commoner (1974):

  • "everything is connected to everything"(the law of the universal connection of things and phenomena in nature);
  • "everything has to go somewhere"(the law of conservation of mass of matter);
  • "nothing comes for free"(about the price of development);
  • "nature knows best"(about the main criterion of evolutionary selection).

From the law of the universal connection of things and phenomena in nature("everything is connected with everything") several consequences follow:

  • law big numbers - cumulative action a large number random factors leads to a result that is almost independent of the case, i.e. having a systemic character. Thus, myriads of bacteria in soil, water, bodies of living organisms create a special, relatively stable microbiological environment necessary for the normal existence of all living things. Or another example: the random behavior of a large number of molecules in a certain volume of gas determines quite definite values ​​of temperature and pressure;
  • principle of Le Chatelier (Brown) - under an external influence that brings the system out of the state stable balance, this equilibrium shifts in the direction in which the effect of the external force decreases. At the biological level, it is realized in the form of the ability of ecosystems to self-regulate;
  • law of optimality- any system functions with the greatest efficiency in some spatio-temporal limits characteristic of it;
  • any systemic changes in nature have a direct or indirect impact on a person - from the state of the individual to complex social relations.

From law of conservation of mass of matter(“everything has to go somewhere”) at least two postulates of practical importance follow:

Barry Commoner writes “... the global ecosystem is a single entity within which nothing can be gained or lost and which cannot be subject to universal improvement; everything that has been extracted from it by human labor must be replaced. Payment on this bill cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The current environmental crisis suggests that the delay has been very long.”

Principle "nature knows best" determines, first of all, what can and what should not take place in the biosphere. Everything in nature - from simple molecules to humans - has passed the most severe competition for the right to exist. Currently, the planet is inhabited by only 1/1000 species of plants and animals tested by evolution. The main criterion for this evolutionary selection is incorporation into the global biotic cycle., filling of all ecological niches. Any substance produced by organisms must have an enzyme that decomposes it, and all decay products must again be involved in the cycle. With every species who violated this law, evolution parted sooner or later. Human industrial civilization grossly violates the isolation of the biotic cycle on a global scale, which cannot go unpunished. In this critical situation, a compromise must be found, which can only be done by a person who has a mind and a desire for this.

In addition to the formulations of Barry Commoner, modern ecologists have deduced another law of ecology - "there is not enough for everyone" (the law of limited resources). Obviously, the mass of nutrients for all life forms on Earth is finite and limited. It is not enough for all representatives appearing in the biosphere organic world, therefore, a significant increase in the number and mass of any organisms on a global scale can occur only at the expense of a decrease in the number and mass of others. The English economist T.R. Malthus (1798), who tried to justify the inevitability of social competition with this. In turn, Charles Darwin borrowed from Malthus the concept of "struggle for existence" to explain the mechanism of natural selection in living nature.

Law of limited resources- the source of all forms of competition, rivalry and antagonism in nature and, unfortunately, in society. And no matter how much they consider class struggle, racism, interethnic conflicts to be purely social phenomena, they all have their roots in intraspecific competition, which sometimes takes much more cruel forms than in animals.

The essential difference is that in nature as a result competition the best survive, and in human society this is by no means the case.

A generalized classification of environmental laws was presented by the famous Soviet scientist N.F. Reimers. They are given the following statements:

  • law of social and ecological balance(the need to maintain a balance between pressure on the environment and the restoration of this environment, both natural and artificial);
  • principle of cultural development management(imposing restrictions on extensive development, taking into account environmental restrictions);
  • rule of socio-ecological substitution(the need to identify ways to replace human needs);
  • law of socio-ecological irreversibility(the impossibility of turning the evolutionary movement back, from complex shapes to simpler ones)
  • law of the noosphere Vernadsky (the inevitability of the transformation of the biosphere under the influence of thought and human labor into the noosphere - the geosphere, in which the mind becomes dominant in the development of the "man-nature" system).

Compliance with these laws is possible if humanity realizes its role in the mechanism of maintaining the stability of the biosphere. It is known that in the process of evolution only those species are preserved that are able to ensure the stability of life and the environment. Only man, using the power of his mind, can direct further development biosphere along the way of conservation wildlife, the preservation of civilization and humanity, the creation of a more equitable social system, the transition from the philosophy of war to the philosophy of peace and partnership, love and respect for future generations. All these are components of a new biospheric worldview, which should become universal.

Laws and principles of ecology

Law of the Minimum

In 1840 Y. Liebig found that the harvest is often limited not by those nutrients that are required in large quantities, but by those that are needed a little, but which are also scarce in the soil. The law he formulated read: “The crop is controlled by the substance that is at a minimum, the magnitude and stability of the latter in time is determined.” Subsequently, a number of other factors were added to the nutrients, such as temperature. The operation of this law is limited by two principles. Liebig's first law is strictly valid only under stationary conditions. A more precise formulation: “in a stationary state, the limiting substance will be the substance whose available quantities are closest to necessary minimum". The second principle concerns the interaction of factors. A high concentration or availability of a certain substance can alter the intake of a minimal nutrient. The following law is formulated in ecology itself and generalizes the law of the minimum.

Law of Tolerance

This law is formulated in the following way: the absence or impossibility of ecosystem development is determined not only by a deficiency, but also by an excess of any of the factors (heat, light, water). Consequently, organisms are characterized by both an ecological minimum and a maximum. Too much of a good thing is also bad. The range between the two values ​​is the limits of tolerance, in which the body normally responds to the influence of the environment. The law of tolerance proposed W. Shelford in 1913. We can formulate a number of proposals supplementing it.

  • Organisms can have a wide range of tolerance for one factor and a narrow one for another.
  • Organisms with a wide range of tolerance to all factors are usually the most widely distributed.
  • If conditions for one environmental factor are not optimal for the species, then the range of tolerance for other environmental factors may narrow.
  • In nature, organisms very often find themselves in conditions that do not correspond to the optimal value of one or another factor determined in the laboratory.
  • The breeding season is usually critical; during this period, many environmental factors often turn out to be limiting.

Living organisms change environmental conditions in order to weaken the limiting influence of physical factors. Species with a wide geographical distribution form adapted to local conditions populations called ecotypes. Their optima and tolerance limits correspond to local conditions.

General concept of limiting factors

The most important factors on land are light, temperature, and water (precipitation), while in the sea, light, temperature, and salinity. These physical conditions of existence may be limiting and influencing favorably. All environmental factors depend on each other and act in concert. Other limiting factors include atmospheric gases (carbon dioxide, oxygen) and biogenic salts. Formulating the "law of the minimum", Liebig had in mind the limiting effect of vital chemical elements present in the environment in small and variable quantities. They are called trace elements and include iron, copper, zinc, boron, silicon, molybdenum, chlorine, vanadium, cobalt, iodine, sodium. Many trace elements, like vitamins, act as catalysts. Phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, required by organisms in large quantities, are called macronutrients. An important limiting factor in modern conditions is pollution natural environment. The main limiting factor for Y. Odumu, - dimensions and quality oikosa", or our " natural home, and not just the number of calories that can be squeezed out of the earth. The landscape is not only a warehouse, but also the house in which we live. “The goal should be to keep at least a third of all land as protected open space. This means that a third of our entire habitat should be national or local parks, reserves, green areas, wilderness areas, etc.” The territory required by one person, according to various estimates, ranges from 1 to 5 hectares. The second of these figures exceeds the area that now falls on one inhabitant of the Earth.

The population density is approaching one person per 2 hectares of land. Are suitable for Agriculture only 24% sushi. While as little as 0.12 hectares can provide enough calories to sustain one person, a healthy diet with plenty of meat, fruits and greens requires about 0.6 hectares per person. In addition, about 0.4 ha are required for the production of various types of fibers (paper, wood, cotton) and another 0.2 ha for roads, airports, buildings, etc. Hence the concept of the "golden billion", according to which the optimal population is 1 billion people, and therefore, there are already about 5 billion "extra people". Man, for the first time in his history, faced limiting rather than local limitations. Overcoming the limiting factors requires huge expenditures of matter and energy. Doubling the yield requires a tenfold increase in the amount of fertilizer, pesticides and power (animals or machines). Population size is also a limiting factor.

Law of competitive exclusion

This law is formulated as follows: two species occupying the same ecological niche cannot coexist in one place indefinitely.

Which species wins depends on external conditions. In similar conditions, everyone can win. An important circumstance for victory is the rate of population growth. The inability of a species to biotic competition leads to its displacement and the need to adapt to more difficult conditions and factors.

The law of competitive exclusion can also work in human society. The peculiarity of its action at the present time is that civilizations cannot disperse. They have nowhere to leave their territory, because in the biosphere there is no free space for settling and there is no excess of resources, which leads to an aggravation of the struggle with all the ensuing consequences. We can talk about ecological rivalry between countries and even ecological wars or wars caused by environmental reasons. At one time, Hitler justified the aggressive policy of Nazi Germany by the struggle for living space. Resources of oil, coal, etc. and then they were important. More more weight they have in the XXI century. In addition, the need for territories for the disposal of radioactive and other waste was added. Wars—hot and cold—take on an ecological dimension. Many events in modern history, such as the collapse of the USSR, are perceived in a new way, if you look at them from an ecological perspective. One civilization can not only conquer another, but use it for environmentally selfish purposes. This will be ecological colonialism. This is how political, social and environmental issues intertwine.

Basic law of ecology

One of the main achievements of ecology was the discovery that not only organisms and species develop, but also. The sequence of communities that replace each other in a given area is called succession. Succession occurs as a result of a change in the physical environment under the action of the community, i.e. controlled by him.

High productivity gives low reliability - another formulation of the basic law of ecology, from which the following rule follows: "Optimal efficiency is always less than maximum." Diversity, in accordance with the basic law of ecology, is directly related to sustainability. However, it is not yet known to what extent this relationship is causal.

Some other laws and principles important for ecology.

Law of emergence: the whole always has special properties that its part does not have.

Law of Necessary Variety: the system cannot consist of absolutely identical elements, but can have a hierarchical organization and integrative levels.

Law of irreversibility of evolution: an organism (population, species) cannot return to its previous state, realized in the series of its ancestors.

The Law of Complication of Organization: the historical development of living organisms leads to the complication of their organization through the differentiation of organs and functions.

biogenetic law(E. Haeckel): the ontogenesis of an organism is a brief repetition of the phylogenesis of a given species, i.e. the individual in his development repeats in short the historical development of his species.

The law of uneven development of parts of the system: systems of the same level of hierarchy do not develop strictly synchronously, while some reach a higher stage of development, others remain in a less developed state. This law is directly related to the law of necessary variety.

The Law of Preservation of Life: life can exist only in the process of movement through the living body of the flow of substances, energy, information.

The principle of maintaining order(Y. Prigozhy): in open systems entropy does not increase, but decreases until a minimum constant value is reached, which is always greater than zero.

Le Chatelier-Brown principle: with an external influence that brings the system out of a state of stable equilibrium, this equilibrium is shifted in the direction in which the effect of the external influence is weakened.

Energy Saving Principle(L. Onsager): with the probability of the development of the process in a certain set of directions allowed by the principles of thermodynamics, the one that provides a minimum of energy dissipation is realized.

Law of maximization of energy and information: the best chance for self-preservation has a system that is most conducive to the receipt, development and efficient use energy and information; the maximum intake of a substance does not guarantee the system success in the competitive struggle.

The law of system development at the expense of the environment: any system can develop only through the use of the material, energy and information capabilities of its environment; absolutely isolated self-development is impossible.

Schrödinger's rule"about nutrition" of the organism with negative entropy: the orderliness of the organism is higher than the environment, and the organism gives more disorder to this environment than it receives. This rule correlates with Prigogine's principle of maintaining order.

Evolution Acceleration Rule: with the increasing complexity of the organization of biosystems, the duration of the existence of a species is on average reduced, and the rate of evolution increases. The average lifespan of a bird species is 2 million years, and that of a mammal species is 800,000 years. The number of extinct species of birds and mammals in comparison with their total number is large.

Law of Relative Independence of Adaptation: high adaptability to one of environmental factors does not give the same degree of adaptation to other conditions of life (on the contrary, it can limit these possibilities due to the physiological and morphological characteristics of organisms).

Principle of minimum population size: exists minimum size population, below which its number cannot fall.

The rule of representation of the genus by one species: in homogeneous conditions and in a limited area, a taxonomic genus, as a rule, is represented by only one species. Apparently, this is due to the proximity of the ecological niches of species of the same genus.

The law of depletion of living matter in its island concentrations(G.F. Hilmi): “ Individual system working in an environment with a level of organization lower than the level of the system itself is doomed: gradually losing its structure, the system will dissolve in the environment after a while. This leads to an important conclusion for human environmental activities: the artificial preservation of small-sized ecosystems (in a limited area, for example, a reserve) leads to their gradual destruction and does not ensure the conservation of species and communities.

Energy Pyramid Law(R. Lindeman): from one trophic level of the ecological pyramid it passes to another, more high level on average, about 10% of the energy received at the previous level. Reverse flow from higher to higher low levels much weaker - no more than 0.5-0.25%, and therefore it is not necessary to talk about the circulation of energy in the biocenosis.

The rule of obligation to fill ecological niches: empty ecological niche always and necessarily naturally filled (“nature does not tolerate emptiness”).

Ecosystem formation principle: long-term existence of organisms is possible only within the framework of ecological systems, where their components and elements complement each other and are mutually adapted. From these environmental laws and principles, some conclusions follow that are fair for the “man-environment” system. They belong to the type of law of restriction of diversity, i.e. impose restrictions on human activities to transform nature.

boomerang law: everything that is extracted from the biosphere by human labor must be returned to it.

Law of irreplaceability of the biosphere: the biosphere cannot be replaced by an artificial environment, just as, say, new types of life cannot be created. Man cannot build perpetual motion machine, while the biosphere is practically a "perpetual" motion machine.

The law of pebbled skin: global initial natural resource potential during historical development is continuously depleted. This follows from the fact that there are currently no fundamentally new resources that could appear. For the life of each person, 200 tons of solid substances are needed per year, which he, with the help of 800 tons of water and an average of 1000 W of energy, turns into a useful product for himself. All this man takes from what is already in nature.

Event remoteness principle: descendants will come up with something to prevent possible negative consequences. The question of how much the laws of ecology can be transferred to the relationship of man with the environment remains open, since man is different from all other species. For example, in most species, the rate of population growth decreases with increasing population density; in humans, on the contrary, population growth in this case accelerates. Some of the regulatory mechanisms of nature are absent in humans, and this may serve as an additional reason for technological optimism in some, and for environmental pessimists to testify to the danger of such a catastrophe, which is impossible for any other species.

Consider the most important, environmental laws, they are listed in alphabetical order.

Law of biogenic migration of atoms(or Vernadsky's law): the migration of chemical elements on the earth's surface and in the biosphere as a whole is carried out under the superior influence of living matter, organisms. This happened in the geological past, millions of years ago, and this is happening in modern conditions. Living matter either takes part in biochemical processes directly or creates an appropriate environment enriched with oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and other substances. This law has important practical and theoretical significance. Understanding everyone chemical processes that occur in the geospheres is impossible without taking into account the action of biogenic factors, in particular, evolutionary ones. In our time, people influence the state of the biosphere, changing its physical and chemical composition, the conditions of the biogenic migration of atoms balanced over the centuries. In the future, this will cause very negative changes that acquire the ability to self-develop and become global, uncontrollable (desertification, soil degradation, extinction of thousands of species of organisms). With the help of this law, one can consciously and actively prevent the development of such negative phenomena, manage biogeochemical processes using "soft" ecological methods.

: substance, energy, information and dynamic qualities of individual natural systems and their hierarchies are very closely interconnected, so that any change in one of the indicators inevitably leads to functional and structural changes in others, but at the same time the general qualities of the system are preserved - energy, informational and dynamic . The consequences of this law are found in the fact that after any changes in the elements of the natural environment (material composition, energy, information, speed of natural processes, etc.), chain reactions necessarily develop, which try to neutralize these changes. It should be noted that a slight change in one indicator can cause strong deviations in others and in the entire ecosystem.

Changes in large ecosystems can be irreversible, and any local transformations of nature will cause response reactions in the planet's biosphere (that is, on a global scale) and in its largest subsections, which predetermine the relative invariance of the ecological and economic potential. Artificial increase in ecological and economic potential limited by the thermodynamic stability of natural systems.

Law of internal dynamic balance- one of the most important in nature management. It helps to understand that in the case of minor interventions in natural environment its ecosystems are able to self-regulate and recover, but if these interventions exceed certain limits (which a person should know well) and can no longer “extinguish” in the ecosystem hierarchy chain (encompassing entire river systems, landscapes), they lead to significant violations of energy and biobalance over large areas and throughout the biosphere.

Law of genetic diversity: all living things are genetically different and tend to increase biological heterogeneity.

The law is important in nature management, especially in the field of biotechnology (genetic engineering, biological preparations), if it is not always possible to foresee the result of innovations during the cultivation of new microcultures through emerging mutations or the extension of the action of new biological preparations to other types of organisms for which they were calculated.

Law of historical irreversibility: the development of the biosphere and humanity as a whole cannot proceed from later phases to the initial ones, general process development is unidirectional. Only separate elements of social relations (slavery) or types of management are repeated.

Law of constancy(formulated by V. Vernadsky): the amount of living matter of the biosphere (for a certain geological time) is a constant value. This law is closely related to the law of internal dynamic equilibrium. According to the law of constancy, any change in the amount of living matter in one of the regions of the biosphere inevitably leads to the same change in the amount of matter in another region, only with the opposite sign.

The consequence of this law is the rule of obligatory filling of ecological niches.

Law of Correlation(formulated by J. Cuvier): in the body as an integral system, all its parts are responsible for each other both for the structure and for the functions. Changing one part will inevitably cause changes in others.

The law of energy maximization (formulated by G. and Yu. Odum and supplemented by M. Reimers): in competition with other systems, the one that contributes the most to the flow of energy and information and uses the maximum amount of them most efficiently remains. To do this, such a system for the most part, forms accumulators (storages) of high-quality energy, part of which is spent on ensuring the supply of new energy, ensures the normal circulation of substances and creates mechanisms for regulating, supporting, system stability, its ability to adapt to changes, and establishing exchange with other systems. Maximization is about increasing the chances of survival.

Law of maximum biogenic energy(Vernadsky-Bauer law): any biological and “bio-imperfect” system with biota, which is in a state of “persistent non-equilibrium” (dynamically mobile equilibrium with the environment), increases its influence on the environment while developing.

In the process of evolution of species, Vernadsky insists, those that increase biogenic geochemical energy survive. According to Bauer, living systems are never in a state of equilibrium and perform useful work due to their free energy against the equilibrium required by the laws of physics and chemistry for existing external conditions.

Together with other fundamental provisions, the law of maximum biogenic energy serves as the basis for the development of a strategy for nature management.

Law of the Minimum(formulated by J. Liebig): the resistance of an organism is determined by the weakest link in the chain of its ecological needs. If the quantity and quality of environmental factors are close to the required minimum, the organism survives; if less than this minimum, the organism dies, the ecosystem is destroyed.

Therefore, during the forecasting of environmental conditions or the performance of examinations, it is very important to determine the weak link in the life of organisms.

The law of limited natural resources: all natural resources in the conditions of the Earth are exhaustible. The planet is a naturally limited body, and infinite constituents cannot exist on it.

The law of unidirectional energy flow: the energy that the ecosystem receives and which is assimilated by producers is dissipated or, together with their biomass, is irreversibly transferred to consumers of the first, second, third and other orders, and then to decomposers, which is accompanied by the loss of a certain amount of energy at each trophic level as a result of the processes that accompany respiration. Since very little initial energy (no more than 0.25%) gets into the reverse flow (from reducers to producers), the term "energy circulation" is rather arbitrary

The law of optimality: no system can contract or expand to infinity. No holistic organism can exceed certain critical dimensions that provide support for its energy. These sizes depend on the nutritional conditions and factors of existence.

In nature management, the law of optimality helps to find the optimal sizes in terms of productivity for areas of fields, grown animals, and plants. Ignoring the law - creating huge areas of monocultures, leveling the landscape with massive buildings, etc. - led to unnatural monotony over large areas and caused a disruption in the functioning of ecosystems, ecological crises.

Energy Pyramid Law(formulated by R. Lindemann): on average, no more than 10% of energy passes from one trophic level of the ecological pyramid to another.

According to this law, it is possible to carry out calculations of land areas, forest lands in order to provide the population with food and other resources.

The law of equivalence of living conditions: all natural environmental conditions necessary for life play an equivalent role. Another law follows from it - the cumulative action of environmental factors. This law is often ignored, although it is of great importance.

Environmental Development Law: any natural system develops only through the use of the material, energy and informational capabilities of the environment. Absolutely isolated self-development is impossible - this is a conclusion from the laws of thermodynamics.

The consequences of the law are very important:

1. Absolutely waste-free production is impossible.

2. Any more highly organized biotic system in its development is a potential threat to less organized systems. Therefore, in the biosphere of the Earth, the re-emergence of life is impossible - it will be destroyed by already existing organisms.

3. The Earth's biosphere, as a system, develops at the expense of internal and space resources.

The law of decreasing energy efficiency in nature management: in the process of obtaining useful products from natural systems over time (in a historical aspect), on average, more and more energy is spent on its production (energy costs per person increase). So, now the energy costs per person per day are almost 60 times greater than in the days of our distant ancestors (several thousand years ago). An increase in energy costs cannot occur indefinitely, it can and should be calculated by planning your relationship with nature in order to harmonize them.

The law of the combined action of natural factors(Mitcherlich-Thinemann-Baule law): the volume of the crop does not depend on a single, even limiting, factor, but on the totality of environmental factors at the same time. A particle of each factor in the total action can now be calculated. The law is valid under certain conditions - if the influence is monotonous and each factor is maximally detected while the others remain unchanged in the totality that is being considered.

Law of Tolerance(Shelford's law): the limiting factor for the prosperity of an organism can be both a minimum and a maximum of environmental influence, the range between which determines the degree of endurance (tolerance) of the organism to this factor. According to the law, any excess of matter or energy in an ecosystem becomes its enemy, a pollutant.

The law of soil depletion (decrease in fertility): a gradual decrease in the natural fertility of soils occurs due to their prolonged use and disruption of natural soil formation processes, as well as due to prolonged cultivation of monocultures (as a result of the accumulation of toxic substances that are released by plants, residues of pesticides and mineral fertilizers).

The law of physical and chemical unity of living matter(formulated by V. Vernadsky): all living matter Earth has a single physical and chemical nature. From this it is clear that what is harmful to one part of living matter harms another part of it, only, of course, in a different measure. The difference consists only in the resistance of the species to the action of either agent. In addition, due to the presence in any population of species more or less resistant to physical and chemical influence, the rate of selection for the endurance of populations to a harmful agent is directly proportional to the rate of reproduction of organisms and the duty of generations. This prolonged use of pesticides is environmentally unacceptable, since pests, which multiply much more quickly, adapt and survive more quickly, and the volume of chemical pollution has to be increased more and more. The law of ecological correlation: in an ecosystem, as in any other system, all types of living matter and abiotic ecological components functionally correspond to one another. The loss of one part of the system (species) inevitably leads to the shutdown of other parts of the ecosystem associated with it and functional changes.

The scientific community is also widely aware of the four laws of ecology of the American scientist B. Commoner:

1) everything connected with everything;

2) everything has to go somewhere;

3) nature "knows" better;

4) nothing is wasted (you have to pay for everything).

As M. Reimers notes, the first law of B. Commoner is close in meaning to the law of internal dynamic equilibrium, the second - to the same law and the law of development of a natural system at the expense of the environment, the third - warns us against self-confidence, the fourth - again touches on problems that generalize the law of internal dynamic equilibrium, the laws of constancy and development of a natural system. According to the fourth law of B. Commoner, we must return to nature what we take from it, otherwise a catastrophe is inevitable over time.

We should also recall the important environmental laws formulated in the works of the famous American ecologist D. Chiras in 1991-1993. He emphasizes that Nature exists forever (from the point of view of man) and resists degradation due to the action of four ecological laws: 1) recycling or reusable reuse of essential substances; 2) constant recovery of resources; 3) conservative consumption (if living beings consume only that (and in such quantity) that they need, no more and no less); 4) population control (nature does not allow "explosive" growth of populations, regulating the quantitative composition of a particular species by creating appropriate conditions for its existence and reproduction). D. Chiras considers the study of the structure and functions of ecosystems, their balance or imbalance, that is, the causes of stability and imbalance of ecosystems, to be the most important task of ecology.

Thus, the range of tasks of modern ecology is very wide and covers almost all issues that affect the relationship between human society and the natural environment, as well as the problems of harmonizing these relationships. From a purely biological science, which was ecology only some 30-40 years ago, today it has become a multifaceted complex science, the main goal of which is to develop the scientific foundations for the salvation of mankind and its environment - the planet's biosphere, rational nature management and nature protection. Nowadays, environmental education covers all segments of the population on the planet. Knowledge of the laws of harmonization, beauty and rationality of nature will help humanity find the right way out of the ecological crisis. Changing natural conditions in the future (society cannot live otherwise), people will be forced to do this deliberately, balancedly, foreseeing a long-term perspective and relying on knowledge of basic environmental laws.

"In the book "The Closing Circle" Barry Commoner offers four laws formulated by him in the form of aphorisms.

We will cite them and comment briefly, showing that, in essence, these are known laws of nature of the most general and fundamental level.

Law 1. Everything is connected with everything.

This law postulates the unity of the World, it tells us about the need to look for and study the natural origins of events and phenomena, the emergence of chains connecting them, the stability and variability of these connections, the appearance of gaps and new links in them, stimulates us to learn to heal these gaps, and also to predict the course of events .

Law 2. Everything has to go somewhere.

It is easy to see that this is, in essence, just a paraphrase of known conservation laws. In its most primitive form, this formula can be interpreted as follows: matter does not disappear. […]

Laws 1 and 2, as a consequence, define the concept of closedness (closedness) of nature as ecological system the highest level.

Law 3. Nature knows best.

The law states that any major human intervention in natural systems bad for her. This law, as it were, separates man from nature. Its essence is that everything that was created before man and without man is the product of lengthy trial and error, the result of a complex process based on such factors as abundance, ingenuity, indifference to individuals with an all-encompassing striving for unity.

In its formation and development, nature has developed a principle: what is collected, then disassembled.

This principle is well articulated in famous movie Mark Zakharova"Love Formula". Remember, the blacksmith, breaking the carriage of Count Cagliostro to extend the repair period, utters the following maxim: "What one person does, another can always break." In nature, the essence of this principle is that no substance can be synthesized in a natural way if there is no means to destroy it. The whole mechanism of cyclicity is based on this.

A person does not foresee this in his activity, at least not immediately. Not everything that he "collects", nature can destroy. This is one of the impasses in the relationship between man and nature, although man himself is part of nature. […]

Man wants to be independent of nature, to be above it, and everything he does, he creates for his own comfort, for his own pleasure, and only for them. But he forgets that against the background of natural expediency and harmony, in words A.I. Herzen, "our comfort is pathetic and our debauchery is ridiculous." Probably, we should follow the call of our peasant poet Nikolai Klyuev: "... with God we will be gods ...". To do this, a person must subdue his pride. We will return to this idea at the end of the book.

Law 4. Nothing is free.

In other words, you have to pay for everything. In essence, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which speaks of the presence in nature of a fundamental asymmetry, i.e., the unidirectionality of all spontaneous processes occurring in it. In the interaction of thermodynamic systems with the environment, there are only two ways of transferring energy: heat release and work. The law says that in order to increase their internal energy, natural systems create the most favorable conditions - they do not take "duties". All work done without any loss can be converted into heat and replenish the internal energy of the system. But, if we do the opposite, i.e., we want to do work at the expense of the internal energy reserves of the system, i.e., do work through heat, we must pay. All heat cannot be converted into work. Any heat engine (technical device or natural mechanism) has a refrigerator, which, like a tax inspector, collects duty. This is the fee for useful work a kind of tax on nature.

Modern ecology has its own laws, rules, empirical (Greek empeiria - experience based on experience) generalizations. The main problems of the interaction between society and nature to some extent reflect the four provisions that were formulated by the American biologist Barry Commoner in his book The Closing Circle. He called them "laws of ecology", in quotation marks.

The first "law" of ecology: everything is connected with everything

This law reflects the existence of close links in the biosphere between living organisms and the physicochemical properties of the natural environment. Any change in the quality of the physical and chemical state of the natural environment is transmitted both within the ecosystem and between them, affecting their development and the biosphere as a whole. An example is the situation in the ecosystem Sea of ​​Azov. Just half a century ago, the productivity of the Sea of ​​Azov was 1.5 times higher than the North, 8 times the Baltic and 25 times the Black. In addition, valuable sturgeon species of fish were caught in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov. But in connection with the use of the flow of the Don and Kuban for irrigation and other economic needs, the salinity of the water has increased. This led to the invasion of the Black Sea jellyfish, which were not here at all before. This upset the ecological balance of the Sea of ​​Azov. Jellyfish ate the plankton they used to eat small fish, which, in turn, was food for much larger fish. Catches of valuable species fell from the usual 90,000 tons to 5,700 tons.

The second "law" of ecology: everything has to go somewhere

The operation of this law is one of the main causes of the ecological crisis. Huge amounts of substances are extracted from the bowels of the Earth, transformed into new compounds that are dispersed in the natural environment, being included in biochemical cycles. Some of them, chemically active, are capable of reacting with proteins, replacing biogenic elements, and influencing the development of living organisms. They are very dangerous. B. Commoner considers this using the example of mercury contained in a used battery or transistor, which makes its way into the environment: "a garbage container - an incinerator - an atmosphere - a reservoir - mercury-methylating bacteria - zooplankton - fish - a person." A small amount of mercury reaches the end, but nevertheless it reaches, accumulates and exerts its effect.

No less dangerous are many hundreds of organic compounds - xenobiotics, which are scattered in the biosphere, are included in the global cycle, accumulate in new generations of fish, birds, animals, people. For example, DDT, its content in microalgae and bacteria is 20 - 100 times higher than in water, in the body of fish - 5 - 12 thousand times, in the body of waterfowl that feed on fish - 30 - 100 thousand times. In the early 80s, residents different countries The Earths contained in their body from 2 to 5 mg of DDT for every kg of body weight.

The Third "Law" of Ecology: Nature Knows Best

This law is based on the results of the emergence and development of life on Earth, on natural selection during the evolution of life. The main criterion for this selection is incorporation into the biotic cycle. Any substance produced by organisms must have an enzyme that decomposes it. Man, contrary to this law, has created substances, materials, products that are not subject to biological damage, biocorrosion and cannot be neutralized by nature (for example, polyethylene, DDT, etc.). Thus, humanity, acting on the biosphere as a powerful "geological force" causes irreversible processes in it that can develop into a global crisis. There is only one way out - to find a compromise acceptable for nature and worthy for humanity. B. Commoner in his lecture "Ecology and Social Actions" made an addition to the wording of the law: "Nature knows better what to do, and people must decide how to do it as best as possible" [according to 8].

The fourth "law" of ecology: nothing is free

B. Commoner writes: "The global ecosystem is a whole in which nothing can be won or lost and which cannot be the object of general improvement; everything that has been extracted from it by human labor must be reimbursed. Payment on this bill cannot be avoided, it can only be delayed. The current environmental crisis suggests that the delay has been too long." B. Commoner did not provide evidence of this law, it is based on the centuries-old experience of mankind. Global Ecosystem, i.e. the biosphere is a single whole, within which any gain is accompanied by losses, but in a different place. For example, when growing grain, chemical elements are extracted from the soil, and if fertilizers are not applied to it, then yields decrease.