An ecosystem is an ecological unit consisting of living organisms (plants and animals) capable of interacting with each other and adapting to the environment in which they live. In practice, therefore, for an ecosystem to exist it is sufficient for there to be interdependence and balance between living things and everything around them, including all non-living components.
To go into more detail, for an ecosystem to be defined as such, it must have very specific characteristics namely:
- It must be an open system (thus having exchanges of some kind with the external environment).
- It is interconnected with other ecosystems.
- It consists of an abiotic (non-living) component and a biotic (living) component.
- Maintains a dynamic equilibrium (there is always an equilibrium in an ecosystem, but that does not mean it is not changing over time).
Natural ecosystems are all those that form in nature, without human intervention, and manage to reach their ecological balance (called climax) in complete autonomy. The natural ecosystems found on Earth are forests, savannah, deserts, tundra, scrubland. Within the natural ecosystems, however, there are also two aquatic ecosystems: marine and freshwater.
The notion of ecosystem, in general, is associated with the natural ecosystem, where the biotic and the abiotic are in balance without human intervention. In any case, it should be noted that there are artificial ecosystems, which are created by humans and do not exist in nature . A greenhouse, a dike, and a fish tank, for example, are examples of artificial ecosystems.
