Raymond Lindeman Biography

At the same time, even non -specialized universities are taken to teach “ecologists”, and the press calls “ecological” any environmental movement. Vavilov RAS. Alexandra Lvovna, candidate of biological sciences, heads at the institute the sector of the history of evolutionary theory and ecology. We talked about how the substitution of concepts is fraught and why saying “bad ecology” is wrong.

Because not only the word in a wide course, but also the very discipline began to understand as a comprehensive "science of the connection of everything with everything." The article on the topic: here people went to collect garbage on the banks of the lakes - the press calls them “ecologists”. But the practical activity in preserving the environment has nothing to do with fundamental science.

And if we talk about ecology so much, we will not be able to solve complex environmental problems. I will allow myself to be a rampant. Ecology is a fundamental biological discipline. As, for example, genetics that studies heredity, or physiology that studies the functioning of the body. But unlike genetics and physiology, which, simplifiedly, are engaged in research at the level of organisms, the ecology is studying what is higher than organisms, “perversive”.

Namely, he studies populations and ecosystems. But after all, the word "ecosystem" is now where they use: I have heard, for example, about some kind of "innovative ecosystem." Meanwhile, the ecosystem is the organisms plus the inanimate that surrounds them. And this is a very interesting combination: organisms feed, breathe, distinguish, multiply and thereby affect the inanimate components - water, soil.

For example, the water in the lake is not just a solution of mineral salts, these are organic substances that organisms secrete during life or after dying. That is, living and inanimate are closely connected in the ecosystem of the stream of substances and energy. Understanding these flows is the key to the right practical measures to preserve ecosystems.

Of course, not to allow pollution - it is important. But it is not taken into account, for example, that in a reservoir I say it as a hydrobiologist have its own sources of water deterioration. Organisms, dying, fall into bottom deposits, increasing the supply of organic substances there that take oxygen from the water - this worsens the state of the reservoir. So you need to know the paths by which organic compounds in the reservoir form and destroy.

Not understanding how the lake ecosystem functions, we can spend millions, but it will not “heal”. It must be realized that the connections in nature are much more complicated than the simple “measure - effect” scheme. Another example is associated with modern climate care. It is believed that the main cause of global warming is the burning of carbon fuel in boiler rooms.

But the formation of the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, occurs not only in boiler houses, but also on lakes and swamps - due to the decay of organic substances there. Well, we will build windmills instead of boiler houses, what will happen? In a collision with their blades, birds will die, which occurs in many European countries and in the USA, where windmen are used.

About all the well -known dangers of atomic energy, I generally am silent of course, in nature there are compensatory mechanisms. But they are not always the way we want to imagine. An example from ground ecology. There is an idea that the predator kills only weak - sick, old - individuals and this heals the population. But the study conducted in the Central Left Reserve in the Tver region showed: predators, using complex forms of hunting “group intelligence”, can also attack a large healthy male together.

I emphasize: the connections between organisms are more complicated than we think. I lead to the fact that any environmental actions and measures will not be successful until theorists -biologists are connected - environmentalists who know how the number of animals population ranges, how the ecosystems are arranged. What is this expressed? And she conducted a study: for what topics Soviet and Russian environmentalists took on in the past half a century.

She took the central scientific journal "Ecology" - and it turned out: ecosystems, that is, a key subject of studying ecologists, is almost not explored! Ecologists have been studying mainly types of 50 years. Because it is easier. Here lives a population of blue pigeons in the city, you can explore them from all sides: numbers, birth rate, mortality, and so on. And the ecosystem - meadow, forest, lake - is more difficult to study, because there are both living and inanimate components there.

It was believed that studying relationships in ecosystems means to engage in some abstractions. The well -known ecologist Vladimir Vladimirovich Stanchinsky in the years considered the ratio between the number of autotrophic organisms in other words, plants and heterotrophic in other words, animals in ground communities. The proportion between them is such that there are more plants and herbivores more than predators.

One of the ideologists from science Israilevich Present was indignant: “What does this give for the economy?! As a result, Stanchinsky was repressed and died in a Vologda prison.Less than ten years later, the general conclusions of Stanchinsky, not knowing about them, will clarify the American Raymondeman, and we could be the first! In conditions of such pressure, it was possible to engage in only “economic valuable” organisms.

In addition, from the end of the X, the Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature was introduced and primarily those animals were studied both by fishing and “harmful”, whose number increases very quickly. And then - e, thaw, scientists and the public rallied in the defense of Lake Baikal. As a result, just a boom in the environmental movement began. It was increasingly called "environmental." And, on the one hand, the ecology began to gain popularity, on the other hand, to turn into science "as if about everything." I thought: maybe this is a Russian specificity?

But it turned out that all over the world! In the West, there was no ideological pressure - on the contrary, ecosystem research in the years, for example, in the USA, was generously funded. But they have taken root such an approach: to study what is easier and more visual. And just like ours, there was an environmental boom, and the ecology also gradually ceased to be the lot of biologists.

Then the hobby played a role in the notorious biodiversity. The fact that environmentalists I mean in mind science are mainly studied by the way of life of species, and they almost do not engage in ecosystems - this is a crisis. And the leading world scientific magazines write about him. All this is annoying, because in the field of studying ecosystems there were major achievements. Here it comes to solar energy to the surface of the reservoir, accumulated by algae that eat crustaceans, and they, in turn, are fish and if, say, the kilocalories of solar energy per 1 sq.

Where does the rest go? On the breath of organisms eating each other in this chain. In our country, provisions were developed, even anticipating Lindemanovsky. For example, a researcher from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Georgy Georgievich Vinberg found that in the cycle of organic substances in the pond there are two most important processes - products and destruction.

At the first, solar energy is converted into an organic matter, peace states, during the second, the food diverges through the food chains. These two processes are the basis of the life of any ecosystem. And the conclusions of Vinberg, like Lindeman, became the basis of modern ideas about ecosystems. And the other Leningrader, a well -known hydrobiologist who also worked at the Zoological Institute, Vladimir Ivanovich Zhadin attached more importance not solar energy, but the fact that the soil from the surrounding territories was washed off in the rivers.

The flow of organic substances makes the river a single whole, that is, an ecosystem. But now, often, I repeat, very complex systems of connections are replaced by simple linear laws. And this affects education, and then on the social understanding of ecology. That's what I am doing now. Indeed, without knowledge of ecosystems, we will not be able to preserve them, which means that we will suffer ourselves.