Ekologi, skog och miljö - Epsilon Open Archive - Sveriges ...

Summary
General
This study links silviculture and environmental issues with the development of
ecology. It also addresses the difficulties and uncertainties in doing so, for example
the lack of data on silviculture before 1950. Any author’s choice of sources
brings some risk of subjectivity, but in order to minimize this, the author has
widened the context considered and investigated how a number of factors have
influenced silviculture and environmental aspects, such as philosophers, writers,
artists, columnists, and others’ view on nature. Other factors are the necessary
theoretical, economic, and technical conditions for land-owners to be active
foresters and incorporate environment concerns. Here, forest policy, particularly
legislation, has played an important role. Forest policy has in turn been influenced
by the general political and economical situation in the country, and by the technical
and economical development of the forest industry.
Ecology
During the 18 th century, significant progress was made within some of the
fundamental subjects of ecology. The most critical, and one which was of decisive
importance for the development of ecology, was the classification and
nomenclature system suggested by Linné. Botanists around the world were given
a common language. The chemistry revolution at the end of the century led to the
discovery of oxygen and photosynthesis, and of the chemical composition of
water.
The natural science of the 16 th century, which was structured in minerals, plants,
and animals, was replaced in the 19 th century by modern fields of science. New,
fundamental findings for ecology were made within plant geography, plant
physiology, geology, plant science, and microbiology. Darwin’s theory of evolution
gave ecology an new foundation to build on. Botany developed into plant ecology
by the plant geographers Alexander Humboldt and Göran Wahlenberg who
studied the influences of soil and climate on plants, and by Eugenius Warnung,
who in his studies of plant associations, considered the plants’ evolutionary
adaptation to the environment.
During the first decades of the 20 th century, the influence of micro-organisms on
soil type was studied by Henrik Hesselman and others. From the start of the
1900’s, questions on plant associations, succession and possible climax stages
were more or less the focus of a whole century of research on the mechanisms of
vegetation change. In the 1930’s, Arthur Tansley launched the expression
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