Question

Ecologists have demonstrated that analyses of ecosystem engineering provide an organizational framework for understanding biological influences on material flows. Under what sorts of conditions or in what sorts of locations might such flows dominate overflows influenced by industrial engineering?

Answer 1

The phenomenon called ecosystem engineering is considered with a case study of the mound building termite Macrotermes michaelseni. It has been observed that this species acts as an ecosystem engineer across a range of scales, from altercation of local infiltration to the creation of landscape mosaics. These changes to the resource flows are likely to go for longer periods and  constrain the biological structure of the habitat. The role of ecosystem engineering is described as a holistic way of understanding the complexity of tropical ecology.

Industrial ecology aims at a reduction of the environmental impact of materials and energy flows through increased resource. Material flow is an analytical method to quantify stocks of materials and substances in a well defined system. Because of the growing demands of production processes in industry and logistics, the material flow becomes an important factor for transport, storage operations to the prevailing conditions on time. Delays in the flows of material can also be avoided.