Odum is also recognized for seeing the “big picture” or what later became known as holistic science. Odum was a pioneer in the interaction termed “mutualism.” He frequently quipped, “When the going gets tough, it pays to cooperate”-indicative of a philosophy that he applied across levels of organization or when describing attributes of ecosystems during mature seral stages of development. The early work at the Sapelo Island laboratory was influential in raising awareness of ecological interactions between rivers, estuaries, and salt marshes, especially the interactions of the physical, chemical, and biological components. Starr, initiated an ecosystem-level investigation of the estuaries and extensive salt marshes, probably the first of its kind in that environment. Odum, his students, and a small academic resident staff, including Lawrence R.
Reynolds Jr., who maintained a plantation on the island.
Laboratory of the University of Georgia was established on Sapelo Island in 1953 as a result of interactions between Eugene and Richard J. For example, in addition to the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, the Marine Biology In yet another classic paper (1977) he described how ecosystem development served as the central or unifying theme for early research at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.Įugene conducted early groundbreaking research not only on coral reef energetics and old-field community development but also on bird fat metabolism, radiation ecology, and salt marsh dynamics. Personnel at the laboratory focused their early research on secondary succession as described in Odum’s classic paper “The Strategy of Ecosystem Development” (1969). He was the founder of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in 1951. Odum and he were the recipients of the Mercer Award, awarded in 1956 by the Ecological Society of America, for their coral reef paper, “Trophic Structure and Productivity of a Windward Coral Reef Community on Eniwetok Atoll,” published in Ecological Monographs (1955). Odum’s research on structure and function of ecosystems, trophic-level dynamics, and ecosystem development is recognized internationally. Odum built his study of ecosystem ecology on this holistic perspective of nature. Shelford instilled in Odum such concepts as the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts that nature tends toward stability in its mature stages and that ecology is the study of large-scale systems and the interrelationships therein. Odum’s involvement with holistic science continued to develop under the influence of Victor Shelford, who viewed ecology as the study of biotic communities. This curiosity in physiology challenged him not only to study functions within an organism but also to study how organisms function in their environment as a whole. This investigation, published in Ecological Monographs (1941), attests his early interest in physiological ecology. Odum was the recipient of numerous awards in ecological education, including the Educator-of-the-Year in 1983 awarded by the National Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Educator Award in 1992 from the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and the Distinguished Service Award in 1998 from the United States International Association of Landscape Ecology.įocused on the heart rate of birds in his Ph.D. “Great Ideas in Ecology for the 1990s,” published in BioScience (1992), placed his understanding of and goals for ecology during the last decade of the twentieth century in a public forum. These books were intended to provide a clear understanding of current and future challenges for public consideration in order to move toward sustainable societies. For example, in 1989 he published Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems (second and third editions were published, respectively, in 19) and in 1998 a book entitled Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicaments. In later years of his life Odum authored several books and publications that focused attention on Earth as a life-support system.
In an award-winning video Eugene Odum: An Ecologist’s Life, Odum is depicted as providing a commensurate education, whether through invited speaking engagements with citizens, discussions with community organizations, or dialogue with individual students walking across a university campus. Fundamentals of Ecology was ranked first in a survey of the membership of the American Institute of Biological Sciences as the book that had the greatest impact on career training in the biological sciences (Barrett and Mabry, 2002). Of Georgia, was published after Odum’s death (at the age of 88).