Ecology is the study of the relationships of organisms among themselves and with their environments.
Ecological research is organized into population, community, and ecosystem studies. This unit takes an ecosystem approach to ecology, and it is developed in the context of the climatic factors which shape and have shaped the living and non-living worlds. I discuss the relation between ecology and climate by looking at two well-known and extensively studied regions of North America, the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest specifically, the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State and the Florida Everglades. These ecosystems, while widely separated from each other, share a number of ecological characteristics. The Olympic Peninsula contains the world s best example of old-growth, temperate rain forest.