There are differently scaled processes inside a single ecosystem, as well as sets of differently scaled, more inclusive and less inclusive ecosystems. . . . The degree to which processes of different types express themselves and the length of time they do so, are both ways of describing the uniqueness of particular ecosystems. Much of what we observe in ecosystems, is better set in time rather than space. . . . Ecosystems can be seen more powerfully as sequences of events rather than things in a place. These events are transformations of matter and energy that occur as the ecosystem does its work.
Ecosystems are process-oriented and more easily seen as temporally rather than spatially ordered.
Hence, anthropogenic changes imposed on nature are no less natural than any other. However, since Homo sapiens is a moral species, capable of ethical deliberation and conscientious choice, and evolutionary kinship and biotic community membership add a land ethic to our familiar social ethics, anthropogenic changes may be land-ethically evaluat ed. The norm of appropriate scale . . . . Biotic communities may be ever changing assemblages of organisms of various species that happen to be adapted to the same edaphic and climatic gradients. However, that makes them even more analogous to human communities than the old static-holistic representation.