O’Neil (in Cairns and Crawford, 1991: 39) suggested that the ecosystem approach
could be seen as methodology (with models to simulate the ecosystem) and mindset
(with a focus on function and properties of ecosystems), the strength of this approach
being synthesis of the complexity of problems faced, enabling assessment of consequences.
In practice there has been an understandable specialisation, for example:
ecosystem studies of risk; ecosystem quality management; assessment of ecosystem
potential; ecosystem conservation, and so on. It is not only ecologists and environmental
managers who have adopted an ecosystems approach: many other disciplines frequently
do so, including human ecology (perhaps the first to do so), cultural anthropology
(Moran, 1990), planning, management and urban studies. Because the ecosystem
approach means different things to various disciplines it is a useful generalisation rather
than a precise term.