I. Give the English equivalents for:

использование и управление природой, взаимодействовать, использовать слово в значе­нии..., основные причины, окружающая среда, прикладная экология, лесное хозяйство, ры­боловное хозяйство, вмешиваться, естественные науки, химия, биология, огромный вред, са­мый важный вопрос, оценка, воздействовать.

II. Are these sentences right or wrong? Correct the mistakes according to the text.

1. Some people called ecology the economy of nature.

2. Ecology doesn't touch other disciplines.

3. One of the reasons to understand ecology is the necessity to know about natural resources.

4. A lot of professional ecologists think that the human intervention in the nature is harmful.

5. Ecology and environmentalism don't mean the same.

6. Ecology concerns a small range of questions.

7. The term ecology has an evaluative connotation.

III. Answer the following questions.

1. What is ecology?

2. What are the reasons to study ecology? What is your own reason?

3. What is the most important issue for humans to deal with?

4. What other disciplines connected with ecology should students study?

5. What is the main goal of most ecologists?

IV. What is ecology according to the text? Find the definition.

There are a lot of other definitions of the term ecology:

• Haeckel (German zoologist) 1870: By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of Nature - the investigation of the total relations of the animal to its inorganic and organic environment.

• Andrewartha (1961): The scientific study of the distribution and abundance of organisms.

• Odum (1963): The structure and function of Nature.

• Kxebs (1972): Ecology is the scientific study of the processes regulating the distribution and abundance of organisms and the interactions among them, and the study of how these organ­isms in turn mediate the transport and transformation of energy and matter in the biosphere (i.e., the study of the design of ecosystem structure and function).

• Natural Geographic: Ecology is the study of interactions that occur among organisms and their environments

Compare these definitions. How do they differ from each other? Use such adjectives as clear, comprehensive, easy/difficult to remember, ambiguous, loose, broad/wide ...Choose one as a work­ing definition and learn it by heart.

V. Word formation. Complete the table.

Noun	Noun (a person)	Adjective	Adverb
ecology			ecologically
			environmentally
		scientific
	naturalist
	geographer
			biologically

VL It is interesting to know...

Read the text and explain the origin of the term ecology.