Ecotope

The (or ) ecotope (Greek oikos, " house ", " housing" and topos, "place" ) is a term used in landscape ecology. It describes the spatial extent and the inanimate components of an ecosystem in which a specific interaction of environmental factors playing. It is representative of different spatial Econs of similar structure are interrelated.

In colloquial usage, the terms and ecosystem ecotope are sometimes confused or used interchangeably:

• An ecosystem is at most the idea of ​​the functioning of a model Ökotops
• An ecotope includes the local corpus of representational and actually all of the inanimate components of an area

Based on a community the ecotope is called a biotope.

Either one considers:

• Several habitats consisting of hydrotrope, Pedotop, Klimatop

Or, more often:

• Several biotopes, inanimate components of the habitat of a biological community ( community ).

In the hierarchical system of landscape ecological complexes of ecotopes represent the ( in a geographical sense homogeneous ) ground units, while the ecozones win the top -order stage of the biosphere. Between ecotopes and ecozones further subdivision steps can be inserted if required, which can be described for example as ecoregions, Ökoprovinzen and Ökodistrikte.