<P> The application of ecological concepts to epidemiology has similar roots to those of other disciplinary applications, with Carl Linnaeus having played a seminal role . However, the term appears to have come into common use in the medical and public health literature in the mid-twentieth century . This was strengthened in 1971 by the publication of Epidemiology as Medical Ecology, and again in 1987 by the publication of a textbook on Public Health and Human Ecology . An "ecosystem health" perspective has emerged as a thematic movement, integrating research and practice from such fields as environmental management, public health, biodiversity, and economic development . Drawing in turn from the application of concepts such as the social - ecological model of health, human ecology has converged with the mainstream of global public health literature . </P> <P> In addition to its links to other disciplines, human ecology has a strong historical linkage to the field of home economics through the work of Ellen Swallow Richards, among others . However, as early as the 1960s, a number of universities began to rename home economics departments, schools, and colleges as human ecology programs . In part, this name change was a response to perceived difficulties with the term home economics in a modernizing society, and reflects a recognition of human ecology as one of the initial choices for the discipline which was to become home economics . Current human ecology programs include Cornell University College of Human Ecology and the University of Alberta's Department of Human Ecology, among others . </P> <P> Changes to the Earth by human activities have been so great that a new geological epoch named the Anthropocene has been proposed . The human niche or ecological polis of human society, as it was known historically, has created entirely new arrangements of ecosystems as we convert matter into technology . Human ecology has created anthropogenic biomes (called anthromes). The habitats within these anthromes reach out through our road networks to create what has been called technoecosystems containing technosols . Technodiversity exists within these technoecosystems . In direct parallel to the concept of the ecosphere, human civilization has also created a technosphere . The way that the human species engineers or constructs technodiversity into the environment, threads back into the processes of cultural and biological evolution, including the human economy . </P> <P> The ecosystems of planet Earth are coupled to human environments . Ecosystems regulate the global geophysical cycles of energy, climate, soil nutrients, and water that in turn support and grow natural capital (including the environmental, physiological, cognitive, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of life). Ultimately, every manufactured product in human environments comes from natural systems . Ecosystems are considered common - pool resources because ecosystems do not exclude beneficiaries and they can be depleted or degraded . For example, green space within communities provides sustainable health services that reduces mortality and regulates the spread of vector borne disease . Research shows that people who are more engaged with regular access to natural areas have lower rates of diabetes, heart disease and psychological disorders . These ecological health services are regularly depleted through urban development projects that do not factor in the common - pool value of ecosystems . </P>

Relationship between man and environment in ecological perspective