Note
The image of Howard and Eugene Odum snorkeling in a back reef lagoon peering through the crystal clear waters of the Pacific Eniwetok Atoll (now “Enewetak”) is the epitome of my image of the emerging science of “ecosystems ecology” during the middle of the past century. Ecosystems ecology was a new way of looking at natural systems, a view from “outside the box” that considered the flows of materials, energy and information, into, out of, and within, instead of merely considering the components “inside” the box.