Designed ecosystem services: application of ecological principles in wastewater treatment engineering

Abstract

Wastewater treatment engineering and ecology have complementary goals and need to interact much more closely. Wastewater engineers and ecologists share strong interests in the structure and function of biological communities, yet rarely engage in extensive interdisciplinary dialogue. Wastewater (bioprocess) engineers focus on solving practical environmental problems and typically do not work forward from ecological principles to test specific theories. Ecologists, on the other hand, have focused primarily on the collection and analysis of data in order to test specific scientific hypotheses; only recently have they emphasized ecological applications as well. Wastewater engineers should use the fundamentals of ecological theory to help guide future system design and ecologists should view engineered biosystems as valuable new platforms for ecological research.