Final answer:
Ecology is the study of interactions between living organisms and their environment, organized into levels such as organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere. Ecosystem level in particular focuses on living beings in concert with abiotic components like air, water, and soil.
Step-by-step explanation:
Ecology fits within a nested hierarchical structure of biological organization. This structure starts with individual organisms and progresses through several levels of complexity: populations, communities, ecosystems, biomes, and ultimately the biosphere. At the organismal level, ecologists study individual organisms and their interactions with the environment. Moving up, the population level involves studying a group of individuals of the same species and how they live and reproduce in a certain area. Community ecology examines how different populations interact with each other. The ecosystem level encompasses all living things, known as biotic components, in an area interacting with the nonliving, or abiotic components, such as climate and geography. Finally, the biosphere is the global ecological level containing all ecosystems.
An ecosystem is not just an assembly of living organisms but also includes their physical environment, making it a central concept in ecology. Understanding ecosystems requires integrating knowledge from various scientific disciplines, such as biology, chemistry, sociology, and geology, among others. Ecology as a field emphasizes the complex and dynamic relationships between organisms and their environment, necessitating study at each of these levels for a comprehensive understanding.