(1841-1924) Danish botanist whose pioneering studies of the relationships between plants and their natural environments established plant ecology as a new discipline within botany.
Warming was born on the island of Mandř, Denmark. He studied at Copenhagen and at German universities. While still a student, he spent 1863–66 at Lagoa Santa, Brazil, where he undertook a study of tropical vegetation. In 1882 he became professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He went on an expedition to Greenland in 1884 and to Norway in 1885, after which he returned to Copenhagen to become professor and director of the Botanical Gardens, positions he held until 1911. His last major expedition, 1890–92, was to the West Indies and Venezuela.
Warming investigated the relationships between plants and various environmental conditions, such as light, temperature, and rainfall, and attempted to classify types of plant communities (he defined a plant community as a group of several species that is subject to the same environmental conditions, which he called ecological factors). In Plantesamfund/Oecology of Plants 1895 he also formulated a program for future research into the subject.
Heating; process of warming or being warmed up