Building from scholarship in the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine and rhetorical ecologies, this chapter investigates how ecosystems ecology was influenced by technological metaphors that serve to both structure and constrain ecological inquiry. Turning to the intellectual history of the ecosystem as a concept and a diagram, this chapter moves from its origins in the work of Arthur Tansley to its development by Howard T. and Eugene P. Odum. This context demonstrates how the legacy of technological thinking shapes contemporary environmental inquiry. Through interdisciplinary research, this chapter analyzes ecosystems as diagrammatic scientific models and rhetorical inventions.