Title: abundance
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - abundance
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.14415
Status: current

Definition
Total number of individual organisms in a population, seen over a defined period of time in a certain place.Note: For fish, an estimate of total weight may replace number.
Total number of organisms per unit of habitat space seen over a defined period.
Amount of an element that exists in nature, usually expressed in relative terms as a percentage of the total amount of all elements in a given medium (e.g., the Earth’s crust).
Amount of an isotope of an element that exists in nature, usually expressed in relative terms as a percentage of the total amount of all isotopes of the element.


Related Terms
- habitat: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/14728
- population: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/14932

Source
- PAC, 2009, 81, 829. 'Glossary of terms used in ecotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2009)' on page 833 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-08-07-09)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14415/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14415/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/14415/xml

Citation: Citation: 'abundance' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.14415
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
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Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-04-21T11:05:58+00:00