Creating a Genuine Science of Sustainability

Previously, I wrote about Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis' book, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future. In a recent issue of the journal Futures, Jerome Ravetz reviews their book alongside David Waltner-Toews' The Chickens Fight Back: Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases That Jump From Animals to Humans. Ravetz himself points out that the subject matter and approaches of the books are rather different, but suggests that "Read together, they provide insights about what needs to be done for the creation of a genuine science of sustainability".

Ravetz (along with Silvio Funtowicz) has developed the idea of 'post-normal' science - a new approach to replace the reductionist, analytic worldview of ‘normal’ science. Post-normal science is a "systemic, synthetic and humanistic" approach, useful in cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent". I used some of these ideas to experiment with some alternative model assessment criteria for the socio-ecological simulation model I developed during my PhD studies. Ravetz's perspectives toward modelling, and science in general, shone through quite clearly in his review:

"On the philosophical side, the corruption of computer models can be understood as the consequence of a false metaphysics. Following on from the prophetic teachings of Galileo and Descartes, we have been taught to believe that Science is the sole and certain path to truth. And this Science is mathematical, using quantitative data and abstract reasonings. Such a science is not merely necessary for achieving genuine knowledge (an arguable position) but is also sufficient. We are all victims of the fantasy that once we have numerical data and mathematical argument (or computer programs), truth will inevitably follow. The evil consequences of this philosophy are quite familiar in neo-classical economics where partly true banalities about markets are dressed up in the language of the differential calculus to produce justifications for every sort of expropriation of the weak and vulnerable. ‘What you can’t count, doesn’t count’ sums it all up neatly. In the present case, the rule of models extends over nearly all the policy-relevant sciences, including those ostensibly devoted to the protection of the health of people and the environment.

We badly need an effective critical philosophy of mathematical science. ... Now science has replaced religion as the foundation of our established order, and in it mathematical science reigns supreme. Systematic philosophical criticism is hard to find. (The late Imre Lakatos did pioneering work in the criticism of the dogmatism of ‘modern’ abstract mathematics but did not focus on the obscurities at the foundations of mathematical thinking.) Up to now, mathematical freethinking is mainly confined to the craftsmen, with their jokes of the ‘Murphy's Law’ sort, best expressed in the acronym GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). And where criticism is absent, corruption of all sorts, both deliberate and unaware, is bound to follow. Pseudo-mathematical reasonings about the unthinkable helped to bring us to the brink of nuclear annihilation a half-century ago. The GIGO sciences of computer models may well distract us now from a sane approach to coping with the many environmental problems we now face. The Pilkeys have done us a great service in providing cogent examples of the situation, and indicating some practical ways forward."

Thus, Ravetz finds a little more value in the Useless Arithmetic book than I did. But equally, he highlights that the Pilkeys offer few, rather vague, solutions and instead turns to Waltner-Toews' book for inspiration for the future:

Pilkey's analysis of the corruptions of misconceived reductionist science shows us the depth of the problem. Waltner-Toes’ narrative about ourselves in our natural context (not always benign!) indicates the way to a solution."

Using the outbreak of avian flu as an example of how to tackle complex environmental in the 'risk society' in which we now live, Waltner-Toes:

"... makes it very plain that we will never ‘conquer’ disease. Considering just a single sort of disease, the ‘zoonoses’ (deriving from animals), he becomes a raconteur of bio-social-cultural medicine ...

What everyone learned, or should have learned, from the avian flu episode is that disease is a very complex entity. Judging from TV adverts for antiseptics, we still believe that the natural state of things is to be germ-free, and all we need to do is to find the germs and kill them. In certain limiting cases, this is a useful approximation to the truth, as in the case of infections of hospitals. But even there complexity intrudes ... "

Complexity which demands an alternative perspective that moves beyond the next stage of 'normal' science to a post-normal science (to play on Kuhn's vocabulary of paradigm shifts):

"That old simple ‘kill the germ’ theory may now be derided by medical authorities as something for the uneducated public and their media. But the practice of environmental medicine has not caught up with these new insights.

The complexity of zoonoses reflects the character of our interaction with all those myriads of other species. ... the creatures putting us at risk are not always large enough to be fenced off and kept at a safe distance. ... We can do all sorts of things to control our interactions with them, but one thing is impossible: to stamp them out, or even to kill the bad ones and keep the good ones.

Waltner-Toes is quite clear about the message, and about the sort of science that will be required, not merely for coexisting with zoonoses but also for sustainable living in general. Playing the philological game, he reminds us that the ancient Indo-European world for earth, dgghem, gave us, along with ‘humus’, all of ‘human’, ‘humane’ and ‘humble’. As he says, community by community, there is a new global vision emerging whose beauty and complexity and mystery we can now explore thanks to all our scientific tools."

This global vision is a post-normal vision. It applies to far more than just avian flu - from coastal erosion and the disposal of toxic or radioactive waste (as the Pilekys discuss for example) to climate change. This post-normal vision focuses on uncertainty, value loading, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives that demands an "extended peer community" to evaluate the knowledge generated and decisions proposed.

In all fairness, it would not be easy to devise a conventional science-based curriculum in which Waltner-Toes's insights could be effectively conveyed. For his vision of zoonoses is one of complexity, intimacy and contingency. To grasp it, one needs to have imagination, breadth of vision and humility, not qualities fostered in standard academic training. ... "

This post-normal science won't be easy and won't be learned or fostered entirely within the esoteric confines of an ivory tower. Science, with its logical rigour, is important. It is still the best game in town. But the knowledge produced by 'normal' science is provisional and its march toward truth is seemingly Sisyphean when confronted faced with the immediacy of complex contemporary environmental problems. To contribute to the production a sustainable future, a genuine science of sustainability would do well to adopt a more post-normal stance toward its subject.

Columbia University Press Sale

Columbia University Press currently has a sale on. They have savings of up to 80% on more than 1,000 titles from several fields of study. I was particularly interested in their books in the Environmental Studies and Ecology section and purchased several:

• Foundation Papers in Landscape Ecology Edited by John Wiens, Michael R. Moss, Monica G. Turner, and David Mladenoff
  
• Understanding Environmental Policy Steven Cohen
  
• Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Century: The Hierarchy of Energy Howard T. Odum
  
• The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Has Failed the Environment Robert L. Nadeau
  

Previously on this blog I reviewed another book they have on sale, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future by Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis.

When I get round to reading this new batch I'll review some of these also (at first glance the Wiens et al. book looks particularly useful for any Landscape Ecologist - student, teacher or researcher). You've got up until May 31st to order yours.

US-IALE 2008 - Summary

A brief and belated summary of the 23rd annual US-IALE symposium in Madison, Wisconsin.

The theme of the meeting was the understanding of patterns, causes, and consequences of spatial heterogeneity for ecosystem function. The three keynote lectures were given by Gary Lovett, Kimberly With and John Foley. I found John Foley's lecture the most interesting and enjoyable of the three - he's a great speaker and spoke on a broader topic than the the others; Agriculture, Land Use and the Changing Biosphere. Real wide-ranging, global sustainability stuff. He highlighted the difficulties of studying agricultural landscapes because of the human cultural and institutional factors, but also stressed the importance of tackling these tricky issues because 'agriculture is the largest disturbance the biosphere has ever seen' and because of its large contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Presentations I was particularly interested in were mainly in the 'Landscape Patterns and Ecosystem Processes: The Role of Human Societies', 'Challenges in Modeling Forest Landscapes under Climate Change' and 'Cross-boundary Challenges to the Creation of Multifunctional Agricultural Landscapes' sessions.

In the 'human societies' session, Richard Aspinall discussed the importance of considering human decision-making at a range of scales and Dan Brown again highlighted the importance of human agency in spatial landscape process models. In particular, with regards modelling these systems using agent-based approaches he discussed the difficulty of model calibration at the agent level and stressed that work is still needed on the justification and evaluation phases of agent-based modelling.

The 'modeling forest landscapes' session was focused largely around use of the LANDIS and HARVEST models that were developed in and around Wisconsin. In fact, I don't think I saw any mention of the USFS FVS at the meeting whilst I was there, largely because (I think) FVS has large data demands and is not inherently spatial. LANDIS and HARVEST work at more coarse levels of forest representation (grid cell compared to FVS' individual tree) allowing them to be spatially explicit and to run over large time and space extents. We're confident we'll be able to use FVS in a spatially explicit manner for our study area though, capitalising on the ability of FVS to directly simulate specific timber harvest and economic scenarios.

The 'multifunctional agricultural landscapes' session had an interesting talk by Joan Nassauer on stakeholder science and the challenges it presents. Specific issues she highlighted were:
1. the need for a precise, operational definition of 'stakeholder'
2. ambiguous goals for the use of stakeholders
3. the lack of a canon of replicable methods
4. ambivalence toward the quantification of stakeholder results

Other interesting presentations were given by Richards Hobbs and Carys Swanwick. Richard spoke about the difficulties of 'integrated research' and the importance of science and policy in natural resource management. He suggested that policy-makers 'don't get' systems thinking or modelling, and that some of this may be down to the psychological profiles of the types of people that go into policy making. Such a conclusion suggests scientists need to work harder to bridge the gap to policy makers and do a better job of explaining the emergent properties of the complex systems they study. Carys Swanwick talked about the landscape character assessment, which was interesting for me having moved from the UK to the US about a year ago. Whilst 'wilderness' is an almost alien concept in the UK (and Europe as a whole), landscape character is something that is distinctly absent in the new world agricultural landscapes. Carys talked about the use of landscape character as a tool for conservation and management (in Europe) and the European Landscape Convention. It was a refreshing change from many of the other presentations about agricultural landscape (possibly just because I enjoyed seeing a few pictures of Blighty!).

Unfortunately the weather during the conference was wet which meant that I didn't get out to see as much of Madison as I would have liked. Despite the rain we did go on the Biking Fieldtrip. And yes, we did get soaked. It was also pretty miserable weather for the other fieldtrip to and International Crane Foundation center and the Aldo Leopold Foundation (more on that in a future blog), but interesting nevertheless.

Other highlights of the conference for me were meeting the former members of CSIS and eating dinner one night with Monica Turner. I also got to meet up with Don McKenzie and some of the other 'fire guys', and a couple of people from the Great Basin Landscape Ecology lab where I visited previously. And now I'm already looking forward to the meeting next year in Snowbird, Utah (where I enjoyed the snow this winter).

XIII World Forestry Congress 2009

The call for papers for the XIII World Forestry Congress is now open. To be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October 2009 the congress will address "the sustainable development of forests from a global and integral perspective". Authors are invited to submit papers and posters expressing new ideas and providing information on experiences, theoretical models and interesting initiatives. Papers will be published in the Congress Proceedings and on the Congress' official website.

Tackling Amazonian Rainforest Deforestation

This week's edition of Nature devotes an editorial, a special report and an interview to the subject of tropical rainforests and their deforestation. The articles highlight both the proximate causes and underlying driving forces of tropical deforestation, and the importance of human activity as an agent of change (via fire for example), in these socio-ecological systems.



The editorial considers the economics of rainforest destruction, with regards to global carbon emissions. It suggests that deforestation must be integrated into international carbon markets, to reward those countries that have been able to control the removal of forest land (such as India and Costa Rica). Appropriate accounting of tropical rainforest carbon budgets is required however, and the authors point to the importance of carbon budget modelling and the monitoring of (via satellite imagery for example) change in rainforest areas over large spatial extents. Putting an economic price on 'ecosystem services' is key to this issue, and the editorial concludes:

One of the oddly positive effects of global warming is that it has given the world the opportunity to build a more comprehensive and inclusive economic model by forcing all of us to grapple with our impact on the natural environment. We are entering a phase in which new ideas can be developed, tested, refined and rejected as necessary. If we find just one that can beat the conventional economic measure of gross domestic product, and can quantify some of the basic services provided by rainforests and other natural ecosystems, it will more than pay for itself.

The special report focuses on the efforts of the Brazilian government to curb the rate of deforestation in the their Amazonian forests. The Brazilian police force is blockading roads, conducting aerial surveys and inspecting agricultural and logging operations, to monitor human activities on the ground. Brazilian scientists meanwhile are monitoring the situation from space, and have developed methodologies and techniques that are leading the way globally in the remote monitoring of forests. The Brazilian government is a keen advocate of the sort of economic approaches to the issues of rainforest destruction highlighted in the editorial outlined above, and sees this rigorous monitoring as key to be able to show how much carbon they can save by preventing deforestation.

Halting the removal of forest cannot simply be left to carbon trading alone, however, and local initiatives need to be pursued. To ensure the forest's existence is sustainable, local communities need to be able make money for themselves without chopping down the trees - if they can do this it will be their in their interests NOT to remove forest. But developing this incentive has not been straightforward. For example, some researchers have have suggested that as commodity prices for crops such as soya beans have increased (possibly due to increased demand for corn-based ethanol in the US) deforestation has increased as a result. Although the price of soya beans may be a contributing factor to rainforest removal, Ruth DeFries (who will be visiting CSIS and MSU next week as part of the Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture Series) suggests that it is not the main driver. Morton et al. found that during for the period 2001-04, conversion of forest to agriculture peaked in 2003. This situation makes it clear that there are both proximate causes and underlying driving forces of tropical deforestation. The Nature special report suggests:

If the international community is serious about tackling deforestation, it will probably need to use a hybrid approach: helping national governments such as Brazil to fund traditional policies for enforcement and monitoring and enabling communities to experiment with a market-based approach.

But how long do policy-makers have to discuss this and get these measures in place? One set of research suggests 55% of the Amazon rainforest could be removed over the next two decades, and the complexity of the rainforest system means that a 'tipping point' (i.e., an abrupt transition) beyond which the system might not recover (i.e., reforestation would not be possible). The Nature interview with Carlos Nobre highlights this issue - the interactions of climate change with soil moisture and the potential for fire indicate that the there is risk of rapid 'savannization' in the eastern to southeastern Amazon as the regional climate changes. When asked what the next big question scientists need to address in the Amazon is, Nobre replies that the role of human-caused fire will be key:

Fire is such a radical transformation in a tropical forest ecosystem that biodiversity loss is accelerated tremendously — by orders of magnitude. If you just do selective logging and let the area recover naturally, perhaps in 20–30 years only a botanist will be able to tell that a forest has been logged. If you have a sequence of vegetation fires going through that area, forget it. It won’t recover any more.

As I've previously discussed, considering the feedbacks and interactions between systems is important when examining landscape vulnerabilities to fire. Along with colleagues I have examined the potential effects of changing human activity on wildfire regimes in Spain (recently we had this paper published in Ecosystems and you can see more wildfire work here). However, the integrated study of socio-economic and ecological systems is still very much in its infancy. And the processes of landscape change in the northern Mediterranean Basin and the Amazonian rainforest are very different; practically inverse (increases in forest in the former and decreases in the latter). As always, plenty more work needs to be done on these subjects, and with the potential presence of 'tipping points', now is an important time to be doing it.

IALE-IUFRO WG Website

A while back the 'new' IALE-IUFRO Working Group website launched, so I thought I'd highlight it here. During the IALE World Congress 2007 in Wageningen, a new IALE-IUFRO working group was approved and sanctioned by both IALE (International Association of Landscape Ecology) and IUFRO (International Union of Forestry Research Organizations):

Forestry was the first major field to recognize the importance of landscape ecology, and today foresters widely know, use, and even develop landscape ecology principles based on experience and science. Landscape ecology is an exciting field for researchers and managers together. In this sense, landscape ecology is viewed as the nexus of ecology, resource management, and land use planning. It is within this framework of synergy and integration that we envisaged this formal link between the two groups.

Thus, the IALE-IUFRO WG aims to collate landscape ecologists with an interest in forest science and ecology including studies and methods for monitoring, planning, designing, and managing forest ecosystems and landscapes. Through the website, members of IALE-IUFRO WG will be able to exchange experiences and share common needs and interests to build up on the strength of the network. This group can serve as an international platform for advocating and updating research and management on forest landscapes.

Global Land Project

The Global Land Project is a proposed joint research project for land systems for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP). It plans to build upon previous work and the research network developed during the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) and Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) projects. The GLP website states:

The Global Land Project Science Plan represents the research framework for the coming decade for land systems. This development of a research strategy is designed to better integrate the understanding of the coupled human-environment system. These integrated science perspectives reflect the recognition of the fundamental nature of how human activities on land are affecting feedbacks to the earth system and the response of the human-environment system to global change.

The GLP will evidently be an important component of CHANS research in the coming years. Of the three research 'Nodal Offices' around the world, one is located in Aberdeen, Scotland and will be essentially run by the folks at the Macaulay Institute. They have several workshop coming up in 2008, the titles which seem to suggest discussion of the sort of work that I often insist on espousing on this blog. In late February 2008 Workshop 1. will examine The design of integrative models of natural and social systems in land change science, and 2 later in the year Workshop will discuss Data and model integration for coupled models of land use change. As I write it looks like those interested in such matters can still apply to attend. Future workshops will examine:

• Integration of the economic and spatial modelling of land use change


• Representation of land systems in the modelling of ecosystem services


• Economic, social and environmental valuation of land use systems

Also on the GLP website are a series of webcasts from previous workshops for all those that missed out on attending (like me). There are some pretty interesting presentation on there, and in a couple of days I think I'll post about the recent Advances in Land Models as presented by Tom Veldkamp.

Sustainability Science: An Emerging Interdisciplinary Frontier

Sustainability. Integration. Interdisciplinary. These are the three words that stood out from Prof William C. Clark's Rachel Carson Distinguished Lecture at MSU on Thursday and reflect the research we do at the the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.

Prof Clark discussed the recent emergence of 'Sustainability Science' as a field that is use-inspired (like health science or agricultural science), that is defined by the practical problems it addresses, that is focused on the scientific understanding of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS), and that integrates knowledge and research from multiple disciplines.

The definition of 'sustainability' has always been a tricky one - in part Clark suggested because it is a concept that is as broad as concepts such as 'freedom', 'good' and 'bad'. What sustainability means depends on who is using the word and the context of the problem in which it is being used. Because sustainability science is use-inspired, what is to be sustained is defined by the the problem or issue being addressed. In one situation the objective might be examine how best to sustain a community's cultural and social well-being, in another it might be the continuation of the life-supporting functions of an ecosystem, and in yet another it might the continued growth of the economy and the material well-being that affords. An idealist might argue that the objective should be to sustain all three examples, but in reality priorities will often need to be drawn up.

Clark used Stoke's (1997) presentation of the four quadrants of the reasons to undertake research, highlighting that sustainability science falls into Pasteur's Quadrant. Research in sustainability science is driven by both a quest for fundamental understanding and the consideration of the use to which the research will be put in the real world. Research with the goal of the former alone might be termed 'Basic Research' (e.g. physics - Bohr's Quadrant), whereas the latter might be termed 'Applied Research' (e.g. engineering - Edison's Quadrant). Through time, research in Pasteur's Quadrant often results in a dialogue between the basic and the applied sciences, as demonstrated below.


The characterisation of sustainability science highlights that the domain of sustainability science is geo-historical. Place and history are important in defining both the problem to be examined and the solutions we might suggest. Prof Clark highlighted this, noting that a good knowledge of the environmental history of the location under study is important, and that such a history can be used in some ways as a laboratory provides data. But equally we need to remember that this history can be framed or contextualised itself - the narrative of an environmental history is unlikely to provide data that is as 'objective' as would be produced in a biology lab say.

Furthermore, the nature of geo-historical systems highlights the problems associated with a science that tries to be both applied and basic. How do we take use the knowledge gained from a given study to inform wider policy and decision making? Critics can argue that 'it only happens in this particular place', whereas advocates can argue that 'it happens like this everywhere'. A balance between these stances will need to be struck. Multiple examples of processes, treatments, and outcomes in different places might be one way to approach this balance. Given that real-world systems are context-dependent, and that the problems sustainability science will study are value-laden, a certain level of subjectivity probably isn't such a big deal anyway. The development of nomothetic generalizations in the same vein as the hard sciences may not be possible. However this situation, which implies uncertainty, will need to be acknowledged and understood by decision-makers.

Clark also discussed the 'lessons for designing university-based knowledge systems for sustainability'. An article in the current issue of Futures highlights the issues faced by university departments and researchers wishing to perform sustainability science:

"The art of problem-based interdisciplinarity lies in the choice of problems that will be both academically and socially fruitful. Too heavy emphasis on the former leads to research that may successfully address problems within a particular field of study and make a contribution to the literature but that are of limited value or interest beyond the academy. Too much emphasis on the latter leads to work that is indistinguishable from consulting or pure advocacy work. Being problem-driven means starting from a problem or concern in society, but, in order to create the hybrid activity described above, this problem must be translated into a form that is amenable to issue-driven interdisciplinary research. Such translation is an indispensable prerequisite to obtaining funding from academic funding agencies and buy-in from academic collaborators, who have to be able to undertake research that will lead to publications in the outlets in which they need to publish in order to further their career prospects."

To develop successfully Prof Clark suggested that the academy will need to maintain and engage strength in the foundation disciplines, support focused programs of 'use-inspired basic research' on core questions of sustainability science, build collaborative problem-solving programs, and create recognition and reward systems for those who develop and participate in such programs. The 'publish or perish' mantra also demands that there be suitable outlets for sustainability science research - the creation of the Sustainability Science section in PNAS is an indication that the importance, and uniqueness, of this emerging interdisciplinary field of study is becoming increasingly recognised.

There was so much more said and discussed during Prof Clark's visit to MSU but that's enough here for now. A copy of the powerpoint presentation used during the lecture can be downloaded from the CSIS website.

Staying Together... for the Sake of the Environment?

I may be a little behind the times but I have finally begun to digg stuff. From now on if I digg something that I really like or think it is relevant to what I talk about on this blog I'll post it directly from digg. Given the media interest in the most recent paper to come out of CSIS it seems appropriate that this be the first blog from digg:

"A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household," said Jianguo Liu, a sustainability expert with Michigan State University. He and fellow researcher Eunice Yu concluded that in 2005, in the United States alone, divorced households could have saved 38 million rooms, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water if their "resource-use efficiency" had been comparable to that of married households. Liu's analysis of the environmental impact of divorce appears in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Besides the United States, Liu looked at 11 other countries, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002. In the 11, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been a million fewer households using energy and water in these countries. "People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered," Liu said.

read more | digg story

An Integrated Fire Research Framework

Integrated, multi- and inter-disciplinary studies are becoming increasingly demanded and required to understand the consequences of human activity on the natural environment. In a recent paper, Sandra Lavorel and colleagues highlight the importance of considering the feedbacks and interactions between several systems when examining landscape vulnerabilities to fire. They present a framework for integrated fire research that considers the fire regime as the central subsystem (FR in the figure below) and two feedback loops, the first with consequences for atmospheric and biochemical systems (F1) and the second that represents ecosystems services and human activity (F2). It is this second feedback loop in their framework that my research focuses.


To adequately quantify the fire-related vulnerability of different regions of the world the authors suggest that a better understanding of the relative contributions of climate, vegetation and human activity to the fire regime is required. For example, they suggest that an examination of the statistical relationships between spatio-temporal patterns evident in wildfire regimes and data on ecosystem structure, land use and other socio-economic factors. We made a very similar point in our PNAS paper and hope to continue to use the exponent (Beta) of the power-law frequency-area relationship that is evident in many model and empirical wildfire regimes to examine these interactions. One statistical relationship that might be investigated is between Beta and the level of forest fragmentations, thought to be a factor confounding research on the effects of fire suppression of wildfire regimes.

But the effects of landscape fragmentation can also be examined in a more mechanistic fashion using dynamic simulation models. Lavorel et al. mention the impacts of agricultural abandonment on the connectivity of fuels in Mediterranean landscapes which are attributed, in conjunction with a drier than average climate, to the exceptionally large fires that burned there during the 1990s. My PhD research examined the impacts of agricultural land abandonment on wildfire regimes in central Spain. I'm currently working on writing this work up for publication, but I plan on continuing to develop the model to more explicitly represent the F2 feedbacks loop shown in the figure above.

The potential socio-economic consequences of changing fire regimes are an area with a lot of room to improve our understanding. For example, some regions of the world, such as the Canadian boreal forest, are transitioning from a net sink for carbon to a net source (due to emission during burning). If carbon sinks are considered in future emission trading systems, regions such as are losing a potential future economic commodity. Lavorel et al. also discuss the interesting subject of potential land conflict due to mismatches in the time scales between land planning and fire occurrence. In Indonesia for example, years which burn large areas force re-allocation of land development plans by local government. Often however the processes of developing these plans is not fast enough to forestall the exploitation by local residents of the new land available for occupation and use.

The need for increased research in this area is highlighted by the case studies for Alaskan and African savannah ecosystems presented by Lavorel et al. Whilst discussion of the wildfire regime and atmospheric/biochemical feedbacks can be discussed in detail, poor understanding of the ecosystem services/human activity feedbacks prevents such detailed discussion.

The framework Lavorel et al. present is a very useful way to conceptualise and plan for future research in this field. They suggest (p.47-48) that "Assessments of vulnerability of land systems to fire demand regional studies that use a systemic approach that focuses on the feedback loops described here" and "... will require engaging a collection of multiscale and interdisciplinary regional studies". In many respects, I expect my future work to contribute to this framework, particularly with regards the human activity (F2) feedback loop.

alan greenspan on the future

I just listened to an interview with Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, on BBC Radio Four (available to listen again online here). I just want to point out some quotes that interested me, the first regarding societal decisions that seem to echo some of Jared Diamond's writing, and the second regarding our (in)ability to predict the future...

"I think fundamentally societies have to make choices as to whether they want more material well being or more tranquillity. Regrettably I think we cannot have both. ... That's what I believe the evidence very conclusively indicates."

"All you can basically know is whether probabilities are increasing or decreasing. We have no capability of looking into to the future and knowing for certain that certain things are going to happen."

CHANS and the Risks of Modelling

In their recent review of Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS), Liu et al highlight several facets of the integrated study of these systems;

• Reciprocal Effects and Feedback Loops
  
• Nonlinearity and Thresholds
  
• Surprises
  
• Legacy Effects and Time Lags
  
• Resilience
  

Whilst the emphasis of the paper is on the emergence of complex patterns and processes not evident when human and natural systems are studied independently by social or natural scientists, for me the issue that should be highlighted is the importance of surprises and legacy effects when studying these systems. This goes back to what I have written before about the open, middle-numbered nature of these systems. In these systems history matters and events that occur outside the bounds of the system being studied can have an influence on system dynamics.

With this in mind, when I was recently asked where the risks lie in ecological-economic modelling (modelling that specifically considers the interactions of ecological and economic systems) I suggested we might consider three areas of risk:

1. The production of a integrated model that is not accepted or valued by those we hope it would (whether that be other scientists, decision-makers or members of the society we are modelling). For example, the nature of producing a model that lies somewhere between ecology and economics and/or between science and management has the potential to be accepted by neither party in these dichotomies (as it is not perceived by others to be ‘real ecology’ or ‘real science’ for example). However, this can be avoided by ensuring continued collaboration between economists and ecologists, and between scientists and managers, throughout the modelling process to ensure understanding or model structure.
   


2. The production of a model that is not fully integrated but is rather an ecological model used to examine various economic scenarios. In this case, the study remains integrated (examining the interactions between economic and ecological systems) but the model is not (as feedbacks back from the ecological systems into the economic system, for example in terms of prices and costs, are not fully accounted for). Alternatively, if the modelling process is understood to be iterative, then this initial reduced version of the model may simply be a single step in the complete ecological-economic modeling process.
   


3. Because of legacy effects, surprises etc, a misplaced confidence in what the model can accurately predict may arise. This is also related to the question of the limited capacity to validate models of complex ecological systems given limited empirical data. Again, this may be prevented by continued collaboration between scientist and manager to ensure the structure and limitations of a model are understood, and if a range of model results are predicted for different scenarios (in order to demonstrate the variability in potential outcomes).
   

The study of CHANS will become increasingly important in the future. But if political decisions are to be made based on the outcome of the knowledge gained, the risks present in the study (and specifically the modelling) of these systems must be minimized and accounted for.

CHANS Science Paper

In this week's issue of Science Jack Liu, Director of CSIS (and my boss), and colleagues present a review of recent research on Coupled Human And Natural Systems (CHANS). Using six case studies from around the world the paper discusses these coupled systems with regards spatial, temporal and organisational units, nonlinear dynamics and feedback loops between systems, the importance of history within these sytems, and aspects of their resilience and heterogeneity. We'll be discussing the paper within the center next week so maybe I'll have some more insightful comments then. For now, here's the abstract:

Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural systems vary across space, time, and organizational units. They also exhibit nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, and surprises. Furthermore, past couplings have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities.

Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Jianguo Liu , Thomas Dietz, Stephen R. Carpenter, Marina Alberti, Carl Folke, Emilio Moran, Alice N. Pell, Peter Deadman, Timothy Kratz, Jane Lubchenco, Elinor Ostrom, Zhiyun Ouyang, William Provencher, Charles L. Redman, Stephen H. Schneider, William W. Taylor
Science 14 September 2007
Vol. 317. no. 5844, pp. 1513 - 1516
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144004
Also online here`

The Tyranny of Power?

The past week or two I've been wrestling with the data we have on white-tailed deer density and vegetation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in an attempt to find some solid statistical relationships that we might use in our ecological-economic simulation model. However, I seem to be encountering similar issues to previous researchers, notably (as Weisberg and Bugmann put it) "the weak signal-to noise ratio that is characteristic of ungulate-vegetation systems", that "multiple factors need to be considered, if we are to develop a useful, predictive understanding of ungulate-vegetation relationships", and that "ungulate-vegetation interactions need to be better understood over multiple scales".

Hobbs suggests that one of the problems slowing species distribution research is a preoccupation with statistical power that he calls "the tyranny of power". This tyranny arises, he suggests, because traditional statistical methods that are powerful at smaller scales become less useful at larger extents. There are at least three reasons for this including,

1. small things are more amenable to study by traditional methods than large things
   
2. variability increases with scale (extent)
   
3. potential for bias increases with scale (extent)
   

"The implication of the tyranny of power is that many of the traditionally sanctioned techniques for ecological investigation are simply not appropriate at large-scales... This means that inferences at large-scales are likely to require research designs that bear little resemblance to the approaches many of us learned in graduate school." Hobbs p.230

However, this tyranny may simply be because, as Fortin and Dale point out, "most study areas contain more than one ecological process that can act at different spatial and temporal scales". That is, the processes are non-stationary in time and space. Leaving time aside for now, spatial non-stationarity has already been found to be present in our study area with regards the processes we're considering. For example, Shi and colleagues found that Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models are better at predicting white-tailed deer densities than an ordinary least-squares regression model for the entirety of our study area.

Hobbs' argument suggests that it's often useful analyse ecological data from large regions by partitioning them into smaller, more spatially homogenous areas. The idea is that these smaller patches are more likely to be governed by the same ecological process. But how should these smaller regions be selected? A commonly used geographical division is the ecoregion. Ecoregions divide land into areas of similar characteristics such as climate, soils, vegetation and topography. For our study area we've found that relationships between deer densities and predictor variables do indeed vary by Albert's ecoregions. But we think that there might be more useful ways to divide our study area that take into account variables that are commonly believed to strongly influence spatial deer distributions. In Michigan's UP the prime example is the large snow fall is received each winter and which hinders deer movement and foraging.

We're beginning to examine how GWR and spatial boundary analysis might be used to delineate these areas (at different scales) in the hope of refining our understanding about the interaction of deer and vegetation across our large (400,000 ha) landscape. In turn we should be able to better quantify some of these relationships for use in our model.

The Role for Landscape Ecology in Poverty Relief

In the latest issue of Landscape Ecology, Louis Iverson suggests landscape ecologists have a role in poverty relief. Reviewing Sachs' The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time, Iverson believes the book 'should motivate additional research and implementation of principles within landscape ecology into this critical arena' and argues that landscape ecologists'can provide expertise to efficiently use funds to the greatest value and to research sustainable, integrated pathways to development'. After discussing several aspects of the current state of the global poverty problem (poverty statistics, water scarcity, Millennium Development Goals, environmental constraints on development), Iverson suggests landscape ecologists can contribute to these issues by;

1. Modelling the impacts and possible mitigation of climate change on water and agricultural production, especially in the most vulnerable zones with high levels of extreme poverty
   
2. Creating innovative, landscape-level systems for efficient water use, agricultural production, and infrastructure in the zones of extreme poverty
   
3. Working towards sustainable management of ecosystems, especially fragile ecosystems, that are deteriorating due to human pressures
   
4. Assisting in planning for urban growth that also sustains agriculture productivity using appropriate water, soil, and food management systems
   
5. Building models of low-cost but sustainable means of protection against natural or technological disasters, especially storms, floods, and droughts (climate-related disasters)
   
6. Designing infrastructure and energy improvements in developing countries with maximum positive human impact and minimum negative environmental impact
   
7. Working to better understand the diseases of the poor and spatial and temporal relationships of these diseases
   
8. Working to understand how over-consumption and excessive wealth contributes to environmental degradation and poverty elsewhere in the global landscape, and propose/model remedial solutions
   
9. Developing partnerships with ecologists, economists, landscape architects, wildlife managers, and land managers in developing countries that make a difference
   
10. Seeking out students from poor countries who can provide direct linkages to projects back in their home countries
    
11. Assisting in land-use and urban planning efforts where practical and feasible, focusing on improving conditions for slum dwellers
    
12. Working to help influence decision-makers to realize that investments toward the goals outlined above are well spent and the right thing to do
    

More inspiration, if it were needed, to continue this field of research...

infidelity offsetting

This is Genius. Nice one boys.

The Wilderness Ideal

One evening whilst sitting on a deck overlooking a tranquil lake in the wilds of the UP's northern hardwood forests, I began reading William Cronon's contributions to the volume he edited himself; Uncommon Ground. The book has been around for a decade and more but it is only recently that I came across a copy in a secondhand book store. It seems apt that I considered what it had to say about the 'social construction' of nature in a setting of the type that has long intrigued me. Maybe the view of a landscape which confronted me is another of the reasons I am doing what I am right now. I have had pictures of these large wilderness landscapes on the walls of my mind, and elsewhere, for a while.