{"id":570384,"date":"2010-05-19T13:32:21","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T17:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dirt.asla.org\/?p=4570"},"modified":"2010-05-19T13:32:21","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T17:32:21","slug":"designing-for-the-full-range-of-biodiversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/570384","title":{"rendered":"Designing for the Full Range of Biodiversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nKicking-off a\u00a0two-day symposium on “Designing Wildlife Habitats<\/a>” at Dumbarton\u00a0Oaks,\u00a0John Beardsley, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies<\/a> and convenor of the symposium, said landscape architecture has always had an “art camp” and an “ecology camp.” There are a few like “Frederick Law Olmstead, and, now Michael van Valkenburgh, FASLA,\u00a0and Kongjian Yu, International ASLA, who straddle the two camps.” However, the ecological principles many landscape architects are applying to their habitat restoration projects may now be “outdated, or even misconstrued.” Increasingly, designers need to be mindful\u00a0of the “full range” of biodiversity. Landscape architects, Beardsley argued, have been successful with plant diversity, but less so to date with other kinds of biodiversity.<\/p>\n

As Beardsley outlined in the symposium brief (see earlier post<\/a>), the world is now undergoing a new wave of extinctions. To preserve species, landscape architects will need to work with biologists, ecologists, and other scientists to recreate wildlife habitat. This will involve complex issues like\u00a0”sizing and spacing habitat patches and ecosystems,” productive habitat creation, and restoration ecology. There\u00a0may also be\u00a0trade-offs between preservation and restoration.<\/p>\n

Beardsley argued that culture and nature “shouldn’t be separate.” “Wildness can’t be separated from management and stewardship of the environment, or we can’t create an ethical and sustainable relationship.”\u00a0Furthermore, while\u00a0designing wildlife habitats, the science can’t be so artful that it’s no longer functional. The model must be “complex, adaptable,” and science can provide a set of parameters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lastly, “we must ask why are we recreating habitat? Can these designs be agents of broader ecological change? Are we restoring for educational reasons, or to generate ecosystem services? “Do we value diversity for its own sake?” There are a range of philosophical issues.<\/p>\n

To root the conversation in cutting-edge science on biodiversity and\u00a0ecosystems, and explore the\u00a0concept of ecosystem services<\/a>, Shaheed Naeem<\/a>, Professor of Ecology and Chair, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, provided an ecological framework. Naeem, author of a seminal book on ecosystem services<\/a>,
\nsaid “nature is structured to govern the distribution of species. Evolution governs these structures.”<\/p>\n

Biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF)<\/a> is\u00a0the framework that enable us to analyze the complex\u00a0functional\u00a0distribution of nature. Naeem said there are competing views on biodiversity function,\u00a0including (1) every species is special, (2) nature is totally chaotic so we can’t tell, and (3) we can lose some species and still maintain appropriate levels of biodiversity. Naeem implied\u00a0the idea of just discarding some species\u00a0was a bit simplistic. He used an analogy. “Imagine knowing nothing about a car, and lifting up the hood and pulling out little pieces.” The car may still function for a period of time,\u00a0but eventually\u00a0the entire “car system”\u00a0could break down. Ecosystems, in the same way, are complex machines with\u00a0 inputs and wastes, processes and food chains\u00a0that are difficult to understand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Species loss affects ecosystem function. Naeem said recent analyses demonstrate that “preserving as much biodiversity as possible” is\u00a0the best\u00a0path. To prove this, ecologists must “bring reality into the system,” and apply real world variables into their models. This involves taking managed or restored ecosystems to a higher-level of biodiversity function.<\/p>\n

Getting to a higher-level of biodiversity function means\u00a0addressing “ecological poverty.” Naeem argued that just as there are very few very rich people and many poor people, in nature, there are very few rare species and many common, poor ones. “It’s a lognormal distribution<\/a>, not a bell curve.” Relating rare species to rich people, Naeem asked: why should we\u00a0care about those very rare species if the vast majority are plentiful? “This is where the question of biodiversity lies.”<\/p>\n

Most ecosystem functions are invisible, so, it’s actually the poor, invisible, “common”\u00a0species, which\u00a0are most plentiful, that “we need to focus most of our attention on preserving.” Poor species are the ones that get out-competed. They have attributes of common species but changing conditions lead to changes in the ecosystem that adversely impact them. Naeem called for a campaign to “champion the rare, special, and poor.”<\/p>\n

Naeem argued that humans have managed landscapes for a long time.\u00a0\u00a0Even the American grassland, an iconic landscape, has borne human “mixing,” because the original grassland ecology disappeared long ago.\u00a0The American prarie is more of an “American religion” than a natural system. “Native Americans were managing it eons ago.” So, there is\u00a0a case that\u00a0nature\u00a0can\u00a0be “disassembled,” broken down into essential components. “We can remix them. Monocultures can be remixed as polycultures, creating new ecosystems that have never existed before.” However, some still\u00a0say the “soul of nature” is torn down when you start from scratch.<\/p>\n

Ecosystem services may provide\u00a0a\u00a0way forward\u00a0for\u00a0preserving\u00a0nature’s valuable and often invisible (at least to our\u00a0eyes)\u00a0biodiversity and ecosystem\u00a0functions. Nature is estimated to provide some $38 trillion in services to humans per year, but all of this is largely provided for free. Naeem asked: “What if fungi could send us a bill? What is microbes could unionize?\u00a0They are working all the time.” To\u00a0take ecosystem service from a conceptual framework into reality, a price on carbon is needed so the true value of trees, fungi, microbes,\u00a0and other natural services can be incorporated into existing\u00a0natural resource\u00a0markets.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0part one\u00a0in a three-part series on the \u201cDesigning Wildlife Habitat\u201d\u00a0symposium recently at Dumbarton\u00a0Oaks\u00a0in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Image credit: National Geographic <\/em><\/p>\n

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Kicking-off a\u00a0two-day symposium on “Designing Wildlife Habitats” at Dumbarton\u00a0Oaks,\u00a0John Beardsley, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies and convenor of the symposium, said landscape architecture has always had an “art camp” and an “ecology camp.” There are a few like “Frederick Law Olmstead, and, now Michael van Valkenburgh, FASLA,\u00a0and Kongjian Yu, International ASLA, who straddle the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7015,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}