Aldo Leopold’s Land Health from a Resilience Point of View: Self-renewal Capacity of Social–Ecological Systems

Health approaches to ecology have a strong basis in Aldo Leopold’s thinking, and contemporary ecohealth in turn has a strong philosophical basis in Leopold. To commemorate the 125th anniversary of Leopold’s birth (1887–1948), we revisit his ideas, specifically the notions of stewardship (land ethic), productive use of ecosystems (land), and ecosystem renewal. We focus on Leopold’s perspective on the self-renewal capacity of the land, as understood in terms of integrity and land health, from the contemporary perspective of resilience theory and ecological theory more generally. Using a broad range of literature, we explore insights and implications of Leopold’s work for today’s human–environment relationships (integrated social–ecological systems), concerns for biodiversity, the development of agency with respect to stewardship, and key challenges of his time and of ours. Leopold’s seminal concept of land health can be seen as a triangulation of productive use, self-renewal, and stewardship, and it can be reinterpreted through the resilience lens as the health of social–ecological systems. In contemporary language, this involves the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the ability to exercise agency both for conservation and for environmental justice.     

基于社会总体偏差和同伴效应修正的海洋生态修复偏好研究

公众参与海洋生态修复对我国海洋环境保护与生态安全具有重要意义。利用单边界二分式引导技术评估青岛市居民海洋生态修复偏好,并从内疚和抵抗心理两方面就社会总体偏差与同伴效应对修复偏好的影响机理进行分析,为政府激发公众参与海洋生态修复的积极性提供理论依据与技术指导。结果表明:①青岛市居民平均每年愿意为海洋生态修复捐赠184.386元,考虑属性重要程度结果表明生物数量的改善可显著提高公众海洋生态修复支付意愿,而公众对改善海水水质和海岸环境并未表现出显著差异性偏好。②社会总体偏差和同伴效应均对公众海洋生态修复支付意愿表现出显著正向影响。③社会总体偏差和同伴效应可通过激发受访者的内疚感提高生态修复支付意愿,但也会导致抵抗心理抑制参与积极性;主观规范正向调节社会总体偏差和同伴效应对支付意愿的影响。研究揭示了公众在海洋生态修复中的偏好和竞争性心理对陈述偏好的影响,可为促进公众参与海洋生态修复和提高海洋环境资源价值评估准确性提供参考。     

Intelligent Tinkering in Ecological Restoration

Restoration practitioners adopt a multiplicity of approaches that range from basic trial and error, and site‐specific efforts, to complex experimental designs that test cutting edge theoretical hypotheses. We classify these different strategies to understand how restoration is planned and executed, and to contribute to the discussion on certification and evaluation. We use Aldo Leopold's notion of “intelligent tinkering” as a basis for a typology of four different approaches to restoration based on four parameters: motivation, general strategy, method of inquiry, and temporal and spatial scales of the expected outcomes. We argue that efforts to restore a damaged ecosystem in a skilled and experimental manner should be called “professional intelligent tinkering” versus “amateur intelligent tinkering,” and “careless tinkering.” We compare these three types of tinkering, and a more formal “scientific approach.” In professional intelligent tinkering, interventions and adjustments are done in a logical and careful manner, and with a methodical, experimental mindset. In contrast to the scientific approach, intelligent tinkering does not necessarily follow a formal experimental procedure, with replications and controls that allow extrapolation, nor is it driven by the motivation to publish in peer‐reviewed journals. Rather, it is primarily driven by a desire to solve site‐specific problems even in the absence of sufficient ecological knowledge to apply previously tested knowledge and techniques. We illustrate three approaches with three on‐going restoration projects in southeastern Brazil, two of which are small scale, and one of which is very large scale.     

The Substance View: A Critique (Part 2)

In my initial critique of the substance view, I raised reductio‐style objections to the substance view's conclusion that the standard human fetus has the same intrinsic value and moral standing as the standard adult human being, among others. In this follow‐up critique, I raise objections to some of the premises invoked in support of this conclusion. I begin by briefly presenting the substance view as well as its defense. (For a more thorough presentation, see the first part of my critique.) I then raise objections to three claims involved in the substance view's defense: the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its potentiality; the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its essential properties; and the claim that it is the possession of the basic potential for rational moral agency that best accounts for the wrongness of killing the standard human fetus, among others.     

Shifting Boundaries on a Wisconsin Landscape: Can GIS Help Historians Tell a Complicated Story?

This paper considers the promise that geographic information systems (GIS) hold for addressing complex historical questions. Using my experience as an environmental historian who has used GIS in a case study of the Kickapoo Valley in Wisconsin, I examine social and ecological processes of rural transformation during the twentieth century, and how these processes have shaped modern property rights debates. The multiscale range of GIS brings out the crucial issue of scale in the Kickapoo Valley's environmental history. Spatial analysis offers an important picture of landscape dynamics and land ownership in the Valley since the 1930s. Together with historical methods, GIS maps help explore the ways in which residents have constructed their own stories about property and the environment. These cultural narratives include the economic inevitability of land concentration and fragmentation, ethnic differences in land use, local places vs. the federal government, and local communities vs. newer outsiders. Results from the GIS illustrate my argument that change on the ground over many decades—rather than any inherent ideological resistance to federal policies—might better explain contemporary debates over private and public property. Finally, I use this research to outline the dilemmas faced by scholars in the humanities and social sciences who want to incorporate GIS into their own interdisciplinary studies.     

Reconstructing minimal length tree branch systems from leaf positions

We present a method to infer a straight-lines tree branch system from a given set of leaf positions and average branching angles. Among an extensive set of possible branch systems constructed in the process, we choose the one featuring the shortest total length, following an optimality hypothesis by Leopold (1971). The approach is illustrated using empirical low-order skeletons from European beech. Our method further allows to assess, for a given species or individual tree, to what extent its branching pattern accords to Leopold's hypothesis, which we argue to be the case for beech. While yet facing issues of computational intensity for too many leaves, the method can furthermore be used to complement existing tree structure reconstruction methods that otherwise require a rudimentary skeleton as manual input.     

Ecological restoration should be redefined for the twenty‐first century

Forty years ago, ecological restoration was conceptualized through a natural science lens. Today, ecological restoration has evolved into a social and scientific concept. The duality of ecological restoration is acknowledged in guidance documents on the subject but is not apparent in its definition. Current definitions reflect our views about what ecological restoration does but not why we do it. This viewpoint does not give appropriate credit to contributions from social sciences, nor does it provide compelling goals for people with different motivating rationales to engage in or support restoration. In this study, I give a concise history of the conceptualization and definition of ecological restoration, and I propose an alternative definition and corresponding viewpoint on restoration goal‐setting to meet twenty‐first century scientific and public inquiry.     

High‐severity fire corroborated in historical dry forests of the western United States: response to Fulé et al.

Accurate assessment of changing fire regimes is important, since climatic change and people may be promoting more wildfires. Government wildland fire policies and restoration programmes in dry western US forests are based on the hypothesis that high‐severity fire was rare in historical fire regimes, modern fire severity is unnaturally high and restoration efforts should focus primarily on thinning forests to eliminate high‐severity fire. Using General Land Office (GLO) survey data over large dry‐forest landscapes, we showed that the proportion of historical forest affected by high‐severity fire was not insignificant, fire severity has not increased as a proportion of total fire area and large areas of dense forest were present historically (Williams & Baker, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 21 , 1042–1052, 2012; W&B). In response, Fulé et al. (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2013, doi: 10.1111/geb.12136; FE) suggest that our inferences are unsupported and land management based on our research could be damaging to native ecosystems. Here, we show that the concerns of FE are unfounded. Their criticism comes from misquoting W&B, mistaking W&B's methods, misusing evidence (e.g. from Aldo Leopold) and missing substantial available evidence. We also update corroboration for the extensive historical high‐severity fire shown by W&B. We suggest that restoration programmes are misdirected in seeking to reduce all high‐severity fire in dry forests, given findings from spatially extensive GLO data and other sources.     

生态恢复评价研究进展与展望： 第5届国际生态恢复学会大会会议述评

第5届国际生态恢复学会大会于2013年10月6—11日在美国威斯康星州麦迪逊召开.来自50多个国家的约1200位代表参加了本次大会,讨论了生态恢复不同领域的最新进展.会议中关于生态恢复评价的探讨主要从生态恢复评价指标体系的建立、生态恢复的评价方法、生态恢复监测与动态评价三方面展开.会议强调了生态恢复评价在生态恢复过程中的重要地位,关注了生态恢复评价研究中面临的挑战.对我国生态恢复评价研究主要有以下启示： 1)加强构建全面、综合的评价指标体系,注重评价过程的多方参与;2)注重生态恢复评价的尺度效应与尺度转换研究;3)拓展3S技术在生态恢复评价中的应用,促进生态恢复动态监测的发展;4)积极开展国际交流合作,提升我国生态恢复研究的国际影响力.
     

"Craziness" and "visions": experiences after a stroke.

For a stroke victim there may be at least three types of strange occurrences: incorrect saying, seeing, and thinking. To the patient only the third seems to be "crazy". After a stroke (left hemisphere), which mainly produced serious aphasia, I (the patient) felt crazy two or three times when someone said something I expected him to say. On the other hand, my initial aphasic "gibberish speech" and an occasional false vision did not seem crazy. In my case the vision is always a car or a child, seen on my extreme right, where I am otherwise blind from the stroke. I am always driving when it happens; in recent years this phenomenon occurs when I am tired or tense, or the light is poor. These rapid visions do not seem insane but merely physical problems in my eyes, much like ordinary people''s dreams.     

STANDARD CIRCUMSTANCES AND VITAL GOALS: COMMENTS ON VENKATAPURAM'S CRITIQUE

This article is a reply to Venkatapuram's critique in his article Health, Vital Goals, Capabilities, this volume. I take issue mainly with three critical points put forward by Venkatapuram with regard to my theory of health. (1) I deny that the contents of my vital goals are relative to each community or context, as Venkatapuram claims. There is no conceptual connection at all between standard circumstances and vital goals, as I understand these concepts. (2) Venkatapuram notes that I stop short of filling the framework of vital goals with any content and thereby make my concept of health less concrete. I reply that some vital goals are indeed universal, viz. the ones which are necessary conditions for survival. Many other vital goals are individual and cannot therefore be included in a universal list. (3) Venkatapuram claims that my definition of vital goals is too broad, since it entails that some persons without any disease can be regarded as ill. However, in my understanding health is a relational concept from a state of complete health to a state of maximal illness. In this framework, a minor reduction of a state of complete health does not entail illness. This article also contains a comparison between my theory of health and Martha Nussbaum's theory of capabilities for dignity.     

THE SUBSTANCE VIEW: A CRITIQUE

According to the theory of intrinsic value and moral standing called the ‘substance view,’ what makes it prima facie seriously wrong to kill adult human beings, human infants, and even human fetuses is the possession of the essential property of the basic capacity for rational moral agency – a capacity for rational moral agency in root form and thereby not remotely exercisable. In this critique, I cover three distinct reductio charges directed at the substance view's conclusion that human fetuses have the same intrinsic value and moral standing as adult human beings. After giving consideration to defenders of the substance view's replies to these charges, I then critique each of them, ultimately concluding that none is successful. Of course, in order to understand all of these things – the reductio charges, defenders of the substance view's replies to them, and my criticisms of their replies – one must have a better understanding of the substance view (in particular, its understanding of rational moral agency) as well as its defense. Accordingly, I address the substance view's understanding of rational moral agency as well as present its defense.     

Reflections on Grant Evans’ The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975

In this article I reflect on Grant Evans’ landmark and influential The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975, the way in which this book relates to the transformation from socialism to post‐socialism in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), to the crisis of legitimacy of the communist regime, and to issues of social memory, Buddhism, nationalism, iconography, and ethnic minorities. I also consider how other scholars have engaged with The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance both critically and supportively since the publication of the monograph in 1998 . I include in my analysis some observations on Evans’ quite radical change in political views over his career as a student, journalist and academic, culminating in his critique of socialism in general and the LPDR in particular and his controversial sympathy for the Lao monarchy.     

Differences in stakeholder perceptions about native forest: implications for developing a restoration program

Ecological restoration is a global priority. Incorporating stakeholders' perceptions has been established as a critical factor to improve the success of restoration and conservation initiatives and decrease future social conflicts; however, it has barely been incorporated. Our objective was to analyze and compare the differences in the perceptions of Chilean dryland forest restoration of three groups: local community, experts, and government managers. We asked about: (1) what is the knowledge, importance, and uses that they have and give to the native forest and its restoration? (2) What is the willingness to restore the native forest? (3) What are the most valuable goods and services provided by the forest? (4) Where to begin to restore? (5) What criteria must be considered to prioritize areas to restore? To determine if the criteria selected were related to the stakeholder group, a semi‐parametric multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed. Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with 61 stakeholders. The community gave greater importance to restoring the ravines and creeks, the experts to restoring areas that increase landscape connectivity, and both experts and government managers to restoring areas of greater biodiversity and ecological value. The experts gave a lower value to both social and economic criteria compared to the local community and government managers. The differences among stakeholder perceptions must necessarily be considered in the restoration programs. Research on perceptions can contribute to decision‐making and will favor the social approval and long‐term success of restoration programs.     

The Fox River Risk Assessment Teaching Tool

In 1999 and 2000, two environmental consulting companies independently prepared risk assessments of the Lower Fox River waste site in Wisconsin. Because the two assessments produced somewhat different risk characterizations, the Association for Environmental Health & Sciences was asked by the site's Potentially Responsible Party to form a peer review panel to critique and compare the two assessments. The panel found interesting differences between the two risk assessments and recommended that their observations, together with the two risk assessments, be made available as a Teaching Tool for persons interested in conducting human and ecological risk assessments. An accompanying CD contains these and other materials useful for teaching purposes.     

Ecological succession,patch age and the evolution of social behaviour and terminal investment

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in understanding the evolution of social behaviour in heterogeneous spatially structured populations. These studies, however, have neglected the impact of extinction–colonisation dynamics and ecological succession on the dynamical expression of social behaviour over time. Here, I present a kin‐selection model in which patches are structured into age‐classes. I show that ecological succession and patch age lead to highly plastic social phenotypes that vary dramatically as societies age since their initial establishment until their ultimate collapse. I find that the mode of colonisation following dispersal strongly influences the patch age‐dependent trajectories of social phenotypes. When patches are colonised by a random collection of immigrants, aggression is favoured during the build‐up of a society, but it slowly subsides until it eventually gives place to cooperation throughout the later stages of a society's lifespan. When newly established societies are formed by collectives of close relatives, cooperation is favoured during the build‐up of the society as well as when the society nears its eventual collapse. At intermediate societal ages, the genetic structure of the society is sufficiently resilient to the influx of immigrants such that cooperation remains relatively high. Moreover, I report a novel form of social terminal investment, whereby cooperative effort rises when patches approach their collapse. When dispersal is allowed to co‐evolve with cooperation, we observe a sudden rise in dispersal phenotypes before a patch's collapse, and the surprising result that clonal colonisation does not yield significantly higher levels of cooperation than the individual mode of colonisation. More generally, my results show that ecological succession strongly determines the dynamics of kin selection after colonisation, and therefore I expect that these findings will be valuable for understanding behavioural syndromes during range expansion or biological invasions.     

Celebrating and Advocating the Personalisation of the World: A Reply to Don Gardner

In replying to a critique of my book Transcendent Individual: Towards a Literary and Liberal Anthropology (TAJA 2000, 11(1):59–77), I argue in this piece that a genuinely nuanced appreciation of the tension between the culturo‐symbolic forms of social life on the one hand and, on the other, the individual energies which animate the forms and afford them purpose and content, means more than merely paying lip service (á la Giddens or Bourdieu) to a notion of agency. The individual can be seen to be more than a conduit by which impersonal social structures reproduce in time. Indeed, it is the ‘personalisation of the world’—the way in which the individual makes environments personal to him or her (in terms of what they are and what they mean)—which provides social life with its logic(s), character(s) and cause(s). What is called for is an aesthetic appreciation both of the way individual consciousness works and of the way this is best represented in literary‐cum‐poetic forms. Placing the conscious individual at the centre of social theory is, however, an ethical and pedagogic matter as well as a methodological one. Celebrating the personalisation of the world is a route not only to understanding human interaction in socio‐cultural milieux but also to advocating liberal milieux where the human remains sovereign.     

The United States of the United Races: a rejoinder

I respond to a review by C. Matthew Snipp, revisiting how my book connects abolitionist leanings to acceptance of racial mixing in the Early Republic. I reiterate that, contrary to the reviewer's claims, the book does not suggest that the defence of interracial marriage has been a thriving social movement. I correct his reading of my chapter on the Civil War era, referring to both the variety of voices present, and the claims of reformers' opponents, who were the only ones who claimed racial mixing was an aim of the abolitionist movement. Lastly, I defend The United States of the United Races against Professor Snipp's characterization of it as a work anticipating a ‘post-racial’ ideal, embodied by racially mixed people, who would be the end point of the obsolescence of race as a relevant analytic tool.