Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 2006

Ecology is a Branch of Biology: A Note from Haldun

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Hi Jennifer,

In the academic world we speak of the “natural,” the “mathematical,” the “social,” the “engineering,” and the other sciences.

The natural sciences deal mostly with the humanly dicovered laws/rules of nature while the mathematical sciences are associated with “human” made laws/rules and their applications.

Engineering science deals mainly with how knowledge gained from the mathematical and natural sciences can be applied with judgment to devise ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of human kind (ABET 1980). Engineering science courses usually lead to engineering design in which we make use of the laws of nature and avoid their negative consequences.

Historically, the natural sciences branched first to physics, chemistry, biology. Later, biology and natural geography gave birth to ecology. Presently, at the basic level we have the natural sciences branching into physics, chemistry, biology and ecology with all their known sub-branches.

Ecology, very briefly, is the natural science that treats the relationships of the living (biota) among themselves and among the non-biotic environment.

Thanks to pioneers like Eugene Odum, Edward Kormondy, and Fikret Berkes we can use the “system” approach to study and quantify ecosystems, especially in terms of energy requirements.

Thanks to discoveries in genetics and the evolutionary processes alonside with the latest findings in ecology, we can predict natural human behavioral patterns as well as future requirements.

We can also predict environmental damage although it is a relatively slow process.

In contemporary ecology humans are classified as within the top “omnivore” subclass of the consumer class of biota (producer>consumer>decomposer). Human ecology should be the subject belonging to the natural sciences under the division of ecology.

The fact that human habitats are mainly outside the natural forest areas does not mean that the laws of the jungles do not apply within the cities.

Finally, a clear distinction should be made between ecology and enviromental sciences. The former, as discussed above, is a natural science while the latter is very close to an engineering science.

Haldun.

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This is an edited version of a comment posted earlier today by Haldun on an old blog post entitled ‘Ecology is Not a Branch of Biology’. I definately have a preference for the natural sciences.

The Burnett River Tortoise: A Note from Russell

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Hi Jennifer,

Any Australians looking for an example of an endangered or vulnerable freshwater species to focus a campaign on might look no further than the Burnett River tortoise.

This species is under threat due to changes in flow regimes on the Burnett, as it lives primarily in riffle habitats and these are disappearing as a consequence of damming the river.

The species was the subject of some controversy during the Paradise Dam proposal and construction. The dam proponents escaped the endangered species label for this tortoise by pointing out it also occurs in the Fitzroy and the Mary and so how could it be endangered if the Dam was built on the Burnett? Of course there was little discussion of the impact of existing and proposed modifications of habitat for this species on those two other river systems. But as one of the leading engineers for the consulting company that prepared the Enironmental Impact Assessment (and the director of their environmental group) said to me at the time:

…what is the fate of a tortoise, compared to the need to provide table grapes to Brisbane?

What indeed, I had to ask myself? After all, it is nothing more than a rather ugly looking reptile.

What possible moral or ethical dilemma could there be in making a decision not to proceed with a development simply because it might extinguish a species that had moved itself foolishly up an adaptive peak?

Clearly those who eventually made the decision to proceed were motivated by a much loftier sense of duty; the need to provide grapes to Brisbane.

I might also point out they were so motivated by that lofty moral position they had no qualms about changing what I had written in the Environmental Impact Assessment to tone down the quite legitimate concerns about the future of that species.

My point in raising this example, is that some here seem to imply that the fate of the Baiji might have been different if it had been Australians that were making the local decisions.

My personal experience suggests there would be no difference.

Russell.

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This is a slightly edited version of a comment first posted by Russell at the very long thread that began with a blog post entitled ‘The Loss of the Baiji’.

The Loss of the Baiji

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It seems the most endangered mammal on earth, a species of freshwater dolphin from the Yangtze River in China, is now extinct. That’s the conclusion from a group of specialists who recently spent six weeks searching for the dolphin, also known as the baiji, along the Yangtze.

The extinction of the baiji has taken place at a time of unprecedented interest and concern for their large relative, the minke whale. We have know for some time that there are probably over a million minke whales, but perhaps no more than a dozen baiji. Yet so much money has been spent campaigning to “save the minke whale”. Where are our priorities when it comes to conservation? I wrote on this issue in the last IPA Review in a piece entitled, “The Loss of the Baiji’.

baiji whistle.jpg

This picture is from www.baiji.org.

Click here and you can listen to a recording of the baiji’s whistle.

So beautiful.

The Great Grain Drain: A Note from Aaron Edmonds

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Hi Jennifer,

Globally grain stocks have shrunk to levels not seen since the early 1970s. Now to most this may seem like a seemingly unimportant fact. But this reality needs to be put into perspective.

In 1970 when the world was feeding itself out of the same sized grain inventories there were 3.7 billion people. Today there are over 6.5 billion people meaning the world is carrying near an extra 3 billion hungry mouths to 1970. We also now have a significant portion of the global crop being turned into biofuels – cereals and sugars for ethanol and oilseeds and tallows for biodiesel.

Once these biofuel plants are built they generally do not stop consuming feedstock. Shareholders do not make money from plants sitting idle. Other end users that have emerged are combustible stoves and water heaters in grain producing areas where low prices have encouraged feedstock substitution away from fossil fuels.

There are over 2 million corn stoves in North America alone that consume close to 25kg each per day in the cooler months – a total loss of 50,000 tonnes a day. What this serves to highlight is that grain prices have been too slow to appreciate to discourage waste in non food sectors. Once end using infrastructure is in place and consuming it generally will take significant grain price inflation to stop this consumption. Grain values in effect need to reach and in fact surplus energy parity values to prevent loss to biofuel end uses.

On the other end of the grain chain are the producers who are facing severe limitations in their ability to actually increase let alone maintain production. Depleting water aquifers, drought affected irrigation sources, competition for water and reduced rainfall are issues that are real and impacting on production output today.

And with an anticipated ‘grain boom’ there are also some such as myself who are predicting capacity constraints. For example, an inability for the fertilizer supply chain to be able to cope with demand from an agricultural sector keen to capitalise on rising prices. Potash fertilizer may be especially short moving forward. Hyperinflation in such inputs in itself is damaging to the output potential of third world cropping systems. Competition for land resources by staple food crops will be fierce and ‘illogical’ crop choices of the past (eg fruit crops) will be swept aside for fields of wheat, rice, corn and soybeans.

Output driven technologies such as transgenics will need to be embraced worldwide and embraced with fervour. Most would argue it is better to be fed than dead and anyone disagreeing with this is likely unwilling to be the first to go without as shortages unfold.

Environmentalism has failed for there is not one so called green group with a truly sustainable model of food production to promote today.

2007 will be a critical year for the world’s staple food supply. Because a willingness to try and produce our way out of an approaching deficiency in grain supplies may be overriden by constraints out of everyones hands – weather and water. There are already early signs that China’s 06-07 winter wheat areas are showing the effects of drought and areas within the Midwestern wheatbelt of the US have inadequate soil moisture levels. Here in Australia our summer crop plantings are well down from previous years. This developing crisis should concern everyone who eats food.

Regards,
Aaron Edmonds
2002 Nuffield Scholar
President Australian Sandalwood Network
www.australianuts.com

Under Threat in Australia, Grassland Birds?

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While groups like the Wilderness Society run advertisements suggesting that in western Queensland and New South Wales broadscale tree clearing is a major environmental threat, many local landholders argue the problem is quite different. They claim that trees are replacing once open grassland over vast areas and that these ‘invasive woody weeds’ are the real environmental issue.

Yesterday, On Line Opinion published an article by Gillian Hogendyk* entitled ‘An Alternative Perspective on Tree Clearing’ providing some support for the landholder’s position.

Gillian writes:

“Early settlement caused massive changes to the ecology of the region. Grasslands were overgrazed, fires were put out, native shrubs and trees began to invade grasslands as early as 1870, rabbits invaded, drought struck, and wool prices collapsed.

By 1901 the Western Division of NSW was in an economic and ecological crisis, and a Royal Commission was called to try and formulate some solutions. Today landholders claim they are still battling the invading scrub, and that recently introduced native vegetation regulations are making their job almost impossible…

“So how is all this affecting the bird life of the region? In 2000 intensive biodiversity surveys were carried out by “West 2000” at a number of sites in the Cobar, Wanaaring, and Ivanhoe localities…

“Two examples of threatened species that were found to prefer less woody shrub cover were the Pink Cockatoo and Hooded Robin…

“Landholders of the Cobar Peneplain claim that 80 per cent of the threatened species of the region are dependent on grasslands and open woodland habitat. They claim that while many fauna species use the dense shrublands and trees for roosting and nesting, they are almost always seen feeding in the grasslands and croplands nearby. Their claims are supported by the known habitat requirements of the threatened birds recorded from the Cobar region. The majority of species listed rely on open woodlands and different types of grasslands as feeding habitat.

Of interest in this debate are the nationwide findings on woodland bird populations reported in The State of Australia’s Birds 2005: Woodlands and Birds, a Birds Australia publication. This document compared the reporting rates of the two nationwide atlases carried out by Birds Australia in 1977-81 and 1998-2002…

“Surprisingly, despite the “doom and gloom” text, the reporting rate of the majority of woodland-grassland birds had actually remained unchanged or increased over the 20- year period (for all woodland-grassland species: 48 per cent increased, 38 per cent did not change, and 13 per cent decreased). However the results were very different for grassland-dependent and ground-feeding woodland-grassland birds. These species showed much higher rates of decline over the 20-year period than the species that feed in the canopy layer.”

Read the full article here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5265

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* Gillian is a Director and founding members of the Australian Environment Foundation and so am I.

Beware Global Warming: Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow

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There have been calls for the sacking of the chancellor of British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, Nancy Green Raine, after she suggested on a Canadian breakfast show last week that:

“In science, there’s almost never black and white. We don’t know what next week’s weather is going to be. To say in 50 or 100 years, the temperature is going to do this, is a bit of a stretch for me.”*

A Canadian government meteorologist joined the public attack, questioned why Greene Raine would offer comment about something on which she is not versed. He noted that no one comes to him for advice on skiing.

Chancellor Nancy Green Raine was once an Olympic skiing champion.

We are expected to be concerned about climate change, and to do so something about climate change, but not expected to make up our own minds on the issue!

Now here’s something worth worrying about at youtube.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNzWfguDjZU

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* from The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2006