ECOLANDSCAPES
Category: Gray Merriam’s Ecology Blog
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Weighing and Marketing the Evidence
It is now a common opinion that discussions of environmental (ecological) issues should be based on evidence. Considering current sources of information from social media flashes and TV clips, one must ask: what constitutes evidence? And how should we weigh or value various types of evidence? Knowledge is produced from research by several groups
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Managing for Beauty
Lake planning and management is not just making technical measurements and using some scientific understanding to set values that those measurements should match. That was one view of lake plans and, in its simplest form, all that was required was to measure total phosphorus in the water and make a plan to hold that measurement
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Human Ambitions and Environmental Sustainability
Aldo Leopold noted that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds… An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor… (Leopold, A., 1953. Round River. New York,
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Freedom of Speech and National Heritage
It has been reported that when Dr. Sarah Parcak, world-renowned United States archaeologist, received funding from the National Geographic Society to conduct research at Point Rosee, Newfoundland, she was required to sign a gag-order on her potential findings (known in the world of business as a ‘non-disclosure agreement’). Point Rosee contains a possible second
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Ecological Footprinting and Global Futures
Global Human Population The United Nations World Food Program recorded for 2016-17 that 795 million people in developing countries did not have enough food and 12.9% of the populations of developing countries were undernourished. Starvation caused 45% of all children’s deaths – 3.1 million children died of starvation. Clearly we are not feeding
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Wetlands Slow Climate Change
WETLANDS SLOW CLIMATE CHANGE by Gray Merriam The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the inescapable root of climate change. Anything affecting the rate of addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is unquestionably related to climate change. The ability of carbon dioxide to block transmission of infrared heat
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Wetlands – the Kidneys of the Landscape
Wetlands trap nutrients from surface runoff and store those nutrients in organic matter and sediments. Much of this process is carried out by green plants taking up the nutrients as they grow. Later, dead plant matter, and dead animals that fed on the plants, all sink to the bottom of the wetlands and become part
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Effects of Reservoir Impoundments
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Beauty in Natural Processes
Beauty can be appreciated at different levels of organization from the very detailed to broad landscapes. In ecological systems this can mean from a particular insect or a particular bird to widespread processes such as the flow of energy into entire ecological systems. The mechanisms that guide transformations of nutrients and flow of energy
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Water Bees
Water Bees At least two bee species depend on our aquatic plants. One solitary bee, Dufourea novaeangliae depends on Pickerel Weed flowers for its supply of pollen. The bee forms pollen balls that are stored in a nest tunnel in sandy banks along with an egg. When the egg hatches, the larva will get