ECOLANDSCAPES
Category: Gray Merriam’s Ecology Blog
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Heads and Headwaters
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We Live Lightly on the Land
Mid-morning there was a thump. Probably wet snow coming off the roof we agreed. In the sunroom for a coffee I found some trinkets on the floor. Fallen from their window shelf. Strange. I let our dog, Sila, out the sunroom door. She turned instantly and focused sharply. A grouse lay dead on the
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Wise Futures – Looking Both Ahead and Back
The “lake district” of eastern Ontario is anchored in the area north of the limestone plain, in the Canadian Shield, in Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and Hastings counties. This Lakeland has not been fully developed as “cottage country” and “retirement country”. But it will be! Are we ready for it? Short-term problems and demands
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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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MUNICIPALITIES ARE EMPOWERED
In 2001 a unanimous judgement by the Supreme Court of Canada gave municipalities an important role to play in environmental protection. That judgement gave municipalities both the power and the responsibility to protect local environments. The Supreme Court empowered municipalities to exceed, but not to lower, national norms for environmental protection. The case that produced
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MANAGING FOR BEAUTY
Lake management and planning 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 needed was to measure total phosphorus in the water and make a plan to hold that measurement
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DAMS HAVE TWO SIDES
DAMS HAVE TWO SIDES Can Dams Cure or Cause Drought? The Weather Network reports, “22 of 31 watersheds throughout southern Ontario are reporting some level of drought conditions (July 29). Ten watersheds have advanced to Level 2 (moderate drought), including most watersheds in eastern Ontario, plus the Hamilton and Grand River watersheds. At this
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Cats and Birds
CATS AND BIRDS A recent study by Environment Canada published in Avian Conservation and Ecology estimated that cats kill between 105 million and 308 million birds in a year (mid-point of 204 million). Pet cats accounted for about 38 percent of the total. Homeless or feral cats killed the rest. Cat predation is considered
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Weighing 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 weight or value various types of evidence? Knowledge is produced from research by several groups
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Blackfly Power
Long ago, Aldo Leopold, an early and long-lasting guru of the environment, wrote “The Odyssey of Atom X”. In that saga of a Carbon atom, Leopold illustrated how difficult it is for any atom to oppose the forces moving it steadily towards the sea and instead to find some way to climb back up the