SER 2.0

Day two. It began slowly, various talks of moderate interest.

At 11:30, that all changed. Jody Bluhm presented a paper titled "Samish traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom." Much of it was a video providing background and a brief description of restoration activities, including estuary restoration, on Cypress Island in Puget Sound.

There is much to be learned from traditional wisdom. I'll share two special moments from that video. An elder spoke of her childhood, spoke of the ocean breathing... so much more eloquent, holding so much more meaning than our comparatively sterile modern technical descriptions.  Then, a tribal leader spoke of her ancestors, seven generations ago at the time of first European contact... and of the importance of thinking seven generations ahead.

This, at an event where most of us are thinking seven minutes ahead to which paper to dash to next, and that's long-term thinking compared to the general population.

Perhaps it's time to once again think seven generations ahead.

SER 1.2

More discussion of novel ecosystems:

Novel ecosystems = new configurations of species which arise as a result of anthropogenic influence; they do not require human management to maintain.
I had some immediate questions after the early talks.  These did not account for temporal variation. Are currently recognized novel ecosystems stable? For example, areas of the Midwest which were dominated by Eurasian buckthorn in the 1970s are now overtopped by cottonwoods, which are in turn relatively short-lived. In another 80 years, they will be something else. These are relatively unstable, at least for now. They have not had time to find an equilibrium.

Some of the later talks were much better, leading me to believe that the validity of this concept still depends a lot on the person and the definition being used. For example Joe Berg tied it to east coast stream restoration in what I thought was a very meaningful way.

Then came a reminder that this really is a world conference. I just heard an excellent estuary restoration talk by a South African, and am currently listening to a fellow from Beijing.

The best talks are very good. As always, others are too narrow spatially, temporally, or both, or just too rigid. The good ones make it all worthwhile.

SER 1.1

The SER event is being held at Monona Terrace, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s but not built until 1997. We just had lunch in the rooftop garden looking out over Lake Monona.

A session titled "Novel and Hybrid Ecosystems: Expanding the Restoration Paradigm" is just beginning and is sure to be thought provoking. More on that in a little while.

SER 2013

I'm at the Society for Ecological Restoration 5th World Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Only halfway through the first morning, I'm of course still forming impressions; what's certain is that there are a lot of people here, reportedly over 1,200 people from 52 countries. There are 13 concurrent sessions and lots of good papers, it's going to be tough to choose.

The plenary kicked off with a diverse and upbeat talk by Paul Hawken, much too diverse to easily summarize here but I think it set a good tone for the event.

Not long after that, someone made the first mention of one of the key tensions in restoration ecology: The role, and the validity (or danger) of the novel ecosystem concept. I suspect more writings on that hot topic will follow.

Salt River

The photo was taken late this afternoon on the Salt River restoration project near Ferndale, California. In the foreground is the newly excavated tidal channel; in the background is the old, narrow channel... long silted in and bordered by cordgrass.

This is part of the phase 1 work, which includes the lowermost channel segment and about 400-acres of adjacent historic salt marsh, diked off for over 100 years and now only weeks away from the return of tidal influence.

Salt River

This photo was taken late yesterday at the Salt River Restoration Project near Ferndale CA. It's the beginning of the new, wider tidal portion of the channel, still under construction. The end of the excavation is right behind me. The bare ground to the right will later be planted to riparian forest, and away from the channel is a 400-acre salt marsh restoration including a series of internal sloughs.

I'll try to get some more photos later this summer as the work progresses. For now, it's so good to see it being built, this one's been a long time coming... my involvement dates to 2003, and a few were working on this much earlier.

abstract

It's almost time for the NCER conference. Here's my abstract for 2013:

In recent years restoration projects have tended to become increasingly complex. Attention to
detail is essential at the final design stage, but at earlier conceptual stages, excessive control may
be counterproductive. When addressing stochastic systems, control may indeed be an illusion.
Deep understanding of spatial and temporal dynamism and ecosystem-level processes can be to
a large extent intuitive and abstract. Walking a project site in the rain and watching hydrology in
action or visiting multiple reference sites may be keys to understanding processes and creating a
successful design. Understanding landscape-level processes and historic landscape context can
facilitate a restoration design requiring less long-term maintenance. Economic and policy factors
can then be considered as part of a feasibility analysis. Several case studies demonstrate that
conceptual minimalism, in the sense of eliminating non-essential distractions during the early
stages of restoration design, can be an effective strategy. As in other fields of human endeavor,
this may require learning the “rules” well enough that they can be allowed to fade into the
background or sometimes even be challenged. Modern philosophies and ancient wisdom offer
useful metaphors to guide this process.

So simple. And yet I've had difficulty getting some to understand this.