This afternoon was a little fragmented, because I had a short notice meeting at Wisconsin DNR which is located just a few blocks from the conference venue. It was a preliminary meeting to discuss Hine's emerald dragonfly, and only took about 20 minutes but it did result in missing the first bit of the afternoon talks. I did get to hear about forest butterflies and extreme disturbance events at restoration sites.
At 4:00 I presented my own paper, and then (of course) remained in that room for the remainder of the time block event though I would ordinarily have sought out some other papers. After the talks were done for the day I had a series of very interesting conversations in the hallway with a few folks from The Nature Conservancy, a consultant from Texas, and a few others.
It was a shorter and easier day than yesterday. I'm about to look through tomorrow's program and get a sense of what to expect.
I should perhaps mention that last night's poster session included some very solid presentations, with the added bonus of a conversation with a former colleague at another consulting firm. I hadn't seen him in about seven years, so it was nice to catch up. After that a few of us walked over to downtown for dinner, which ultimately made for a late night end to a very good day.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
SER 3.0
I wasn't able to get into the late morning session on the relevance (or not) of reference sites, it was overflowing from the too-small room and would have been quite unpleasant even if there had been any tiny bit of space to squeeze into. Someone seriously underestimated the crowd when selecting session rooms. Apparently a lot of us will need to go back and read the abstracts.
The relevance of the topic should be obvious; at an event where we're talking a lot about novel ecosystems and climate change, is a reference site a reasonable analog of what we want to restore? Since there are few if any truly pristine reference sites left, we're working with best remaining examples, and some of those aren't very good. Choosing a site is important, yet there are few guidelines on what constitutes a suitable reference site. As with much else, a lot depends on the experience and the insight of the person making the choice.
So instead I went down the hall to a session on the post-industrial landscape, in a vast lecture hall sparsely populated by about 20 people. There, I heard a fascinating talk keyed from Nietzsche and including among other things some fascinating photos of the Duisburg Nord landscape park. This flowed into a postmodernist look at the landscape. The speakers were Euro and with a dramatically different sense of the landscape than what we Americans are accustomed to.
The relevance of the topic should be obvious; at an event where we're talking a lot about novel ecosystems and climate change, is a reference site a reasonable analog of what we want to restore? Since there are few if any truly pristine reference sites left, we're working with best remaining examples, and some of those aren't very good. Choosing a site is important, yet there are few guidelines on what constitutes a suitable reference site. As with much else, a lot depends on the experience and the insight of the person making the choice.
So instead I went down the hall to a session on the post-industrial landscape, in a vast lecture hall sparsely populated by about 20 people. There, I heard a fascinating talk keyed from Nietzsche and including among other things some fascinating photos of the Duisburg Nord landscape park. This flowed into a postmodernist look at the landscape. The speakers were Euro and with a dramatically different sense of the landscape than what we Americans are accustomed to.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
SER 2.01
Debbie Maurer's talk this afternoon looked at several oak woodland sites in southeastern Lake County, Illinois. Much of my early amphibian research was done at these sites so they're of considerable interest to me; I also had some limited involvement in the early days of restoration at those sites, ranging from monitoring amphibian response to buckthorn clearing at MacArthur Woods, a USEPA-funded study of amphibian/groundlayer vegetation relationships at several sites, and some preliminary restoration design in northern flatwoods at Ryerson Woods.
Lake County Forest Preserve District has long been out on the leading edge of woodland restoration, so it was good to hear that the tradition continues. They're actually thinning trees on test plots now in hopes of identifying the best way to enhance recruitment of new oaks. This ties directly into some things I've learned in northern California recently; but that's another post, sometime after the conference is over.
Lake County Forest Preserve District has long been out on the leading edge of woodland restoration, so it was good to hear that the tradition continues. They're actually thinning trees on test plots now in hopes of identifying the best way to enhance recruitment of new oaks. This ties directly into some things I've learned in northern California recently; but that's another post, sometime after the conference is over.
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.
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.
Monday, October 7, 2013
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.
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.
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.
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.
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