Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Ecosystem Conservation:
The Need for
Ecological Science
I
T IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT HUMANS
'
RELA
-
tionship to nature without mentioning ecology. More and more, this par-
ticular field of science is being called upon to play a leading role in
illuminating and solving environmental problems. So much so that the en-
vironmental historian Donald Worster suggests that the twenty-first century
might well be called the “Age of Ecology” (Worster 1994).
In the post-World War II era, ecological science has played a prominent
role in identifying the cause of major environmental problems and moti-
vating consequent policy to mitigate them. Rachel Carson's
Silent Spring
(1961) alerted us to the danger to humans and wildlife species of pesticides,
which led to government regulation of chemicals in the environment.The
investment of resources and brainpower to discover that phosphate pollu-
tion from households caused massive algae blooms that choke out other
forms of life in major freshwater bodies (Schindler 1974) was nothing short
of an ecological Manhattan project that led to the Clean Water Act. At the
same time, the prospect that acid precipitation (Likens and Borman 1974),
produced when sulphur and nitrous oxides from industrial and automo-
bile emissions react and mix with atmospheric oxygen and hydrogen and
rain back down, could corrode major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
spurred tougher sulfate and nitrous emissions standards.
Ecological science successfully led to policy solutions to these problems
because ecologists could easily trace the causal chain of effects: “the prob-
lems could be seen and smelled and their sources easily identified” (Speth
2004).The problems also were localized and they resonated with society be-
cause they directly jeopardized local livelihoods and well-being.
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