Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Meeting the challenge requires a new way of thinking about the intricate
dependencies between humans and nature in society's endeavor to sustain
long-term health and well being.
Human impacts are many, they are global in reach, and they often com-
bine in synergistic or antagonistic ways at many different geographic scales.
Thus, the effect of any single impact is often insidious and therefore requires
decades to centuries before it becomes fully manifest. It becomes difficult
to pinpoint a specific culprit for such ails as rising cancer levels, degrada-
tion of water quality, species' limb deformities, endocrine dysfunction, and
many others. Answers require in-depth and critical understanding of the
complex ways that species and impacts are linked.
Resolving this complexity is what makes ecological science exciting.At
the same time, this complexity is what makes environmental problems eco-
logically “wicked problems” to solve (Ludwig et al. 2001). Murkiness about
causality makes it very easy for governments to dismiss a putative cause of
any one impact and therefore avoid action to solve the problem. But, is dis-
missing an environmental problem for lack of clear causal understanding a
wise decision? Such a question cannot be answered without first having a
clear understanding of the way that impacts propagate along the myriad
lines of dependency within ecosystems.
This topic aims to offer such understanding by conveying ecological
principles that are relevant to the grand scientific questions about sustain-
ing ecosystem functions. In identifying those questions I take some guid-
ance from a forward-looking report produced in the early 1990s on behalf
on the Ecological Society of America
titled “The Sustainable Biosphere Ini-
tiative” (Lubchenco et al. 1991).This
report first underscored the point that
most of the environmental problems
that human society faces are funda-
mentally ecological in nature.
In anticipation of the increasing
need for ecologists to play a leading
intellectual role in solving environ-
mental problems, the authors—lead-
ing senior ecologists—developed a
plan of action to assemble critical sci-
entific knowledge required to con-
The effect of any single environ-
mental impact is often insidious
and therefore requires decades to
centuries before it becomes fully
manifest. It becomes difficult to pin-
point a specific culprit for such ails
as rising cancer levels, degradation
of water quality, species' limb de-
formities, endocrine dysfunction,
and many others. Answers require
in-depth and critical understanding
of the complex ways that species
and impacts are linked.
