Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
tended to focus on feedbacks that support the theory. As Kirchner has pointed out,
this approach assumes only responses tending towards equilibrium are possible,
which is both incorrect and assumes that all systems must reach a stable equilibrium
through feedbacks (see Bracken and Wainwright, 2006, for a similar demonstration
of this fallacy in geomorphological thinking).
Secondly, there is the extent to which Gaia has a teleological requirement. Such
a requirement is clearly evident in the quotation from Lovelock (1972), although
his later topics tend to present a steady distancing from this more 'New Age' per-
spective. Teleological Gaia was certainly not a part of the original ESS blueprint,
although the environmental problems due to feedbacks from human activity were
a central concern. In his latest book,
The Revenge of Gaia
, Lovelock (2006)
addresses this same theme directly from a Gaian perspective. He also explicitly
equates ESS and Gaia - most clearly in the glossary, where he notes that ESS 'differs
from Gaia theory only because it has not had time to digest the mathematical con-
sequences of the union between the Earth and life sciences, the most important of
which is that self-regulation requires a goal' (p. 162). It is hard to avoid reading
this statement as teleological and thus concluding that Gaia is not the same (nor
even a subset of) ESS as commonly perceived. In a parallel argument, Huggett (1999)
has also concluded that Gaia is not a good replacement for the concept of
biosphere.
Ground Control to Major Tom?
As noted above, one of the key elements of ESS, not least because of its original
defi nition within the NASA Advisory Committee, is that of remote sensing:
Effective discussion of these [environmental] problems requires an intellectual frame-
work and a long-term program[me] of research and observations which transcend the
traditional boundaries of the disciplines in Earth Sciences. The framework must be
fi rmly grounded in the realities of knowledge about the physics, chemistry, and biology
of the processes involved, yet must articulate a vision of how this understanding can
fi t together into a coherent whole. . . . Remote sensing is but one (albeit an expensive
one) of several critical tools, and it is vital to keep the vitality of the science and the
integrity of the whole endeavo[u]r clearly in view, at the same time as cultivating of
the community of interest with more immediate applications of the instrument and
data types. (Bretherton, 1985, p. 1119)
A central question then is whether the practitioners of remote sensing have risen to
the challenge. Stoms and Estes (1993) provide an early example in the literature of
a manifesto for remote sensing to tackle the issue of biodiversity monitoring. This
topic has seen a lot of development in the remote sensing literature (e.g. Williams,
1996; Innes and Koch, 1998; Soberon and Peterson, 2004; Duro et al., 2007),
although there is little explicit reference to an ESS framework. Bretherton specifi -
cally highlighted the need to improve estimates of evaporation from the oceans and
evapotranspiration as modulated by vegetation cover over the land surface. An early
response was the First International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project
(ISLSCP) Field Experiment (FIFE), which carried out experiments at the Konza
Prairie fi eld site in Kansas in 1987 and 1989, with subsequent campaigns up to
1995 (GEWEX, 1995; Hall and Sellars, 1995). There also followed the infl uential
paper of Qi et al. (1994), which attempted to produce an improved empirical
