TUESDAY, JAN 10, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 1-2
A short 8-week course in ecological design, module 1, lesson 2
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABILITY, FROM THE WIRES, LANGUAGE GAMES
Abstract: As I have sustainability concerns and concerns for posterity's and the biosphere's future, I will start a course in Ecological Design tomorrow, which is one of four 'dimensions' of the offering. Subnotes to file will likely follow.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The 2nd lesson. [My comments are in brackets.]
Ecology and the Whole-Systems Approach
In the world model from the previous page, the biosphere is just one of the points of reference, but in reality, the biosphere is everything. It is the total of the Earth-systems integrating all living organisms and their relationships in complex, functional and inter-connected cyclical patterns we refer to as the carbon, hydrogen and nutrient cycles. It is a roughly 25km space around the planet in which living organisms create the conditions that make life possible. Bio is the ancient Greek word for life, so the bio-sphere is itself a living, self-regulating organism, the life-support system for all life on Earth.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has had a great deal of time for research and development. Life appeared on the planet early on, about 3.7 billion years ago. The time our own species has been around is just a blink of the eye in this context, and we can only understand a tiny fraction of Earth’s evolutionary history through geology, fossil fuel records, ice cores and the technologies that advance scientific discoveries in the field of geophysics. As John Todd points out, we can never understand the full complexity of Nature, but interdisciplinary life sciences are making remarkable discoveries. Most recently, new gene-sequencing technologies have opened up the hitherto invisible world of micro-organisms and their interactions with other species to a new level of understanding. The Human Microbiome Project and the Earth Microbiome Project show that the influence of microscopic life on our health and well-being is vast and that they play a major role in the regulation of all the functional cycles of the biosphere. Likewise, massive fungal networks in the ground beneath our feet, the largest living organisms on Earth, connect trees to each other, pass nutrients and chemical messages and are essential for the health of the forests and for the soil. In the following modules we will see how these micro-organisms connect the hydrological, carbon, nitrogen and nutrient cycles, how they live in symbiotic relationships with all other living organisms and illustrate the extent to which collaboration between species is as important to planetary health as competition. With this understanding, we can design regenerative systems that supply our needs while regenerating the degraded biosphere. [Can supply our needs if our population is between 7 and 35 million.]
In the diagram below we can see the new Tree of Life drawn up by microbiologists to show the full range of species as yet discovered on Earth. This might come as quite a shock to those people accustomed to seeing a tree with humans at the top and all the animals and invertebrates below in a hierarchical order. In the new Tree of Life, the Kingdom to which we belong, together with all animals, plants and so forth, is to be found in the bottom right-hand corner, the branch of Eukaryotes. In terms of numbers alone, microbial life is vast and crucial to our life-support system.
Image source: Laura A. Hug et al, A New Tree of Life, link
Ecology, on which the work of ecological designers is based, is the study of the interrelationships between species. We can study individuals, populations of individuals within the same species and the various communities of different species that interact together in a habitat, an ecosystem. This includes organisms from across the kingdoms of life, from the tiniest micro-organism, fungi and vegetation, as well as animals right up to the top predators, all interacting as they breathe, feed and reproduce. But it is the interrelationships that matter, because through relationships they drive those functional cycles. Some species have found a niche and remain there interacting with other species within the ecosystem, others pass through as they migrate, seasonally or at stages of their life cycle, by land, water and air. As they migrate, they transport nutrients and seeds which promote the health and life-cycles of other species. [They may promote..., but not by intent, no teleology implied.]
For example, watersheds (module 2) are dependent for the health of their ecosystems on the migratory fish that swim upstream from the ocean to spawn. When a whale excretes its faecal plumes, it fertilises entire oceans and feeds the phytoplankton which are essential to the marine food chain and produce 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere. The phytoplankton feed the fish that feed the migratory sea birds that deposit nutrients from the oceans onto land to fertilise it, sometimes over long distances. They also underpin the food chain in which salmon and other migratory fish bring nutrients upstream to renew the riparian ecosystems that are the basis for a healthy watershed. Micro-organisms in the watershed propelled upwards in aerosols from trees seed clouds and cause rainfall to hydrate the land and swell the rivers that return water to the oceans, carrying migratory species with it. Everything is literally connected, and we break these connections at our peril. [Healthy merely implies functional, a system maximizing empower. We are not nor can we be the cause of a system's functioning. Doctors do not cause health, but intervene to allow bodily systems to function normally.]
The edifice of Nature is a cathedral of life and as a species we are part of it, just one strand woven into the fabric of life. Biodiversity is the key to maintaining healthy ecosystems; every microorganism, invertebrate, plant and mollusc matters as much as the iconic species we love to protect. As we have seen from the talk by Dr John Todd in the Introduction to the Ecological Dimension, as ecological designers and stewards of Nature, we can reduce our human footprint on the planet by 90% when we mimic nature and create complex ecologies in which symbiotic relationships between species function as natural cycles of the biosphere. Through science, ecology, microbiology, Earth systems sciences, we have been able to unravel some of the mysteries of life and the more we understand the better we get at forming those productive partnerships, the biomimicry, and the more humble we must feel at the great creative power of the biosphere and the individual species. [A metastatic cancer can be part of a body for a time prior to selecting for its own demise. We can, with greater certainty, reduce our human footprint on the planet by 90% by reducing the human population by 90% by a birth-off to avoid a die-off,]
In Nature, there is no hierarchy of species. Plants determine the patterns of their own life-cycles according to sensory perception; they see colours in the spectrum with receptors on their leaves exactly the same as those in the human eye; they respond to wind and rain and heat, and make intelligent ‘decisions’ about when to grow, when to bloom, when to create fruits and seeds, when to return their nutrients to the soil. Plants respond to the frequencies in the buzz of pollinating insects and increase the sweetness of their nectar in response. They are masters of organic chemistry and produce complex molecule chains for nutrition, toxins, smells, to promote beneficial interactions with other species and to repel predators. They also manufacture chemical messages called pheromones. As ecological designers we are partners with these other species, interacting with them, and to do that effectively, we require ecological knowledge. At the beginning of each of the following modules we will look briefly at the functional cycles of the biosphere and the ecosystem interactions relevant to our design work. This is the essence of the whole-system approach in which ‘life creates the conditions conducive to life’ (Dr Janine Benyus, Biomimicry Institute). [Complex, adaptive, evolvable systems and subsystems select for what works to persist long term. Failure is allowed. As storytelling animals we can endeavor to tell better stories (and failure is the more likely outcome. To understand this is to endeavor.]
While science is making great inroads into the functioning of life on Earth, we mustn’t underestimate the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples and the worldview that underpins it. Often, science is confirming what indigenous peoples have always known and understood. Reports drawn up for the UN and its affiliated programmes have shown that indigenous people manage their lands much better than we do and we can learn a great deal from them. As we leave the UN Decade on Biodiversity and enter the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, we need this ecological knowledge to steer our way through the crisis to regeneration. [The San may not hunt giraffes because they understand (have observed) that they are 'midwifes of the acaia trees', a legume that enables greater biodiversity and environmental productivity. Expansionist Bantu pastorialists may kill them for sport or profit, as expansionist Indo-Europeans do.]
Source: Biomes By: Paul Nolasco & Lorraine Manalese
Ecology is the scientific study of the interrelationships between living organisms and the environments in which they live. Ecosystems are embedded in the geological and climatic conditions of biomes and together then form the biosphere.
Humans constitute just a tiny fraction of the total biomass on Earth however according to a recent study human-made objects may now outweigh all of the living beings on Earth. Of the total 550 Gt C, humans make up just 0.6 Gt C. The vast majority of life on Earth is composed of plants, fungi and microbes.
Image source: Yinon M. Bar-On et al. “The Biomas Distribution on Earth”.
2.1. Pause and Bring it to Life
Why are our current approaches reductionist? [Our expansionist form of civilization/culture selects for short-term self interests, which requires a lack of foresight intelligence, i.e. temporal blindness (lacking temporal causal cohesion), reducing our ancestors, posterity and the biosphere to—what's in it for me?] Could you give an example of this? [Modern techno-industrial humans living in and serving the now global monetary culture, the world socioeconomic-political system selects for humans who pursue the contingencies of short-term self interest.]
Name some areas of your life and community where you see these approaches and what have been the unintended consequences? [In the meth house across the street individuals seek the short-term benefit of getting high by first committing crimes, selling services (e.g. sex), and committing slow suicide (unintended) by poisoning their central nervous system because doing so feels good in the short term.] How are they affecting ecosystems and the species and cycles in them? [They over-harvest wild mushrooms and wild garlic in season to sell to pay for drugs.] How are they affecting people’s lives? [Wandering the neighborhood-for-the-taking to steal stuff, breaking and entering to steal stuff, extortion, scams, exploiting social services.] How are they affecting you? [Breaking and entering, attempted extortion, making false accusations, forming homeless camps on undeveloped riparian woodland and borrowing (stealing?) a chainsaw to 'improve' the habitat while they and their dogs prevent the raccoons, opossums, raptors, etc. from living there, lying/pretending, pleading victimhood for compassion to get us to rent them a spare room, then not paying, making false promises to delay eviction to get a month or two of free rent and utilities while damaging/trashing property, etc. as renters have rights and some know how to work the system to serve their short-term self interests. The human ecology of the area is dysfunctional from homeless camps to gated communities.]
Module 1, lesson 3
