Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and. Richard T.T. Forman ... Peter Del Tredici. Flood Control ..... 1983, New York: Hill and Wang. 235. 24_ Odum, E.P. ...
PROJECTIVE ECOLOGIES Chris Reed & Nina-Marie Lister
www.gsd.harvard.edu
www.actar.com
Contents 06 Foreword: Ecologies, Plural and Projective
Charles Waldheim
14 Introduction: Ecological Thinking, Design Practices
Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister
FOUNDATIONS, EVOLUTIONS
22 Parallel Genealogies
Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister
40 Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity
(reprint, 1997) James Corner
66 DYNAMICS (curated drawings + commentary)
EMERGENT IDEAS, ECOLOGICAL THINKING
84 Designing Ecologies
184 Cultural Landscapes and Dynamic Ecologies:
Lessons from New Orleans Jane Wolff
204 EMERGENCE (curated drawings + commentary) ECOLOGY, CITIES, AND DESIGN
218 Do Landscapes Learn? Ecology’s New Paradigm
and Design in Landscape Architecture (reprint, 1999) Robert E. Cook
238 The Flora of the Future
Peter Del Tredici
258 Flood Control Freakology: Los Angeles River
Watershed (reprint, 2008) David Fletcher
276 RESILIENCE (curated drawings + commentary)
Christopher Hight
106 Ecology and Planning (reprint, 1971)
C.S. Holling and M.A. Goldberg
126 Selections from Landscape Ecology Principles in
Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning (reprint, 1996) Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Forman
134 SUCCESSION (curated drawings + commentary) ANTHRO-ECOLOGIES, HYBRIDITY
152 Selections from Discordant Harmonies (reprint, 1990)
Daniel Botkin
168 (Anthropogenic Taxonomies)
A Taxonomy of the Human Biosphere Erle C. Ellis
PATHS FORWARD
290 Design Thinking, Wicked Problems, Messy Plans
Frances Westley and Katharine McGowan
312 The Shape of Energy
Sean Lally
336 Combustible Landscape
Sanford Kwinter
354 ADAPTABILITY (curated drawings + commentary) 370 Contributors 374 Illustration Credits
PROJECTIVE ECOLOGIES Image: Tomás Folch and Chris Reed
Chris Reed & Nina-Marie Lister
(Anthropogenic Taxonomies) A Taxonomy of the Human Biosphere
____________________________________________
Erle C. Ellis
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168 ANTHRO-ECOLOGIES, HYBRIDITY
Since prehistory, humans have altered ecosystems by hunting and foraging, using fire to clear vegetation, driving megafauna to extinction, and taking other actions that have produced long-term cascading effects across most continents [1]. However, the greatest transformation of the terrestrial biosphere ever wrought by humanity began more than 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, with the emergence of agricultural systems [2]. By domesticating species and transforming native ecosystems into agricultural fields, pastures, settlements, and other engineered environments in support of agricultural societies, our ancestors unleashed a process of unprecedented population growth, societal development, and planetary transformation that is now increasingly recognized as the dawning of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene [1-5]. A Global Human Ecology_______________________________________ There is growing consensus that most of the terrestrial biosphere has now been transformed by human populations and their use of land [2, 6-9]. While climate and other geophysical and biotic factors continue to constrain the form and functioning of the terrestrial biosphere, human populations and their use of land increasingly determine the realized form and dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems, including the cycling of the elements, biodiversity, primary productivity, and the presence of trees and their successional state [9-11]. As a result, the classic approach to mapping, classifying, and understanding the global patterns of terrestrial ecology as a simple function of climatic and physiographic variables, the “classic” biomes, is no longer accurate (e.g., [12-16]). Human interactions with ecosystems are diverse, dynamic, and complex, ranging from the relatively light impacts of mobile bands of hunter-gatherers to the wholesale replacement of native ecosystems by built structures [1, 4, 17, 18]. Population density is a useful indicator of the form and intensity of human/environment interactions, as larger populations are both a cause and a consequence of ecosystem modification to produce food and supply other needs [2, 18-20]. For this reason, most of the classic forms of human/ecosystem interaction are associated with orders of magnitude differences in population density, including foraging (< 1 person km-2), shifting cultivation (> 10 persons km-2), and continuous cultivation (> 100 persons km-2). Populations denser than 2,500 persons km-2 are believed to be unsupportable by traditional subsistence agriculture [18-21].
A Taxonomy of the Human Biosphere_____________________________ To characterize the global ecological patterns produced by sustained direct human interactions with terrestrial ecosystems, Ellis and Ramankutty [9] introduced the concept of anthropogenic biomes, or “anthromes,” and developed a global classification and map of these as a new framework for global ecology and earth science. Anthromes were first classified and mapped empirically using statistical algorithms that identified globally significant patterns in global data on land use and human population density, an approach that was then modified using a rule-based classification system allowing longterm changes to be measured over time using historical data [22]. Figure 1. The classic “potential vegetation” biomes (a; [16]) compared with anthromes (b; for year 2000, from [22]; class descriptions in Table 1). Eckert IV projection.
170
Erle C. Ellis
The global extent of anthromes in year 2000 is mapped in Figure 1b, using the anthrome classes in Table 1 (maps viewable in Google Earth at http://ecotope.org/anthromes/v2). Based on this analysis, Wildlands covered just one quarter of Earth’s ice-free land in year 2000, with the rest classified as anthromes. In 2000, more than half (> 55%) of global land area was under intensive use as Rangelands (32%), Croplands (16%), Villages (6.5%), and Densely Settled (1.2%) anthromes, leaving about 20% in Seminatural anthromes having low levels of land use for agriculture and settlements. These results also make clear that large extents of Wildlands remain only in the cold and dry biomes (Boreal, Shrublands, Deserts), and in the global regions with large extents of these (North America, Australia and New Zealand, Near East, and Eurasia).
Level
Class
Dense settlements
Description Urban and other dense settlements.
11 Urban
Dense built environments with very high populations.
12 Mixed settlements
Suburbs, towns, and rural settlements with high but fragmented populations.
Villages
Densely populated agricultural settlements.
21 22 23 24
Rice villages
Villages dominated by paddy rice.
Irrigated villages
Villages dominated by irrigated crops.
Rain-fed villages
Villages dominated by rain-fed agriculture.
Pastoral villages
Villages dominated by rangeland.
Croplands
Lands used mainly for annual crops.
31 Residential irrigated
Irrigated cropland with substantial human populations.
croplands
32 Residential rain-fed
Rain-fed croplands with substantial human populations.
croplands
33 Populated rain-fed cropland
35 Remote croplands Rangelands
Croplands with significant human populations, a mix of irrigated and rain-fed crops. Croplands without significant populations. Lands used mainly for livestock grazing and pasture.
41 Residential rangelands Rangelands with substantial human populations. 42 Populated rangelands Rangelands with significant human populations. Rangelands without significant human populations. 43 Remote rangelands Seminatural lands
Inhabited lands with minor use for permanent agriculture and settlements (
