yep, once we are gone our planetary elders (the bacteria) will do a cleanup and continue evolving into macroscopic things.
Gary On Oct 25, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Joseph Zorzin wrote: > the fundamental question - can the Earth ever recover from the comet > like impact of humans and be as great as it once was? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Lee Frelich > To: [email protected] > Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 11:49 AM > Subject: [ENTS] Re: Autopoietic Forests and Forest Patch Management > > > Gary, Ed: > > As Ed points the autopoietic concept and preservation concept have > problems in terms of defining what indirect effects of people are > allowed for a system to still be considered autopoietic. The indirect > effects that are allowed or not allowed then lead to all sorts of > logic > problems with temporal and spatial scale as it relates to > preservation. > > For example, if autopoiesis includes watching how collective DNA of > the > species within the preserved area responds to loss of species due to > introduced diseases and pests, then small areas could be autopoietic, > but if it does not include those indirect effects, then no area is big > enough to be autopoietic (or to be preserved), since no size ensures > the > absence of invasive tree diseases and pests. > > The temporal scale problem is equally large. Given many thousands or > millions of years, all systems will respond and adapt to non native > species, climate change and loss of the species that initially were > native. The introduction of invasive species, tree pests and diseases, > and global warming become a small blip in time, and all systems > would be > autopoietic. If defined on a time scale of a few centuries, however, > all > systems would lose autopoeisis, regardless of size, given the > onslaught > of invasive species and global warming. > > Its always the temporal and spatial scale issues that are so difficult > with any new concept in ecology. It took me 2 years to work through > those issues for the neighborhood effect hypothesis of forest dynamics > before I was happy enough with the concept to publish it. > > If people are interested in preserving the last natural systems as > they > are right now, then there is no spatial or temporal scale at which > autopoesis or preservation will > work without a lot of management outside of the 'preserved' areas to > keep out all invasive species and stop global warming. > > Lee > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
