[ECOLOG-L] Job: Editor and Geologic Information, Natural Resource Scientist 3
DNR has a Geology Scientist opening for the right person. Editor and Geologic Information, Natural Resource Scientist 3 in our Geology Division. Salary Range: $4,322 - $5,668 per month. (The salary for this position with the 3% reduction is $3,894 - $5,108 per month.) Permanent, Full-time with comprehensive package of benefits. Important Note: This position is represented by the WFSE. Once appointed to this position the incumbent will be required to pay union dues or other representation fees within the first 30 days of employment. OPENS: May 25, 2012 CLOSES: June 1, 2012 POSITION PROFILE: This position works as an integral part of the GIS and Publications Section in preparation of Division of Geology Earth Resources scientific and informal publications and databases and in maintaining the Division's online presence. Uses geologic knowledge and professional-level technical writing/editing, publications/graphic design, geologic information systems(GIS), website design and management, and computer skills to edit, design and produce geologic report, maps, data, and interactive web applications. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: *Bachelor degree or higher in geology, *Demonstrated ability in technical editing (test will be given) *Demonstrated competence in page layout and graphic design (test will be given) *Acute attention to detail *Ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing , with internal and external groups and individuals including communication of technical information to a lay audience. DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS: *Master's degree preferred *Web design experience *Experience in successful project management *Technical editing and preparing geological publications experience *Working knowledge of the publication standards of the major publishers of geologic literature. *Experience in designing and maintaining relational databases *Editing geographic databases and metadata experience *Proficiency with specific word processing, illustration, image editing, and page layout software used by the Division *Understanding of major geographic information system (GIS) concepts *Demonstrated experience in designing and producing simple graphics using GIS software *Designing and maintain GIS map documents *Working knowledge of US Geological Survey geologic map and data standards SPECIAL POSITION REQUIREMENTS AND WORKING CONDITIONS *May require occasional evening and/or weekend work in excess of 20 per week to meet critical deadlines. *Occasional travel may be required to attend training. WHO MAY APPLY This recruitment is open to anyone who meets the required qualifications for this position. APPLICATION PROCESS To be considered for this position, please go to the following link: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Lists/Job%20Openings/Attachments/781/060112_5237.pdf *Questions? Please contact Anne Olson at phone number (360) 902-1445 or e-mail us at dnrrecruit...@dnr.wa.gov.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] invasive truffles
Whatever the case, I do not agree that 'many discussions of exotic species come from a change is bad point of view'. I think this statement eliminates much of the research, which I referred to, that is aimed at trying to understand the why and how of invasive species establishment. I'm not sure what discussions you are involved in, but most all of the people that I work with, including researchers, agency personnel, and landowners, are aware of the issues and ramifications of invasive species. I've never had a discussion with any of them solely on the basis of a change is bad point of view. These people have observed and documented the harm, including economic, environmental, and social, associated with invasive species. I would be interested to know more about those who you are referring to that are discussing exotic species from the change is bad point of view. Thanks, Steve On 5/25/2012 12:37 AM, Jane Shevtsov wrote: I never said that economic harms were more concrete than environmental and social ones, only that many discussions of exotic species come from a change is bad point of view rather than actually demonstrating some kind of harm. In this case, the harm happens to be economic/cultural. Jane Shevtsov On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 7:35 PM, Steve Youngsteve.yo...@unl.edu wrote: You make some good points, but I was interested to know about your last comment on highlighting an article that describes what you would say are concrete harms arising from an exotic species. Just curious, but why are economics, at least that was the emphasis I got from the article, a more concrete harm than loss of services, both environmental and social? In Nebraska, introduced common reed in the Republican and Platte Rivers has been one of the main causes for reducing water flow into Kansas and obstructing nesting ground for two endangered bird species. Another example is eastern redcedar (yes, I know we just had a discussion as to the invasiveness of this native species) that has encroached into prairie grasslands creating monocultures that reduce diversity in not only herbaceous plant, but also invertebrate, and mammalian species. I know there are other examples of the 'concrete' harms done by exotic species beyond just the economics. See the link to find out what Asian carp are doing to kayakers in the Missouri River (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/08/carp_attack.shtml). Steve Young -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Jane Shevtsov Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 1:30 AM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: [ECOLOG-L] invasive truffles As much as I enjoy (and tend to agree with) Matt Chew's commentary on this list, I must express my disagreement with some of what he says below. On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:28 PM, Matt Chewanek...@gmail.com wrote: Labeling a fungus as an invader it is an absurd anthropomorphism. It is a further, even less supportable one to call a fungus invasive as if invading is an essential trait or characteristic of the taxon. While I was speaking casually, I don't think that using the word invasive implies an intrinsic characteristic any more than, say, successful does. A person's success in some endeavor is a function of both their traits and their environment; the same goes for invasiveness. Furthermore, there's no necessary anthropomorphism behind the word invasive. For example, doctors may speak of invasive cancers. No Chinese truffle found growing in Italy has ever been Chinese except in name, and possibly as a spore-unless a person knowingly moved it from Asia to Italy- in which case the motivation and volition were the person's, and the relevant action was translocation, not invasion. If there was ever any intention to invade anything as a result, it was only and entirely a person's intention. Why is volition relevant? Also, we often say that X (a fungus, a person, or whatever) is Chinese when its immediate ancestors are from China. Claiming this (or any) fungus causes problems violates any rational conception of causality. The problem discussed in the article (one species of truffle being mistaken for or misrepresented as another) is one of unethical conduct by truffle dealers and/or taxonomic error by dealers and or buyers. Truffles aren't causing anything. The article also describes Tuber indicum as becoming established in truffle orchards and, either by human error or competition, preventing the growth of the desired Tuber melanosporum. If that's not causality, I don't know what is. Careless metaphorical misconstruction and blaming organisms for arriving and persisting in unexpected places actively undermines ecological understanding, communication, effective research and appropriate conservation action. Is there
[ECOLOG-L] invasive truffles
The dust has settled a bit, so it's time to respond. Jane Shevtsov raised some interesting points in her rebuttal of my analysis of her post. Most of them further exemplify the conceptual confusion and questionable communication practices I was highlighting. First, she reminded us: I was speaking casually Of course she was, and obviously so. Why, having admitted to speaking casually, try to defend it as if that casualness had formal underpinnings? It any case it is a poor justification. Does 'casually' mean carelessly, vaguely, imprecisely or misleadingly? Is this an appropriate forum for casual remarks? For that matter, should any conversation between ecologists about the objects we study be shorthanded either ambiguously or misleadingly? Jane's based her rejection of anthropomorphism primarily on what a person may do or be described as doing. That underlines my point. Truffles aren't persons. Appealing to the fact that doctors may speak of invasive cancers doesn't have anything to do with whether truffles can invade or species are invasive. (Species aren't cancers, although that broad metaphor of reflexive fear and loathing has been applied to them as well.) Appealing to what we often say hardly implies that what we often say has been well said. Ecology's 'house' of casually applied metaphors (see Science 301:52-53) accumulated like a woodrat midden. It's stable the way any heap of miscellaneous material can be stable, but it isn't much of a structure. Volition is important because invading is purposeful. Invading isn't a synonym for diffusing or dispersing or being moved along a gradient or by an applied force. We say species are invading because we mean to be pejorative, not merely descriptive. It's a revealing category error. Any research project that has ever set out to compare 'natives' to 'invasives' (there are MANY such) carries a casual tacit presumption that those twp categories are ecologically meaningful. They aren't (see Chew and Hamilton's 'The Rise and Fall of Historical Nativeness…). That's why the results of those studies are broadly inconsistent. So yes, Jane, research has been significantly undermined. It's not a problem of comparing apples and oranges. It's a problem of comparing mermaids and hippogriffs. In her rebuttal Jane appropriated my point about causality and suggested it was her own. Hardly so. She (originally, casually) claimed truffles were causing a problem. Finally, Jane wrote One of the reasons I highlighted this article is that it describes concrete harms arising from an exotic species… But it doesn't do that. The presence of two superficially similar (to casual inspection) fungi in the same place doesn't cause concrete harm. It may violate someone's sense of place or require them to learn to differentiate between the two. Change is not harm. Demanding the world to conform to prior expectations or beliefs (especially while expecting to be able to manipulate it to one's own advantage) seems naive. David McNeely doesn't like brown tree snakes or Phytophthora ramorum. He casually failed to contextualize either. Charitably assuming that he meant brown tree snakes on Guam, and further assuming that by social damage he meant the climbing instincts of brown tree snakes are incompatible with the way people have traditionally strung electrical wiring, we still can't say the snakes caused a problem. David apparently assumes that humans should be free to do things the way they always have even when newly prevailing conditions render those habits ineffectual. Eradicating brown tree snakes on Guam may or may not be possible. Changing the way electricity is distributed is an engineering exercise. Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results indicates the usual results are actually more acceptable than the costs of adapting. David's ecological damage to Guam was caused by humans acting on naive and tacit expectations that a remote island could be industrially militarized—with all the coming and going that entails—without fundamentally and practically altering its connectivity to other ecosystems. Guam has been only hours away from many islands and several continents since the 1940s. Focusing on brown tree snakes and blaming them for happening to have survived inadvertent transport there seems intentionally myopic. Calling them invaders when they are evidently established and occupying virtually all usable habitat on the island is another category error. The advent of P. ramorum in North America produces effects more troubling to more people than than power outages or ecosystem restructuring on Guam. But P. ramorum is doing what it always has, necessarily without reference to continents or forests or even trees, for that matter. Fungi aren't moral actors and they aren't morally accountable. If a P. ramorum spore arrives in suitable habitat (on, but without awareness of a tree) it grows and reproduces. But that isn't
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Non-Majors Biology
Hi! That sounds like a very interesting course. I definitely understand the struggle. I taught a non-majors class on climate change last fall, and I had similar difficulty in setting the syllabus- it's hard to know what to cover when you know your class is perhaps the last and only biology (or science) course for these students. That said, I would say that less is more, especially in a non-majors class. My fear is that if you try to cover too many units, students will have a superficial understanding of the topics, which will quickly fade after the final exam. (This might happen anyway, but the more superficial their understanding, the more likely it is.) I think that it would probably better to cover a small number of contemporary issues in more depth. I think the students will benefit more from learning how scientists tackle a problem and how to evaluate scientific pronouncements that they read/hear on the news. (In other words, I'm advocating for a substantial nature of science focus throughout the units you choose, which tends to work better if you do a small number of topics in more depth.) Frankly, I think we as educators have to (reluctantly) accept that we can't cover everything, and so eventually our students will have to find information on their own if they wish to make informed decisions about a particular topic. What we can try to do for them is to help them develop the intellectual tools to make that possible. In addition, I like the idea of focusing more on ecology, because it sounds like the students have many opportunities to learn the molecular biology and genetics side of things in the other courses you describe. But you might consider some integrated units (e.g. the ecology of infectious diseases or the environmental side of cancer), where you could introduce molecular biology/genetics/development topics with ecological topics, and show the students how those two fields can inform and strengthen each other. I wish I could be helpful about textbooks, but I can't really think of a single book. I'm wondering if you want to assemble a list of prospective unit topics, and then send another email out to the list- knowing what topics you are hoping will be included would be a big help. Sometimes the university bookstore will also assemble a course pack of excerpts from different books. That can be expensive, depending on the price of copyright, but it's worth looking into if people can recommend only favorite book chapters. Best wishes, Emily Pollina Ph.D. Candidate On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Johnson, David R drjohns...@utep.eduwrote: Greetings, I am teaching a contemporary biology course for non-science majors in the fall and for the first time I am fortunate to be able to organize the course at my discretion. Effectively, I can present any material I wish as long as I hit broad themes such as Cell Theory and Evolution. While this is certainly doable, I am struggling deciding exactly what content to present. The course is meant to present the science of contemporary issues that may be important and/or interesting to the non-science student rather than a broad survey course encompassing all of biology. There is another such survey course with a set syllabus that I am not teaching, and there are two other sections of contemporary biology that are focusing on genetics. I would like to focus on the many ecological issues that both affect and are affected by humans. My struggle involves the fact that this may be the only (or last) biology these students get before we cast them out into the world. So I want to be sure and cover all my bases. I am writing Ecolog with two questions. First, what is the relative merit of including as much biology as possible as opposed to focusing on fewer but perhaps more directly relevant ecological topics? These students will most likely not become scientists, and certainly won't need to memorize the structure of all the amino acids, for example. On the other hand, would I be cheating them somehow by not providing enough information to them for making informed decisions on topics outside of my direct area of expertise, such as developmental biology and stem cells? The other question I have involves textbooks. Is anyone aware of a text (or perhaps pop-science books) designed for the non-science major that focuses on ecology, in particular the involvement of humans in ecological systems? I haven't been able to find something I like and am looking for recommendations. Thanks and I'll circulate a summary response if/when the discussion runs its course. Cheers, David David R. Johnson PhD. Postdoctoral Research Associate Systems Ecology Lab University of Texas at El Paso drjohns...@utep.edu
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Non-Majors Biology
A non-majors biology course is intended to provide an overview of the entire field. A majors biology course is intended to prepare majors for courses they will later take. Therefore, you want to make sure you touch on the major issues in biology, but don't get too hung up on technicalities and specifics. for a brief list of points Students should understand basic cell anatomy and function mitosis meiosis cell cycle basic tissue types basic function organs and basic function basic mendellian inheritance DNA structure and function replication, transcription, translation levels of organization: sub-cellular, cellular, tissue, organ, organ system, organism, population, community, ecosystem, biosphere. Ecosystem ecology organismal ecology population ecology community ecology Evolution and evolutionary mechanisms (this blends into all other areas if done correctly) Some additional things to add: Science in the news (current events) Political decision making vs scientific deduction deduction vs induction I'm not sure if this is helpful, but it is just a list off the top of my head! Malcolm On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Johnson, David R drjohns...@utep.edu wrote: Greetings, I am teaching a contemporary biology course for non-science majors in the fall and for the first time I am fortunate to be able to organize the course at my discretion. Effectively, I can present any material I wish as long as I hit broad themes such as Cell Theory and Evolution. While this is certainly doable, I am struggling deciding exactly what content to present. The course is meant to present the science of contemporary issues that may be important and/or interesting to the non-science student rather than a broad survey course encompassing all of biology. There is another such survey course with a set syllabus that I am not teaching, and there are two other sections of contemporary biology that are focusing on genetics. I would like to focus on the many ecological issues that both affect and are affected by humans. My struggle involves the fact that this may be the only (or last) biology these students get before we cast them out into the world. So I want to be sure and cover all my bases. I am writing Ecolog with two questions. First, what is the relative merit of including as much biology as possible as opposed to focusing on fewer but perhaps more directly relevant ecological topics? These students will most likely not become scientists, and certainly won't need to memorize the structure of all the amino acids, for example. On the other hand, would I be cheating them somehow by not providing enough information to them for making informed decisions on topics outside of my direct area of expertise, such as developmental biology and stem cells? The other question I have involves textbooks. Is anyone aware of a text (or perhaps pop-science books) designed for the non-science major that focuses on ecology, in particular the involvement of humans in ecological systems? I haven't been able to find something I like and am looking for recommendations. Thanks and I'll circulate a summary response if/when the discussion runs its course. Cheers, David David R. Johnson PhD. Postdoctoral Research Associate Systems Ecology Lab University of Texas at El Paso drjohns...@utep.edu -- Malcolm L. McCallum Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry School of Biological Sciences University of Missouri at Kansas City Managing Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive - Allan Nation 1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! The Seven Blunders of the World (Mohandas Gandhi) Wealth w/o work Pleasure w/o conscience Knowledge w/o character Commerce w/o morality Science w/o humanity Worship w/o sacrifice Politics w/o principle Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
