p.7 Defining ecosystem health is a process involving the identification of important indicators
of health (such as a species or a group of species), the identification of important endpoints of health (such as
relative stability and creativity), and finally, the identification of a healthy state incorporating our values... the process
of succession presents a problem: if conditions change, a new ecosystem that is better adapted to the new conditions will
replace the prior system. Consequently, our indicators and variables must be sufficiently dynamic to change accordingly.
p.23 We can begin from the premise that our basic approach to environmental management must be rethought,
a process that has already begun in earnest but remains in a state of considerable confusion.
p.24 The development of a new paradigm involves, by definition, the creation of a new constellation of axioms
and concepts, an alternative set of assumptions, a new method... Adopting a new paradigm represents a more radical departure;
it is to interpret the world in a new format, a format that is given shape and structure by the development of new concepts
and a vocabulary to express them.
p.25-26 consider these five axioms of ecological management: [JLJ - from B.G. Norton, Toward Unity among
Environmentalists, 1991 ]
- The Axiom of Dynamism: Nature is more profoundly a set of processes than a collection of objects;
all is in flux.
- The Axiom of Relatedness: All processes are related to all other processes.
- The Axiom of Hierarchy: Processes are not related equally but unfold in systems within systems, which differ
mainly regarding the temporal and spatial scale on which they are organized.
- The axiom of Creativity: The processes of nature are self-organizing, and all other forms of creativity
depend on them. The vehicle of that creativity is energy flowing through systems that generates complexity of organizations
through repetition and duplication.
- The Axiom of Differential Fragility: Ecological systems, which form the context of all human activities,
vary in extent to which they can absorb and equalize human-caused disruptions in their creative processes.
p.26 Let us say that a system is healthy if it maintains its complexity and capacity for self-organization.
p.31 Resource management, therefore, operates within the constraints indicated by an ecological understanding
of its context.
p.146-147 there are a multitude of stressors, many of them interactive, that have caused ecosystems to degenerate.
In some cases, a single stressor predominates... But in most regions of moderate to intense human settlement or industrial
activity, it is a combination of stressors that deals nature crippling blows... Yet to read nature's health by exposure
to stress is as inadequate as reading human health by exposure to disease. For it is not only exposure but also the innate
"resistance" or "susceptibility" of the individual or ecosystem that determines the outcome. Thus the health status
of nature (or humans) can be confirmed only by clinical investigation.
p.153 Conclusion
Health concepts have become practically ingrained in considering questions of ecosystem breakdown and restoration.
Systems science provides a conceptual basis for defining "health." This conceptual foundation must be integrated
with social values in order to arrive at scientifically valid but necessary subjective criteria for ecosystem health.
p.153 Administering carefully controlled stress tests to ascertain the degree of ecosystem integrity
may provide a method for discovering occult diseases in ecosystems well before any overt signs of pathology appear.
