Since this term "reversing the flow" is catching on in our research group I thought it might be useful for me to post the first time I used this term. It was in a 2008 white paper written as part of the process leading to our successful Coupled-Natural-Human-Systems proposal (we now call this project RESTORE - Rethinking Ecological and Social Theories of Restoration Ecology).
The
Central Metaphor
In 1900
the flow of the Chicago River was reversed in one of the most dramatic
engineering projects in the region’s history.
The project was a solution to a problem that otherwise compromised the
human and ecological health of Chicago (Lake Michigan was unsustainably both a
source of water and ultimately a sink for waste). A little more than a century later, we should
attempt to solve another significant challenge: how can we enhance the management of
protected terrestrial ecological systems - areas that are typically swamped by influences from
the vaster unmanaged metropolitan lands that surround them - in a way that
simultaneously enriches both the human and ecological health of the
region? We need to investigate if
ecological systems designed and managed with resilience in mind (arguably the
current best management practices for restoration do not produce resilience
results, and quickly revert to a ‘degraded’ condition) can exert a stronger influence on the landscape on a larger scale (which includes these large unmanaged areas) than is
currently the case. In this way we can arguably “reverse the
flow” of restoration influence or more precisely modify the fluxes, of influence between managed and
unmanaged preserved systems.
