Springwatch Chicago, 2013...continues

Honey Locust getting ready... not quite there yet.

Linden delicately unfurls.... however....

Some Linden leaves have thrown caution to the wind and are out!

Magnolia pinkly heralds forth

Bradford pear blooming in strenght

Redbud clustering about the twig like pink soldier ready to deploy.

Redbud... flowers, as always, getting the jump on the leaves.

Remember your silver maple (shaggy barked)...

...slightly exhausted from the effort

Sliver maple flowering

2006: A Key Year for Landscape Scale Conservation Planning?

2006 was a key year for disciplines relevant to landscape scale-conservation planning.  Climate change made the April cover of Time magazine:  a polar bear stranded on a tiny floe of ice stares balefully into the melting waters above a headline that read “Be worried, be very worried.”  Thus the term “climate change”, a topic that had for some time been regarded as a pressing environmental issue by the scientific and some sectors of the policy community, came to public attention in a manner that had not perhaps happened before.  

That same year at their 91st annual meeting in Memphis, Ecological Society of America, ecology’s largest professional body, labeled invasion ecology and restoration ecology as “upstart” disciplines, indicating their relative newness, and contrasting them with disciplinary “icons” (community ecology, ecosystem ecology and so on).  

Moreover, green infrastructure, a concept that emerged in mid-1990s in discussions over the implementation of conservation-oriented land management, especially in urban settings, was the subject of a 2006 book by Mark A. Benedict and Edward T. McMahon, entitled Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities and published by the influential Island Press (Benedict and McMahon 2006).  

Finally, around this time there was a growing appreciation of the value of integrating social science perspectives into land management, and this was signaled by the emergence of a body of theory known as social ecological systems research, and the assimilation of the notion of “resilience” into planning for sustainable management  (Redman et al. 2004, Folke 2006).

Taken together, climate change science, restoration ecology, invasive species ecology, social-ecological systems research, and green infrastructure planning are the predominant disciplines undergirding contemporary urban conservation management.  Considering the relative infancy of these disciplines it is hardly unsurprising that the successful translation of these disciplines into precise recipes for action are slow in coming.

Why Urban Ecology?

The ecology of urban areas has been neglected. Why? Far from being a peripheral discipline it is emerging as central one.  Why?  In fact, all ecology may, in a sense, be urban ecology.  Why? In addition to answering basic questions about nature from a natural science perspective, urban ecology must integrate the insights and methodologies of the social sciences? Why? In addition to integrating the natural and social sciences, urban ecology is a form of humanism.  Why? This grand synthesis is difficult to achieve.  Why? Urban ecology in its broadest sense provides a foundation for sustainability thinking and practice.  Why? A missing element in sustainability studies, that urban ecology addresses, is the (philosophical?) question of existential homelessness and placelessness.  Why? The contemporary human is invariably homeless and placeless (in an existential sense). Why? Participation with nature “in” the city can potentially address this rootlessness.  Why? Urban Ecology’s fundamental distinction between studies “of” the city and “in” the cities is both important and fateful.  Why?  Natural History is the foundation for studies matching the “in” the city criteria, systems ecology is the foundation for “of” the city practice.  Why?  If you attempt to learn all of Urban Ecology in 10 weeks you will fail. I wonder why?!

Four Dublin Snaps - 23rd Feb 2013

Social Ecological Systems Then and Now: Chicago example

With a population of 2.7 million, Chicago is the largest city in the US Midwest and the third largest in the United States. The greater Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to which Chicago belongs has a population of almost 9.5 million. The radical and rapid transformation of the landscape that has occurred over the past century and a half in order to accommodate a burgeoning population might suggest that Chicago is not a promising place to undertake large-scale conservation efforts. However, the region supports conservation programs that have received widespread local, national and international recognition.  That significant biodiversity protection occurs in Chicago is, in part, a consequence of the region’s climate and its evolutionary and ecological history. It is also the result of decisions made by people both before and after the settlement of the region by European and other non-indigenous populations (hereafter referred to as the “settlement” period).  These decisions resulted in land protected from development and/or maintained to preserve the characteristic biodiversity of the area.

When the contemporary situation in Chicago is compared against the description of the natural heritage of the region immediately prior to European settlement the differences are stark and from a conservation perspective seem somewhat discouraging.  One can barely walk for a mile across tallgrass prairie in Illinois compared to the possibility of a one hundred and fifty mile trek along the Grand Prairie back in 19th Century.  That being said, the landscapes of both eras each represent social-ecological systems – in the pre-settlement case the human agents involved being primarily indigenous Native American populations, more recently high populous and diverse urban population dominate.  Thus, both then and now human decision-making played a role in shaping natural components of the region. 

Journalist Charles Mann in his assessment of the impact of Native American peoples on the America found in 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus concluded: "Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same.”  Now, we might quibble with the rather enormous license that this offers, nevertheless, the statement underscores the role of human agency in shaping ecological landscapes (second nature, in William Cronon's terms), both before and after the emergence of the great urban centers.  The emergence of a conservation ethic, one that contrasts with the more cavalier attitude of early settler population in the Chicago region, and one that informs the work of present day biodiversity conservationists and that inspires the work of Chicago Wilderness should be seem as a remarkably positive development.  Though we may not recoup the losses of species, communities and ecological processes that have largely been lost from the region, nonetheless it may be that we develop quite new social ecological systems  - in some cases, with highly cyborgian landscape emerging, mixtures of technology and forces beyond the immediate ken of humans – that are hopeful, biodiverse, and resilient in the face of ongoing anthropogenic disturbances.  We may be betting our lives on it. 

A Five Minute Nature Daydream May Make You More Energetic and Playful!

It’s the middle of the afternoon, the morning’s coffee has long worn off, and the soporific effects of that lunchtime sandwich are kicking in.  Rather than gulping down that energy drink, perhaps a little nature daydreaming might help.  Today in my urban ecology class I investigated this possibility.

The study was designed primarily to initiate a conversation about the role of nature in human health and well being.  It comes as no surprise that active engagement in nature, running, walking, engaging in restoration work, gardening and so forth has measureable benefits for human health.  A little more surprising perhaps are findings that passive engagement with nature, living in prettily landscaped surroundings has positive effects on people and on their communities.  Bordering on mystifying though are the results of studies indicating that even views of nature, pictures of nature or nature glimpsed through a window delivers benefits to people.  This skein of research became big news with the publication of Roger Ulrich’s paper in Science demonstrating that patients with views of nature through a window recovered more rapidly from surgery, required fewer post-operative narcotics, and were less testy with their nurses.[1]

So, it was with a view to opening up a discussion on this range of effects that I conducted a little experiment.  There were 16 attendees – 14 undergraduates, 1 graduate students, and 1 post-doctoral researcher.  Students were assigned one of two pictures.  One is a view down an alley in Evanston – it has both a lot of vegetation but also has garbage bins etc.  The other is of a living room (harvested from the internet) which deliberate was chosen to look comfortable and with a television. 

I read the following prompt: “View the picture you have been assigned.  Imagine yourself in this place and what you would typically be doing in this setting.  With the image in mind contemplate this activity for 5 minutes.  Relax, close your eyes if you prefer.  When Heneghan calls time turn over the page and answer the questions.”

The questions were

On a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being the highest for each factor and 1 being lowest) rate your level of

1.         Overall energy levels (1  2  3  4  5)

2.         Feeling of aggression (1  2  3  4  5)

3.         Playfulness (1  2  3  4  5)

4.         Peacefulness (1  2  3  4  5)

5.         General satisfaction with life (1  2  3  4  5) 

Then students were asked to answer the following numerical puzzle

Mr. Brown has 8 black gloves and 8 brown gloves in his closet. He blindly picks up some gloves from the closet. What is the minimum number of gloves Mr. Brown will have to pick to be certain to find a pair of gloves of the same color?[2]

The results are summarized as follows:

I analyzed the results using a Mann-Whitney U test (run on SAS). There are probably more appropriate ways of analyzing this data but this approach did reveal some exciting trends.  By convention ecologists report effects as "statistically significant" when there is less than a 5% chance that they are in error in reporting that two study populations differ.  This is usually reported as p<0,05. By this metric none of the responses among students was significant.  That being said several difference in responses to daydreams based upon the two landscapes were very close to this cut off point.

For instance, self reported energy levels after contemplating the urban nature scene averaged 3.25 compare with 2.375 when the living room was viewed.  Calling the two populations of viewers different in their energy levels is probably “safe”.  The probability is about 5.8% that they differ by chance (p=0.058) – good enough to be interesting.   

Students arose from their micro-slumber with an average playfulness score of 3.375 when they viewed urban nature but a mere 2.375 after dreams of a living room.  The p-value associated with differences in playfulness scores was 0.065, enough to be also worth thinking about.

There were no other substantial differences in the response of viewers.  I did detect a greater restlessness of my living roomers during their 5 minutes of contemplation.  In contrast, the nature viewers were almost uniformly still and engaged in their meditation.  I guess I just thought that this was cool!  

The conversation was interesting after the test.  But, I will invite the students in the class to comment if they care to.

Now, I am no social scientists, and one thing I have learned from my social science colleagues in recent years is that survey design if a complex business.  On top of this there are many design limitations in the implementation of the study.  For instance, I clustered the hand outs in the room so that students would not look at their neighbors and have a scene other than their designated one to think about.  The replication is, of course, poor.  And frankly, I didn’t have any particular well articulated question in mind, or theoretical framework in which I was working.  I was basically tooling around.  To be very clear, this is not a publishable piece of work, being designed to swell a conversation.  All of this being said, I think we were all a little shocked by the results.

Oh, in case you are wondering half of the nature contemplatives solved the brain teaser whereas only a third of the indoor crew answered correctly.

[Update: I reran this experiment with 18 more students in May 2013 - same results, almost exactly.  The reported energy difference were even stronger.  The same methodological limitations should be stressed, but the results remain, to my thinking at least, intriguing!]

---

[1] RS Ulrich (1984) View through a window may influence recovery from surgery Science Vol. 224 no. 4647 pp. 420-421

[2] Ans = 3 (but you knew that!)

Three Urban Pilgr-images Part I

If it's Friday at noontime, then it's URBAN ECOLOGY

I have not been this excited about a class in a while, and frankly I am always excited about my classes!  So, it should be hefty and satisfying…for me at least. 

We will be using the new text (an edited collection) called “Urban Ecology: Patterns, Processes, and Applications” edited by Jari Niemela. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199643950.do 

Although the course is designed for advanced undergraduates, I will expect them to develop a graduate level understanding of the broad themes of the emerging subdiscipline of urban ecology.  At the very least students should be able to contemplate a series of research-oriented questions in this field when they graduate the class.

I have yet to finalize the syllabus - the plan at the moment is to survey the field by means of a series of questions:

1.         What sorts of questions are answered by urban ecology?  Why is the systematic ecological investigation of cities a relatively new thing?  To what extent is urban ecology an extension of more general ecological theory to urban circumstances, to what extent might urban ecology transform general ecology?

2.         Why do more than 50% of us globally live in cities?  That is, what sequence of events resulted in us being primarily an urban species?  Especially interesting to me is thinking through the evolution of permanent architecture, something that emerged only a few instants ago relative to the age of the species.  We also ask, with some vigor, what exactly is a city?  And we conduct a fairly rapid assessment of the history of cities, concentrating especially on 20th C – present day.

3.         Cities are built habitat – in order to function adequately they must minimally facilitate the transfer of goods and service to the human population and in turn whisk away their shit.  That they do so only minimally is pretty clear in some historical and contemporary circumstances.  That they do so in a manner that encourages human flourishing is also apparent in some circumstance.  So we ask:  how, in very general terms, does the development of cities transform the urban environment, and alter the flows of goods and services into and away from cities?  Included in this section will be an examination of urban climates, hydrological transformation, and soils.

4.         What are the patterns of vegetation distribution in cities?  Elsewhere, I have distinguished between the “intentional forest” and the “interstitial forest”, that is, those aspects of urban vegetation that are deliberately planted and those that are more spontaneous – either weedy vegetation that springs up in highly disturbed situations in the city, or vegetated systems that are remnants of earlier times. 

5.         What are the patterns in the distribution of wildlife and arthropod communities in cities?  Urban wildlife represents an especially distinct community of animals.  How do they survive, how does an animal adapt to life in the city.  What factors explain the recent encroachment of less familiar animals into the limits of the city?

6.         What is the state of ecosystems service provisioning to and within cities?  We will use the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment rubric for evaluating services (provisioning, cultural, regulating and supporting services) and apply it, in very general terms, to cities.  There is less emphasis in the Niemela book on supporting services like decomposition and nutrient cycling than I’d like so we will supplement the book quite heavily here.

7.         Cities can be conceived as coupled human-natural systems – what is the theoretical underpinning for, and the consequences of, considering cities in this way?  Can the CHN perspective alter the way in which we might manage resources in the city or is this just a fancy way of stating the obvious?    In this section we’ll also inspect governance theories and see what they have to offer by way of conceptualizing the future management of cities.

8.         Is Green Infrastructure a useful perspective for promoting the use of ecological principles in urban planning?  We will primarily use the Chicago Wilderness Green Infrastructure vision as a tool for examining this question.

9.         What are the influences of city design of human health?  As part of our inspection of this topic we will read Richard Louv’s work (Richard will be at DePaul in April).

10.       The cities of the future – will they confirm our worst suspicions or most optimistic dreams?  This section will examine the history of utopian and dystopian visions of our environmental future.

More often than not my classes have a whiff of philosophy about them.  Sometimes this is fine, I hope, sometimes not, I fear.  But I will do my best to resist my philosophical urges so that we can concentrate the natural and social sciences in this version of the Urban Ecology course.  These sciences define the scope of our reading; that being said I feel confident that I am forgetting something… suggest additional themes if you feel inclined and I will update my topic list in the coming weeks. 

Also, look out for descriptions of the lab project.

More than likely I’ll video tape the lectures and post them on the blog.  Feedback appreciated.