This time they’ve gone too far. In this economy, it’s hard enough to find employment as a marine scientist. Marine mammals are taking our jobs!
~Southern Fried Scientist
My research is embedded in political ecology. Though no one can agree on an exact definition, suffice it to say that it’s an outgrowth of geography that focuses on human-environment interactions with specific emphasis on the role of power. It’s a field that is deeply academic and there’s nothing like a week of political ecology discussions to send your head spinning. Also, as the field is new, we like to create terms to help define a disciplinary jargon. In addition, the field’s methodology relies on discourse analysis and units of analysis defined by epistemic communities. Therefore at the recent annual meeting of the Annual Association of Geographers, I spent more time than I was willing thinking about word usage and incorporating some new ones into my syntax.
My favorite quote:
“given it’s mainly men climbing, I’d be interested in starting a rumor that it decreases virility but I thought it would be unethical to start a rumor” on feeling the need to help the Australian aboriginal group, the Anangu people, in keeping climbers off their sacred rock formation (Uluru/Ayer’s Rock)
But read on for my collection of a few gems from my colleagues…
This post was originally published on Earth Day, 2009. The responses I received from it were tremendous, both positive and negative. Were I to write it again today, I would include a discussion of Carbon Offsets and Eco-Guilt.
There is a real challenge in the environmental movement. On one hand, the science is on our side, but on the other hand, there is a growing group within the movement committed to dogma and willing to sacrifice facts for pseudoscience. So, this Earth day, we once again bring you “What the hell happened to the environmental movement?”
Forty-seven years ago, a brilliant, passionate scientist who understood the power of public outreach, noticed a decline in songbird populations, discovered a trend of decreasing egg shell thickness, and correlated this effect with the increase in the use of DDT as a pesticide. After thoroughly and rigorously verifying her results and conclusions, she did something revolutionary; she wrote a book. The publication of Silent Spring in 1962 marks the beginning of the modern environmental movement in America. Its simple, elegant prose made the complex interaction between humankind and the environment accessible to a public that had limited exposure to scientific writing. Like other works of literary science, Silent Spring, wove the scientific method into a narrative; observations, questions, conflicts, discoveries, joy and sorrow. To struggle and to understand, never the last without the first. The beauty of her words still echo with that same power today.
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Did you ever meet that gear-head who had a shelf full of Nalgenes or a trunk full of those reusable shopping bags? At the time, did you stop and think about the environmental impact of these eco-friendly products? In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to take a moment to step back and evaluate the state of our environmental movement.
Yes, at some level these things reduce your personal environmental impact. They save millions of plastic bags and cups from entering the waste stream and therefore our biosphere. At the same time, they promote the consumer culture that created many of our environmental issues in the first place.
Census of Marine Life (CoML) recently released this awesome video of some of the smallest and most beautiful creatures in the ocean. Hat tip @DrCraigMC. Check out the rest of CoML’s YouTube Channel. ~Southern Fried Scientist
When presented with a threatened population in need of conservation, the simplest and most basic question a manager can ask is “how big is it?” Unfortunately, this is one of the most challenging questions to answer. Determining the number of individuals in a population is fundamental to effective management. Small, concentrated populations can be destroyed in a single sweep, while large, broadly distributed populations require more resources and complex management involving many stakeholders.
A population that is easy to sample is rare. Animals move – sometimes over enormous distances. Habitats are difficult or impossible to access. Entire popualtions may be adept at avoiding capture. For most populations, it is impossible to count every individual. In marine ecosystems populations can span the entire globe, and the cost of mounting an expedition to systematically sample all members is huge. In order to get accurate estimates of the number of individuals, ecologists have had to devise statistical techniques to estimate the size of a population.
Read More “Crowdsourcing ConGen – Effective size of a population in flux” »