Baltimore Ecosystem Study Director's Web Log

Post-Industrial Baltimore

2012-02-01T14:32:00.000-05:00

Baltimore is often called a “post-industrial” urbanregion. What set of cultural andtheoretical assumptions does this label invoke? The industrial and post-industrial tag emerges from the Modernistprogram and discontent with it.

What is Modernism?


The industry window at Zion Church

The cultural program of Modernism, which like any culturalprogram is a mix of theoretical assumptions, assertions of boosters, and avernacular mythology, is a view that held sway from the late 19th throughmid-20th centuries. Modernism involvesassumptions that progress, driven by industrialization and urbanization,improve society and result in a sequence of development. At the pinnacle of that development was thenorth temperate, industrial metropolis. Although initial examples of industrial development led to dangerous,polluted, and disease ridden settlements, the leavening of progressive urbanreformers in the late 19th century ushered in the “sanitary city.” The sanitary city ideal mitigated the ills ofthe industrial city, and is most often what people think of when they envisiona “modern” city. Such cities suffer lessfrom local pollution, treat wastes released downstream and downwind, provideeffective infrastructure for transportation and sanitation, and ideally containsome natural amenities for the benefit of citizens, for example.

Discontent withModernism

There are at least two problems with the Modernistdevelopment model. One is that there hasproven to be something “after” the modern. Of course that doesn’t mean something beyond time, but it does suggestthat the development model has shortcomings. The Modernist, industrial city was assumed to be the epitome of nationaland regional development. Perhaps peoplethought that once achieved, such a modern city would persist indefinitely. Now it is clear that is not the case. Industrial, sanitary cities in many northtemperate regions have retreated from the high economic activity, populationdensity, and investment in infrastructure and buildings that they enjoyed attheir zeniths. Former industrialpowerhouses in the Midwestern and Northeastern US, or in eastern Germany andEurope, have slipped in size, productivity, and prestige. They have become post-industrial.

An Opening forSustainability

Baltimore City's Sustainability Website

Of course, the wisest cities, including Baltimore, arepoised and actively attempting to take advantage of this shift as anopportunity to become more sustainable and to provide an attractive and safesocial, economic, and biophysical environment for old and new citizens. So there can be positive outcomes of theshift from the industrial ideal.

Global Failure ofModernism

The second shortcoming of the Modernist development model isits application on the global scale. Itappears in the damning phrase, “developing country.” This application seems to assume that allhuman settlements will evolve through some deterministic sequence, for example,from bucolic agricultural commodity markets, through raucous trading centers,and ultimately to efficient industrial production machines. Associated with this shift is the humandemographic transition, in which the initially high birth and mortality ratesassociated with more agricultural life styles are gradually replaced by low birthand death rates per capita with improved sanitation, medical care, access toeducation, and the shift from farm to diverse forms of industrial labor.

A Capetown, South Africa township.

The assumptions of deterministic development seem to poorlymatch the reality in many parts of the world. Northern hemisphere industrial and labor development in fact exploited locallyequable climates, abundant water for drinking, power, and transport, and drewon resources and people from elsewhere. In particular, industrial production continues to draw on globallydistributed oil, gas, and now even biomass stocks. Do the “developing” countries have access tothis kind of resource base? By whatvulnerabilities are settlements in the Global South, located as they often arein arid and semi-arid regions, or low lying coastal zones, constrained? Are contemporary populations in the“developing” world fixed or mobile relative to regional economicopportunities? The differences, somejust now emerging, between the tidy model of development derived from theGlobal North, and the novelty and diversity of motivations and forms of urbanizationin the Global South, suggest that the Modernist narrative, and the mercantileto industrial to sanitary city transition, has limits in understandingurbanization as it now exists throughout the world.

UnderstandingUrbanization without Modernism

Our post-industrial city, and improved understanding bycomparing it with the diverse forms, social, and ecological implications ofurbanization throughout the world, can both benefit by acknowledging the limitsof the Modernist development model. Ourparticipation in the Research Coordination Network for Urban Sustainability isone tool to advance the theory and practice of urbanism without recourse to theModernist conceptual and political model.

The Year of Adaptive Processes

2011-12-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

The new theme for research in BES emphasizes adaptiveprocesses as a key to understanding and working with urban sustainability. Because of its importance, the intellectualtheme for BES this year will be socio-ecological adaptive processes.

From Sanitary to Sustainable: The Guiding Idea

To review a bit, BES III takes the transformation from thesanitary to the sustainable city as a major ongoing environmental shift thathas the potential to affect all aspects of the city-suburban-exurban system ofBaltimore. Sustainability is a sociallyagreed upon set of goals that accounts for environmental, social, and economichealth of the total urban ecosystem. Itnecessarily incorporates social values.

The Science Supporting Sustainability

But what scientific information is needed to advancesustainability, and to evaluate the degree of success in achievingsustainability? The concept ofresilience, which is both a powerful metaphor of change and adjustment is thenext link in the intellectual path to understanding and working withsustainability. Resilience, as mentionedearlier in this Web Log (http://besdirector.blogspot.com/2011/01/resilience-ecology-evolution-and.html)is the ability of a system to experience internal and external shocks and stilladjust and persist in a dynamic form. Resilience can have socially desirable and socially undesirableoutcomes, and that is judged against the three-pronged sustainability goalschosen. The system of automobile basedtransport in metropolitan America is resilient, but in some ways,an environmentally unfortunate one. Wetlands are a resilient aspect of coastal systems affected by hurricanesand storm surges. Resilience per se isneither good nor bad. Sustainability,when the goals are well chosen, may admittedly involve trade offs, but at leastthose trade offs must not neglect off hand such things as social equity andecological function.

Making Resilience Work

Figure 1: The Adaptive Cycle

Resilience is on the one hand, a metaphorical conception,and on the other a very general theoretical framework cast in the form of the “adaptivecycle” (Figure 1). How does such ageneral concept get translated into something that can be measured andtracked? The answer is to use adaptiveprocesses to fill in the details of how systems develop, how they react tostresses and disturbances, and how they periodically reorganize.

Resilience Depends on Adaptation

What are adaptive processes? They are the structures, fluxes, and interactions that allow systems toadjust to sudden or gradual changes. Social and biogeophysical features can contribute to the adaptivecapacity of urban systems. Theliterature suggests a number of general kinds of adaptive processes (Figure 2). It is these features which BES needs toconcentrate on in the coming year. Howdo our ongoing, long-term measurements support the scheme of adaptiveprocesses? What kinds of trends can bedetermined and can they be interpreted in terms of the resilience cycle andsocially described sustainability goals? What new measurements or analyses might be required? Are there clear parallels between various socialand biophysical adaptive processes?

Figure 2. The determinants of adaptive capacity, shown as adaptive processes in social and biophysical realms. Of course the processes in the two realms interact.

Toward Improved Understanding of Adaptive Processes

Over the coming year, discussion of adaptive processesshould suffuse all our activities and research discussions. Then, during our annual meeting in October,we may be in a better position to evaluate the state of adaptive processes, andto understand how they affect the transition from the sanitary to thesustainable city. Addressing this issuewill undoubtedly take a long time. It’sa good time to start.

Invitation to a Book for BES Community Members

2011-11-30T10:44:00.000-05:00

Urban Socio-Ecological Research:

Concepts,Contrasts, and Conclusions from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study

Introduction

This document outlines ideas for a synthesisvolume for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study Long-Term Ecological Researchproject. It invites explicit proposalsfor chapters by members of the project and details what is required in thoseproposals. The document lays out ageneral structure and philosophy of the volume. Because such syntheses are crucially important contributions andproducts of LTER projects, the editors ask that members of BES study thisdocument and respond with proposals that advance the strategy outlinedhere. Mechanisms, deadlines, andplanning opportunities are laid out below.

We have a distinctive story to tell

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Researchproject is widely recognized as a paragon of modern urban socio-ecologicalscience. After nearly 15 years ofresearch, education, and community engagement in a complex, spatially extensivecity-suburban-exurban system (CSE), there are insights to share,generalizations to examine, and gaps to highlight. Therefore, we wish to produce an editedvolume to synthesize the findings, to link the perspectives of differentresearch traditions, and to illustrate the benefits of interacting with diversecommunities and institutions in improving the understanding of Baltimore’secology in the broadest sense.

Both paper and e-book formats will be published.

The story is distinctive for several reasons. One is the excitement about theory. Does the study of urban systems, includingcity, suburb, and exurb, require new or altered theory? How has standard, disciplinary theory beenrevised and advanced by studying the built and inhabited environment? Built environment as a concept encourages usto unpack the term “urban.” Therefore,the synthesis is not to be a simple, empirical compilation.

Not only do we presume that ecological theory is necessaryfor understanding cities, but that the study CSE themselves is necessary forboth improving theory and human wellbeing. In the contemporary world of seven billion persons, more than half ofwhom live in urban systems, understanding cities as socio-ecological systems isa necessity. Such studies contribute newmethods as well as to theory and practical applications. BES represents an urban research program thataims to meet all these needs. BES is unique,adaptive, and has evolved. We wish topresent our recipe as both a model and a foil for others interested in urbansocio-ecological research and application.

The book will be organized around an attitudethat theoretical and methodological novelty are both important. In addition, such novelty should make adifference in how people view and manage the city. A seminal conceptual contribution of BES isthe shift from urban ecology as studying ecology in the city, to studying ecology of the city. But while wetake this insight as an important inflection point in urban ecology, how thefield might evolve in the future is also important. What are the implications of the shift fromecology in to the ecology of urban systems? We must answer this broader question by examining a trajectory ofknowledge: “We thought this, we learned these new things, and this is where researchand application need to go.”

We wish to produce a book that people, especially aspiringurban socio-ecological researchers, educators, and practitioners will actuallyread and use. We do not wish to producea sterile reference volume crammed with endless lists of data. Rather, we aim for a lively, provocative,risky volume that helps set the tone for the next generation of urbansocio-ecological research. Simplysummarizing past contributions would count as failure. The synthesis should point to and givecontext and meaning to the mass of rigorous and important data that BES hascontributed.

A challenge to authors

A book allows more freedom for novel content.

The authors must commit to the agenda outlined above. We intend this book to be a substantiallynovel contribution, not a rehashing of empirical papers that might appear in scholarlyjournals. Specific new tasks will beaccomplished by each chapter. Theeditors provide a structure for each chapter to conform to, and questions eachmust answer.

First, the book will recognize that there are several levelsof synthesis. This will be laid out inthe preface. BES has contributed tosynthesis 1) within disciplines, 2) across disciplines in social andbiophysical sciences. The book willfurther highlight synthesis 3) across chapters via shared questions, and 4) acrossthe different scales or geographies various chapters examine.

Three goals of the volume

Each goal will be represented by a series of chapters. 1) The first goal is to present the development and justification of the BaltimoreEcosystem Study. This section willcontrast BES with earlier schools of urban ecology, explain the local andexternal roots of the project, and place the understanding to be summarized inthe context of urban transformations now underway globally. 2) The second section of the volume willsummarize the theories examined, the approachesemployed, the knowledge generated, and the empirical gaps remaining inthe Baltimore Ecosystem Study. Eachchapter must highlight both the theoretical and empirical contributions andneeds within its topical scope. Finally,the third section will summarize the major themesand needs that the research, education, and community engagement haveidentified. These insights will bepresented in the form of urban socio-ecological principles, and the remaining priorityneeds for urban socio-ecological science, education, and application.

In Section II each chapter mustaddress several questions (Table 1).

Table 1. Questions to be Answered by Chapters inSection II of BES Synthesis Volume.

1. Whattheory did you use? To help with thistask, a definition of theory is provided elsewhere in this document (Box 2).

2. Howwas that theory changed by application in an urban system? Urban is used here in the broadest sense, as acity-suburb-exurban complex, spatially extensive system (Box 1).

3. Wasthat theory changed by interdisciplinary integration? If so how? In particular, integration across both social and natural sciencedisciplines is of interest.

4. Whatdid you learn? How does this comparewith information from other or contrasting cities?

5. Howwas the knowledge applied to one or more of the following realms: education,public understanding, and policy?

6. Whatis needed next? Such needs can addresstheory, methods, and translations, among others.

The book will conclude with chapters that synthesize 1) theprinciples of urban ecology that emerge or are addressed by BES research, 2)the similarities and differences between findings and expectations fromBaltimore as compared to other urban areas, and 3) the pressing questions andissues for urban socio-ecological research.

Invitation to contribute a chapter

The editors will commission several chapters to set thecontext for BES and explain its historical development and research andengagement strategies.


An LTER synthesis volume.

We also invite members of BES to present proposals for thechapters in Section II, via an e-mail to the BES Co-Principal Investigator listserve. A PDF form willbe delivered along with this document to solicit brief nominations for chapters. If you don't get an invitation but want one, contact Project Facilitator, Holly Beyar at beyarh at caryinstitute dot org.

The form will provide space for a two or three sentencesanswering each question stated earlier (Table 1), plus some additionalinformation about potential and committed coauthors.

Fill in the digital form and return it via e-mail to HollyBeyar at the address spelled out aboveby 9 January 2012. This will give theeditors chance to prepare for the January meeting described below.

Next steps

The proposals, the general structure of the book, and aschedule for completion of the writing, will be discussed at the QuarterlyResearch Meeting on January 18, 2012.

The agenda for the January 18 meeting will include:

· Review of purpose and audience of the bookproject.

· Meaning and scope of theory.

· Scope of the introductory and context chapters(Section I) and the summarizing chapters (Section III).

· Discussion of chapter proposals for Section II.

· Breakout discussions to refine and consolidatechapters, if necessary

· Schedule and milestones for project completion

If you have questions, please contact Steward Pickett, MorganGrove, Elena Irwin, or Chris Swan, who will serve as editors of the book.

References

Here are some sources on the structure of theory in ecology,plus two references that examine the use of ecological theory in urban ecology.

Niemelä, J. 1999. Is there a need for a theory of urbanecology? Urban Ecosystems 3:57-65.

Pickett, S. T. A., J. Kolasa, and C. G. Jones. 2007.Ecological understanding: the nature of theory and the theory of nature, 2ndedition. Springer, New York.

Scheiner, S. M. and M. R. Willig, editors. 2011. The theoryof ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Swan, C. M., S. T. A. Pickett, K. Szlavecz, P. Warren, andK. T. Willey. 2011. Biodiversity and community composition in urban ecosystems:coupled human, spatial, and metacommunity processes. Pages 179-186 in J. Niemelä,editor. Handbook of Urban Ecology. Oxford University Press, New York.

Ecology and Policy

2011-11-13T08:36:00.001-05:00

Many researchers and educators are concerned that the knowledge they generate can be used by society. However, this takes active effort because policy makers and environmental managers are busy and don't have the time to ferret out arcane scientific results. Fortunately, there are experts in our academic communities who understand how best to shape messages and to engage decision leaders, whether they be in communities, in agencies, or in congress. A new book published by the Ecological Society of America is available to help with the task of connecting with policy makers. Here's some further information garnered from their materials:

"ESA has published a new booklet, “An Ecologist's Guidebook to PolicyEngagement." The guide provides advice and resources for engaging withdecision makers at various levels of government. It also includes overviews ofenvironmental laws, federal agencies, tips on effective communication, andinformation about policy awards and fellowships for young scientists. To orderas an eBook or print copy, please go to ESAeStore."

Long time readers of this web log will remember a post summarizing the BES Communicating Science training held earlier this year. That meeting summarized some insights for dealing with the policy world: Communicating Science

BES II Project Outcomes

2011-11-01T09:38:00.001-04:00

What's This All About?

Second story bays, Charles Village neighborhood, Baltimore. BES LTER Photo.

BES, as a Long-Term Ecological Research project, is funded in six year increments. BES II actually lasted for seven years due to a change in the scheduling of the grant cycle by the National Science Foundation (NSF). We are obliged to produce a formal report to NSF that summarizes what we have done and what its broader impacts are. This report is technical, encyclopedic, and detailed, and we will make it available when it is finished. However, NSF also requires us to prepare a "plain language" summary which is posted on the Research.Gov website. For the interest of the BES community, I'm posting that "Project Outcomes" report here.

A Premier Urban Research and Education Platform

Over the last seven years, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study(BES), Long-Term Ecological Research project has consolidated as acomprehensive, multidisciplinary platform for urban socio-ecologicalresearch. It has demonstrated thatconcepts fundamental to mainstream ecology, such as the ecosystem, thewatershed, and the shifting patch mosaic, help to understand the linked,human-natural components of cities, suburbs, and exurbs. The knowledge generated has helped educate citizensand students about nature and natural processes in cities. BES results have helped managers and policymakers 1) to identify new opportunities for urban watershed management, 2) toenhance urban tree canopy and its benefits, and 3) to employ ecologicalprocesses and amenities in neighborhood revitalization. An important product is a new classificationof urban land covers that combines social, physical, and biological features.

Sarah Ann Street, west Baltimore. BES LTER Photo.

Knowledge About Ecosystem Processes

BES has produced new knowledge about urban stream behavior,documenting their disconnection from floodplain and ground waters. It has shown increasing salt pollution instreams the long-term, and shown the effectiveness of stormwater “bestmanagement practices” in old residential neighborhoods. Findings of stream research focused watershedmanagement beyond the near-stream zone, and subsequent research on urban treecanopy documented reduced exposure to UVB radiation and reduction of the urbanheat island effect. The urban heatisland has been shown to be very patchy in its potential negative effects onpeople, and hotspots of urban heat are distributed inequitably throughout themetropolis. Other pollutants beyond heatare also patchy, with nitrogen deposited from traffic exhaust being both higherin general magnitude than expected, and concentrated around travelcorridors. The capacity of the urbansystem to absorb carbon (C) dioxide has also been documented, and daily andweekly patterns confirm the relationship of C dynamics to the activity patternswork and travel. The vegetation in Baltimoreresults in less release of C to the environment than would occur without treesand lawns.

Biodiversity and Spatial Dynamics

The biological organisms other than people also haveimportant roles in the urban ecosystem. Theidentity of some animals has been homogenized across different cities, asexpected, but local specialization still exists. Urban soils contain a rich community ofnative and introduced species that contribute to soil metabolism and to theabsorption of carbon dioxide and nitrates, taking these polluting compounds outof circulation. New communities ofaquatic animals establish in the novel habitats of stormwater detention ponds,and provide nutrient cycling services and support foodchains. Notable members of some aquatic habitats arethe introduced mosquitoes that can transmit West Nile virus (WNV) from birds topeople. The composition of mosquitocommunities shifts from rural to urban waters and containers, increasing therisk of WNV in the city. Birds have beenshown in other cities to depend upon the wealth of neighborhoods, but inBaltimore bird diversity responds to the structure of the tree canopy indifferent neighborhoods.

Socio-Ecological Processes

BES research has evaluated other important interactionsbetween the social and the biological ecology of Baltimore. BES social scientists have discovered how thedistribution of environmental "goods," such as parks and streettrees, has changed over time in Baltimore, and how access to these amenitieshas varied among different groups. Resultsshow that African Americans in Baltimore today enjoy a high degree of access toparks and playgrounds compared to African Americans in other U.S. cities. Examination of the history of environmentalzoning variances documented inequitable decision making in Baltimore'spast. However, our research also showsthat Black Baltimoreans are the beneficiaries of an "inherited"landscape. In fact, a long history ofsegregation, both formal and informal, limited African American access to parksand playgrounds until large numbers of white residents left the city in the1950s and 1960s. It was only then thatthe city's black population "spread out," gaining access to parkfacilities once considered off limits. An unexpected legacy of segregation is thecontemporary association of toxic release inventory sites with white, workingclass neighborhoods. Although areas ofgreater tree cover have less crime, not all residents consider urban trees tobe an amenity. For decades, both blackand white residents of East Baltimore have opposed municipal tree-plantingefforts. In contrast, neighborhoodassociations during the first half of the 20th century were adept atattracting amenities, such as new street trees, while keeping out unwanted landuses. BES social scientists adopted thetheory of market segmentation to document the role of lifestyle differentiationas a key to understanding the shift from an industrial to a knowledge andservice based economy in Baltimore.

Riparian sycamore along the Gwynns Falls. Photo by Charlie Davis.

Broader Impacts

The findings of BES have contributed to education ofunderserved communities, ecological urban design and planning, and discoveryand valuation of ecosystem processes within the urban matrix from city to exurb. Most fundamentally, BES has documented theexistence and mechanisms of ecosystem processes in complex urban environments. The BES research platform is poised to helpinform, evaluate, and educate about the sustainability initiatives now beingimplemented in the Baltimore metropolitan region.

What is a Metacity?

2011-10-25T15:56:00.001-04:00

Metacity: Beyond Mere Size

Hong Kong. Copyright Brian McGrath.

The term “metacity” was introduced by the United Nations asa way to capture the increasing size of the largest urban aggregations on theplanet. Previously, the term “megacity”had been the largest category of city, referring to any urban area comprisingmore than 10 million people. With anumber of cities, such as Mexico City, Tokyo, Lagos, breaking the ceiling of 20million inhabitants, UN Habitat chose to introduce a new term. The sequence of city size classes nowincludes city at the lower end, grading through increasing sizes of metropolis,megacity or hypercity, with metacity representing the largest agglomeration.

BES Co-PI Brian McGrath suggested that the emphasis on sizeof the city by this classification left much to be desired. For example, the metacity category includedsuch different cities as metropolitan New York and Lagos, Nigeria. The first is a city with sanitaryinfrastructure, and long established control over the form and location ofgrowth. Lagos, on the other hand, likemany huge cities in the Global south, is plagued by sprawling in-migration and lackof well developed sanitary infrastructure, among other constraints. Lumping these cities together in terms ofmere size fails to take account of the vast social and environmentaldifferences that they exhibit.

A Dynamic Concept for Urban Design


Shenzhen. Copyright Brian McGrath.

McGrath pointed out that a better use of the metacityconcept was to highlight the dynamic and patchy changes that cities were experiencing. If cities are considered to be complexspatial mosaics, reflecting spatially distinct changes in the buildings,infrastructure, human demography, and economic investment and activity, theidea of metacity could help focus on those things, not just mere size. A dynamic, spatially patchy metacity couldjust as well be shrinking as a result of declining residential density orindustrial activity, as it could be growing explosively in an unplanned manner.

Metacity as a Parallel between Ecology and Urban Design

HERCULES patch mosaic, Glyndon, Baltimore.

When McGrath introduced me to the metacity concept, and itsdynamic refinements, I was immediately struck by the parallels with some “meta”terms in ecology. Metapopulations andmetacommunities are characterized not by size, but by being “systems of systems.” A metapopulation is a collection of spatiallydiscrete populations of a species that may periodically be linked by migration,exchange of genes, or sharing information. Different populations in the collection can grow, shrink, or even goextinct relatively independently. Similarly, a metacommunity is a collection of different species that isrepresented by spatially distinct patches. Large, physically powerful disturbances are a cause of loss of differentmembers of a collection of a particular kind of community. Likewise, metacities can comprise patchesthat are changing as well as patches that are relatively stable. The changing patches can be shifting insocial or architectural composition, population density, access to transportationand other resources, and in many other ways. Baltimore as a city-suburban-exurban system is surely a metacity, with growth,shrinkage, economic and demographic shifts occurring in different patchesacross the five county metropolitan area. In other words, a metacity and various kinds of meta-ecology shareimportant dynamic features.

So the metacity concept is an excellent way to link theconcerns, theories, and activities of socio-ecological research with urbandesign and regional land use decisions. This concept and its power as an integrative tool is explored in a newpaper by McGrath and myself. If you wantto have a look at the original publication, follow this link:

http://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/2/4/55/

Why Does BES Have Rules for Running Meetings?

2011-10-08T11:10:00.001-04:00

There are two answers to thisquestion. First, a wise man, Prof. M.Gordon “Reds” Wolman, suggested at our first meeting that we needed some rulesto guide how such meetings were conducted. Reds, who died last year, was a famous and creative scientist, anaccomplished administrator, and a leader in the Nation's scientific discourse. I first met him when he chaired a committeeof the National Research Council on human population and environment. So when Reds suggested something, we knew tolisten.

Second, we needed rules to be sure that all voices wereheard during our meetings. This idea reflects that discussions should be conceived of first as opportunities to listen, and only second as opportunities to talk. But because this "golden rule" of meetings is rarely recognized, more operational rules are needed to ensure all voices are heard. BES is acomplicated organization, involving people who don’t work together all thetime. In fact the people who participatein BES represent a wide variety of cultures – ranging from academics, togovernment agencies, to community and non-governmental organizations. At any given meeting of BES there are likelyto be graduate students, middle school teachers, senior professors, municipal managers, communityactivists, and technicians present. And thislist doesn’t exhaust the roster. Consequently, we needed rules to be sure that everybody knew that theirideas would be heard in the dialog. Thisreason is what an evolutionary biologist would call the ultimate cause. The fact that Reds Wolman suggested that weneeded rules is what an evolutionary biologist would call a proximate cause.

So here are the rules we came up with at our firstquarterly research meeting.

1. Identify a leader for the discussion. This is to ensure that someone is looking outfor the discussion as an inclusive process. This person is responsible for making sure the rest of the rules arefollowed. His or her priorities areto be sure that all voices are heard, that no voice dominates, and that thediscussion achieves its stated goals. Ifa meeting is a long one, it is not necessary for the same leader to beresponsible for the whole meeting. Different leaders may be chosen for different time periods, or fordifferent topics. In identifying aleader, a useful corollary is to choose someone to take notes. This person may also be responsible forreporting the key points of the discussion if it is a part of a larger meeting. Don’t expect the leader to take notes. He or she has enough to worry about in managingthe discussion in a fair and transparent way.

2. Raise your hand to be recognized. In order to participate in the discussion,people should raise their hands. Theleader should call on people in the order in which they raised theirhands. Exceptions can be made for apoint of clarification about a comment that was just made by anotherspeaker. An exception is also possibleif a person wants to respond to something that the last speaker has justsaid. However, the leader is in charge,and can call people in order regardless of what their points pertain to.

3. There should only be one conversation at a time. If people begin to have side conversations,the leader is empowered to halt them and refocus on the larger group. If there is a need for breakout groups orsubsets, the group can organize itself into smaller clusters for suchconversations. But in any meeting, orclustered discussion, there must be only one speaker at any one time. If the leader calls for cessation of a sideconversation, this must be respected.

4. Once you have been recognized, do not monopolize thefloor. Make your commentsbrief, or your question clear. Do nottalk just to hold the floor. If peoplehold forth, the leader may reasonably ask them to come to their point so the discussion can move on.

5. Not all silence is bad. Sometimes leaving a little space for peopleto consider a response, or to reflect on what’s going on is a good idea.

6. If the discussion is a long one, the leadershould arrange for breaks for physiological comfort or for getting some fresh air. Ifdiscussants need to take a break before the leader calls for one, people shouldfeel free to either propose a break, or simply excuse themselves as need be.

7. The leader should call for at least one“two minute drill” as a summarizing tactic. If the discussion is a very long one, saylasting a whole day, it may be appropriate to have two minute drillsperiodically. A two minute drill ensuresthat even those who have not participated in the discussion before the two minute drillhave a safe place to comment. A twominute drill invites each person in the group to make a comment. It can be a summary point, identification ofan issue that was missed or under-emphasized, or a point of agreement or disagreement. Basically, discussants can make any briefpoint that they wish. It is important tokeep these brief and focused, however. The modifier “two minute” refers to the brevity of the entire exercise,not to the amount of time that each member may take. The leader can specify the amount of time, orask participants to wrap up if they are taking excessive time.

8. The leader may change the rules. But at all times, it should be clear what therules are, and everybody should be prepared to follow them.

These, then, are the Baltimore Rules. We have found them to be very helpful inensuring orderly, open, and fair discussions. We don’t have many rules in BES, but these are fundamental, and have helped build our respectful, collaborative, interdisciplinary culture.

A Presentation on BES III: Research, Education, and Engagement from the Sanitary to the Sustainable City

2011-10-06T16:19:00.000-04:00

By now, friends and members of BES are familiar with the new research strategy we have developed to guide our third grant cycle. A new six year grant is an opportunity to keep up important long-term measurements and experiments, but is also a chance to make important changes.

The fact that the Baltimore metropolitan area has several jurisdictions that have generated substantial, broadly based sustainability plans suggested that one change BES should make was to study how those sustainability efforts in fact changed the social-ecological dynamics of the city, suburbs, and countryside as a linked system. Earlier posts in the Director's Corner laid out the planning process that led to this decision. Other posts described the proposal and the strategy it embodied.

Now I have posted a narrated slide presentation on Nature Precedings that gives an overview of BES Phase III. To hear the narration, use the PowerPoint version. The PDF version will just have the slides. The presentation does violate the YouTube rule: It is long, about 20 minutes. But for those who like slides, and who enjoy being walked through them, have a look.

Here's the link:

http://precedings.nature.com/documents/6499/version/1

Here's the via Digital Object Identifier (DOI):
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6499.1

Here's how to cite the narrated presentation:

Pickett, Steward. Introduction to the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Research Project, Phase III. Available from Nature Precedings (2011)

Where is the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES)?

2011-09-18T04:38:00.000-04:00

BES as Place

Why in Baltimore of course? But that’s not a complete answer. Our research, education, and community engagement are of course focusedon the five-county conurbation that is centered on the city of Baltimore. There, we focus on built, modified, and nativewatersheds, which are perhaps better labeled catchments. We also focus on airsheds, captured by data fromthe first permanent urban tower that measures the composition and physicalfeatures of air that represents either the city or the suburbs, depending onthe wind direction. And there areneighborhoods and networks of social institutions to be understood as well asthe social interactions and characteristics of entire counties and the wholecity-suburban-exurban system. Thesevarious locations are the geography of understanding and interaction of theBaltimore Ecosystem Study. This is thegeography of discovery, sharing knowledge, and interaction with communities onthe ground – the three activities that make up BES

BES as Extensive Community

But BES has another, much more extensive geography aswell. BES itself is a community ofscholars, practitioners, and stakeholders. That community is most dense in the immediate region of Baltimore. You can see a list of all the current membersof the BES community by clicking on this page of our website: http://beslter.org/frame3-stuff.html This community consists of people who arepart of the Long-Term Ecological Research program grant from the NationalScience Foundations, or who are supported by the USDA Forest Service or the USGeological Survey to conduct research, educate, or reach out to interestedcommunities. Some of the people listedas Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs) have written their own grants to variousfunding agencies to support their work in Baltimore. Another key group is collaborators. These are people who make and affect environmentalpolicy in the city, surrounding counties, and the state of Maryland. They are also people who manage variousagencies that are concerned with the environment, such as sustainability, parks,public works, housing, and health.

A map of the United States shows the spatial extent of thecommunity of scholars and practitioners that makes up BES. Green dots represent Co-PIs, and blue dotsrepresent collaborators. We don’t reallytry to represent each individual or institution in the Baltimore regions,because there are so many. But the dotsspread more broadly represent the different locations where at least one personwho participates in BES is located. Somedots represent several people.

There are some dots that lie outside the borders of theUS. These point to collaborations inplace or being developed, with international partners. This is perhaps especially appropriate becauseurbanization has become one of the major environmental trends on theplanet. The growth, spread, change inpattern, and connectivity of urban areas is truly a global phenomenon. Understanding Baltimore is facilitated bycomparisons with older cities in Europe, and with exploding cities in Asia. Comparison promises to be an important toolin understanding and applying the concept of urban sustainability. In fact, I have to admit that I am writingthis post in France, where I have been invited to participate in a summerschool session, entitled “Urban Environment: A Complex System.” I look forward to learning more about theexciting urban research underway in France, and to sharing findings andorganizational lessons learned from BES.

So you see, the answer to the question, “Where is BES?” isactually spatially complex. And this spatialcomplexity points to the richness of expertise and institutional commitmentsrequire to attempt integrated socio-ecological research in a major conurbation.

Swamps and the City: Part II

2011-09-12T14:28:00.000-04:00

A special guest post by Prof. Grace S. Brush, Johns Hopkins University.

My last post discussed how the role of people in shaping the swampy systems of the Everglades had been erased. That erasure paralleled how biophysical processes had in the past been ignored in thinking about urban systems. Because Baltimore is a coastal city, it occurred to me while I was writing that post, that there were insights about the role of swamps and wetlands in the history of our city that would be worth exploring.

Prof. Grace Brush

Who better to lead us on that exploration than Professor Grace S. Brush, one of America's leading paleoecologists -- a scientist who studies past environments and the ecological networks that existed within them, usually by using fossil pollen or larger preserved parts of plants or animals? Here is her essay, reminding us of Baltimore's important swampy heritage, and the implications for the Chesapeake Bay that result from the reduction or obliteration of those many swampy features. S.T.A.P.

THEVERY WET PRE-COLONIAL LANDSCAPE OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY, by Prof G.S. Brush

A prevailing question today, as thehistorical fish harvests of the Chesapeakeand other aquatic systems are greatly diminished, is “What was the land reallylike, when the water was clear and seafood abundant?

Pollen and seed records in dated sedimentcores indicate a forested landscape 300 years ago with most herbaceous plantsbelonging to wetland species. Pre-colonial soils exposed along river cuts contain water lily pollen.Sedge seeds were common in the sediment. Rainfall runoff was minimal in apervious forest floor rich in leaflitter and decomposing wood. Hencegroundwater was constantly recharged, creating wet soggy ground. Seeds of submerged macrophytes in corescollected in present day tidal fresh water marshes record open water at thoselocations in pre-colonial time.

Beaver landscape (Morgan 1867)

Historical maps published in 1897 show springsat the mouths of many tributaries. Druid Hill Park in Baltimore City has structures builtfor drinking water for horses at sites where ground water surfaced. They are now dry. Upland trees such as blacklocust and species of oak are replacing wetland species like green ash and boxelder on floodplains of many streams. This phenomenon, which we have described as a “hydrological drought” isbeing reported in various parts of Eastern and Midwestern USA. All through the watershed, a very largebeaver population created many marshes behind the numerous dams they built oninland streams All of the evidencepoints to a wet environment characterized by many marshes, swamps and ponds.

Baltimore, 1792, with agricultural clearing.

Within a very short time followingcolonization, much of the watershed was converted to agricultural land,accomplished by cutting down the trees and draining and filling in wetlands andmarshes. This conversion was facilitatedby the near extinction of the beaver population by the fur trade in the 18^thcentury. The soil that eroded from the lesspervious agricultural land -- along with fertilizers -- was transported bystreams to estuarine waters. Excessnitrogen, a major constituent of fertilizers, is particularly harmful becauseof its many potential transformations in the soil and water, making itavailable for generations of plant growth. It can be removed from the system only by denitrification, wherenitrogenous compounds are converted to elemental nitrogen and returned to theatmosphere. Denitrification occursalmost entirely in wet, anaerobic environments, such as marshes and swamps. The pre-colonial landscape, which was ideallysuited for denitrification, was destroyed as nitrogen loads and sourcesincreased.

Baltimore 1801, showing extensive, wet lowlands.

Along with overfishing, thetransformation of the landscape from wet to dry contributed directly to thefishery decrease in the Chesapeake Bay, asnitrogen not recycled to the atmosphere became a major contributor to increasedeutrophication, anoxia and habitat loss in the Bay ecosystem.

Grace S. Brush, PhD, Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

The map of the beaver dams is from Morgan, L. H. 1867. The Americanbeaver and his works. New York: Burt Franklin (reprinted 1970).

Swamps and the City

2011-08-16T20:24:00.000-04:00

Laura A. Ogden, of Florida International University is an anthropologist and Co-Principal Investigator of the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER. She is also a regular collaborator with the BES community and has been involved with us and others in cross site projects concerning environmental justice, and the social ecology of lawns. She has additional projects addressing land cover change, political ecology, and vulnerability to hurricanes, among others (http://fcelter.fiu.edu/about_us/personnel/profiles/index.htm?resnum=156&display=projects). So her recent book, entitled Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades (2011, Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis), is of interest to our community.


Photo by Deborah Mitchell.

Ogden’s book ranges widely, dealing with how Native American peoples, white alligator hunters, scientists, conservationists, and even outlaws, created various conceptual and literal landscapes in the Everglades. The reciprocity of the natural – alligators, snakes (real and imagined), mangroves, hydrological fluctuations, and fire, with the human – lifeways, laws, territorial claims, the politics of scientific exploration, and the establishment and enforcement of state and national parks, are all part of swamplife. This concern with the hybridity of landscapes in the Everglades parallels our conceptualization of the Baltimore region.

Hybrid Landscapes

Even though the Everglades is now and has always been a hybrid human-natural system, as Ogden so engagingly shows, mainstream or outside culture has neglected or erased much of the entangled human history and intimate inhabitation of the Everglades. Reading this book is a trip through several good yarns, interesting interviews with people who once made their living by hunting in the ‘Glades, and documentation of how some key habitats came to be considered wild and imminently conservable. For example, Royal Palm Hammock was seen by early scientific explorers as a pristine tropical outlier, untouched by human history. Any Indian effects were disregarded as having been essentially a part of the wild landscape. However, the hammocks, as high ground in a watery ‘scape, were precious sites for all who occupied, lived in, traversed, or made their living in the Everglades. Such was the case prior to European contact and through the early 20th century when even the poor white residents were finally dispossessed to establish the national park. Indeed, the intensity of human entanglement with the hammocks is illustrated by the evidence that many were at least partially constructed by accretion of the debris of people’s everyday life before the historic record began.

Overcoming Erasure

Much of the academic and practical approach to the Everglades has intentionally or accidentally erased the human side of the story. Ogden succeeds in bringing the human history of the Everglades and its erasures to light. She puts the humans back in the picture. She also highlights the role of class as well as ethnicity in such erasures.

Overcoming human erasure parallels one of the big tasks we have in the Baltimore as well. Urban systems have been predominantly seen as strictly human places. Of course there are deep roots of knowledge about the entanglements of nature in cities. But the weight of the academy has been on the human side of the scale. We, like Ogden in Swamplife, struggle to understand how humans and nature are entangled in the system we study. However, in the City-Suburban-Exurban system the erasure has been opposite to the one she overcomes in her book. We are peeling back the assumptions that have allowed people to erase the natural in the city. So there are many ways in which the city and the swamp are fighting the same intellectual battles. People and nature go together, whether in town or out.

Natural Experiments of History

2011-07-27T09:44:00.000-04:00

The title of this essay is the same as a book edited by Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, published in 2010 by Harvard University Press. The book explores the general method of natural experiments applied to human societies and history. It was tempting to title this essay "Cultural Experiments," because the emphasis of their book is on inhabited places, social institutions, and human actions. But the cognitive dissonance of natural, experiment, and history in one title is an appropriate mental stimulus for the message they present.

Experiments are controlled comparisons deliberately set up to expose the effect on one or a very few variables on some structure or process. Greatest confidence is afforded by laboratory experiments where all external conditions can be held constant, or field experiments where even the conditions outdoors are kept as constant as possible while varying the presumed cause. A randomized comparison between a treatment and a control is still the statistically most unassailable approach. However, even with this paragon of knowledge creation, great creativity must be brought to bear to ensure that the external conditions are indeed well known and no causative factors are left unaccounted for. Furthermore, there is a trade off between rigor and realism in experiments. The more controlled a situation is the greater the distance from messy reality.

Patterson Park, Baltimore

Experiments in Culture and History

What are researchers to do if they can't control the environment and vary one or two factors at a time? After all, history can't be redone, and there are ethical constraints to manipulation in inhabited systems. Many people have assumed that this means the power of experimentation is unavailable in such situations. This would disadvantage those who are interested in complex systems, in much of human agency, and in historical causation. What influence do the conditions of the past have on the outcomes in the present?

This is the problem that Diamond and Robinson address. They open and close the book with chapters outlining the issues and summarizing the successful strategies for dealing with found or natural experiments. Indeed, the cultural and historical comparisons, and the comparisons of socio-ecological conditions that the book presents are far from some haphazard stumbling across a good comparison that has the hallmarks of an experiment. Great care is taken in evaluating the similarities and differences among the control and the treatment historical or initial conditions.

In addition to the introductory and closing chapters, the book addresses several cases:

· Polynesian cultural evolution,

· Frontier boom/bust cycles,

· Banking institutions and development,

· Comparisons of environment and social controls on Pacific islands,

· The consequences of the slave trade in Africa,

· How colonial land tenure practices influences current public goods,

· The role of the French revolution in speeding the transition to capitalism.

Baltimore: Boom and Bust on Frontier?

The chapters are written in a very approachable style while at the same time explaining the rigorous assessment of conditions to ensure the validity of the comparisons. All repay attention. However, perhaps of greatest relevance to the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, with our new emphasis on the transition from the sanitary to the sustainable city, is the chapter by James Belich on "Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies" (pages 53-87). The chapter covers the American West, and the British "West" consisting of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The transfer of human, financial, and material capital from an established metropolitan area to a frontier, with an associated increase in vectors of mass transfer; media and modes of communication; and booster institutions and businesses characterize booms. The creation of local infrastructure during a boom is a major commitment. Busts, crashes, or panics, on the other hand are characterized by reduced human population growth and reduced economic growth. They can last for two to ten years, and generate by an economy dominated by new or increased exports. The "conquest of distance" is a feature of successful export recoveries.

There are repeated cycles of boom and bust throughout the global, Anglo-American Wests. What relevance does this kind of thinking have for the transition from the post-industrial, sanitary city to the sustainable city of the future? It's a question we should consider. And attention to the methodology of cultural or natural experiments in an urban LTER is also an important matter. So this book has double relevance to BES.

A Moving Field Guide

2011-06-21T07:02:00.000-04:00

Seeing the World

Science starts with noticing the world – what plants and animals do, the changes in vegetation over time – or in wondering what’s going on beneath the surfaces we see. Careful observation continues as we devise instruments or methods to extend our initial view, guided by models and concepts. Experiments are another window for observing new conditions, perhaps ones that don’t usually exist in the real world.

Whatever makes people notice the world and its denizens more closely, or even at all, advances science and the appreciation of scientific knowledge. I was fortunate to recently see how dance opened the eyes of about a dozen 5^th and 6^th graders from east Baltimore. Members of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in cooperation with Dr. Mark Twery of the Forest Service and Dr. Marla McIntosh of the University of Maryland led the young people through several activities that sensitized them to their immediate environment, familiarized them with the compass directions, and provided opportunities to observe aquatic and terrestrial situations in Patterson Park.

Moving To Notice/Noticing To Move

Those of us who are trained in science are used to paying close attention to the world, guided by years of experience under the tutelage of mentors and collaboration with colleagues. After a while it becomes a habit, and paying close attention can be almost automatic. But how do you get a 5^th grader to notice the environment and organisms?

Members of The Dance Exchange company had a plan. Get the kids to relax into movement. Get them to do some simple orienteering, and ask them to observe something special and personal along the way, pay attention to each kid. Some of the company members had backgrounds in environmental education, and along with the visiting experts, engaged in discussions that refined or generated new understanding about life, energy, and leaves of giant oak trees, seed dispersal in little leaf linden, tasty fruit of Juneberry trees, and migration of birds. The students also thought about the connections, some plausible and some quite fanciful, that might have led to the demise of a giant mulberry tree.

The dancers and the kids invented movements to represent the insights they learned along the way. The swirling motion of dispersing winged seeds, the shivering collapse of a dead tree, the upward swoop of water rising in the trunks of trees, an imagined encounter with a bushy tailed skunk that might depend on one of the trees, and the left handed, right handed, and ambidextrous shapes of mulberry leaves were some of the observations and ideas that made it into the dances. It was a special treat to see the creative “ah ha moments” as the professional dancers translated ecological facts and observations into motions – sometimes small, and sometimes grand in scope. These moves were combined into dances that also embodied personal reactions to the local environment, memories of trips, and events in the kids’ lives.

Dancing To Remember

Over the course of a couple hours in the park, a goodly amount of ecological knowledge was imparted or reinforced. The two groups of students and their accompanying Dance Exchange members collaborated to generate some impressive and engaging sequences of moves. These dance sequences became the “Moving Field Guide,” a lively phrase created by Cassie Meador of the Dance Exchange. The Moving Field Guide added a new creative dimension to the usual records of scientists: making notes, recording measurements of dimensions and processes in the material world, and interpreting those observations in the light of existing concepts and knowledge. Thinking about dance movement as a way to facilitate the entry of novice observers into the complexities of ecological structures and processes was new to me. It proved to be a powerful tool, and I suspect one that will help cement new ecological knowledge for the students who helped make the Moving Field Guide, Patterson Park, June 2, 2011.

Adaptive Explanations in Cities

2011-06-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

Cities are hard to explain, no doubt. Within and between cities, social capital, historical contingency, economic resources, and the deployment of power are well known explanatory variables. One kind of explanatory process, however, has been notably absent from the roster of possibilities in urban socio-ecological research. Surprisingly, that missing element is one of the most fundamental explanatory tools of modern biology and ecology – the adaptation of social organisms as groups. The application of the principles of natural selection (Box 1) to social groups may also have a role in understanding the social structure of cities and urban agglomerations, and hence the effects of social groups and neighborhoods on environmental processes.


Prof. David Sloan Wilson

This lapse is being corrected by the scholarly and practical efforts of Professor David Sloan Wilson, of Binghamton University, a part of the State University of New York system. Prof. Wilson is one of the world’s leading evolutionary ecologists. He has studied the adaptation of groups of organisms in both model and actual situations for decades. Although some biologists find adaptation of groups to be problematical, preferring to leave adaptive explanations at the nexus of individuals and the populations they constitute, the weight of models and experimental outcomes has convinced many, including myself, that this kind of explanation has great power and legitimacy. The emergence of altruism against the seemingly unassailable momentum of individual benefit has required forceful explanatory tools. Groups that exhibit greater altruism and cohesion are expected to be more successful than those which do not promote group benefit.

Can this explanatory hypothesis apply to cities? Prof. Wilson and colleagues are investigating this possibility by comparing various opportunities for “prosociality”[i] in Binghamton, NY. In BES, we might refer to social capital or neighborhood cohesion as related concepts. The arenas in which prosociality is being examined in Binghamton range from the reward systems in high school classes, to the willingness of persons in different neighborhoods to do good deeds for strangers. A recent article in the journal, Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110608/full/474146a.html) has summarized in very engaging and clear terms the concepts and the many community-based activities that Prof. Wilson is employing in Binghamton. His work is aimed at understanding the social structure of this post-industrial, upstate New York State city, but he and his colleagues are also engaged in activities aimed at improving the quality of life for the 47,000 residents in their many neighborhoods.

At the BES annual meeting, which takes place on 19-20 October 2011, Prof. Wilson will deliver the keynote address. This will give us a chance to think about how the hypothesis of adaptive altruism of groups can be applied and tested in Baltimore. For background on Prof. Wilson and his exciting work with Binghamton communities, see not only the piece in Nature referenced above, but also his own Web Log (http://scienceblogs.com/evolution/) and that of the Binghamton Neighborhood Project (http://bnp.binghamton.edu/).

I’m excited to explore how an adaptive model and the hypotheses it generates can help us better understand and promote the connection of science and society, and the prospect of people's well being in the Baltimore region.

[i] Prosocial - Beneficial to all parties and consistent with community laws and mores; Contributing to a beneficial outcome by negotiation, problem solving, problem analysis, clarification, or respectful behaviors (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prosocial).

The photograph of Prof. Wilson is from http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/

Complexity: The Hidden Nugget in Jane Jacobs' Book

2011-06-08T22:43:00.003-04:00

Well, perhaps it’s unfair to call it hidden. It is after all the topic of the final chapter, entitled “The Kind of Problem a City Is.” In that chapter, she explores the nature of cities as complex systems, stimulated by the work of pioneering cyberneticists as summarized by Dr. Warren Weaver[i]. But I have to admit that I missed it the first time around, back when I read Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities in college. (No, you may no ask what century that was!) But I can perhaps be forgiven for the lapse, because the theory of complex adaptive systems, which has become a mainstay of ecological sciences in the past decade or so, was hardly well known back then. (OK, it was around 1970 when I read Death and Life.) Yes, some physical scientists and mathematicians were in on complexity, but it was not something that had sent its tendrils into many other disciplines at that time. Now we have a journal of Biocomplexity, and the National Science Foundation has made grants in complexity and similar things, such as coupled natural-human systems, for over a decade.

Jane Jacobs (from http://www.whatwesee.org/)

Two recent reminders highlight Jane Jacobs’ insight that cities are complex problems. In 2010, I was on a Martin Luther King Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. My host, the ecologically savvy landscape architect, Anne Whiston Spirn[ii] mentioned to me one day that she had been horrified to have exploited the significance of Jacobs’ final chapter on cities as complex systems. I went back and read that last chapter again. It is a stunningly prescient piece.

The second reminder is in Witold Rybczynski’s Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities, published in 2010 by Scribner. Rybczynski is one of America’s best known urbanists, and a writer whose work is easy to read. In chapter 2, he reviews the three big ideas of urbanism from the early 20^th century[iii], and notes, among others, Jacobs’ critique of all of them. His reminder came toward the end of the chapter, where he points to her assessment of cities as complex systems, and quotes some of her pithier insights into urban complexity. Cities should not be approached as sets of separate problems to be solved individually. They are complex wholes, but only because of the interaction of a plethora of communities and processes.

To be sure, Rybczynski (OK, I’m calling him WR from now on) has criticisms of Jacobs. She was, after all, originally a journalist and not a trained urban scholar. One important criticism is that she, like many other urbanists, has perhaps made a bit too much of physical characteristics such as density, diversity of use, and pedestrian vigilance. WR notes that at the same time she was extolling the values of these characteristics based on her own experience, especially in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Lewis Mumford cited other New York neighborhoods possessing these same characteristics as notoriously unsafe and crime ridden. WR also notes that some of her criticisms, such as the City Beautiful movement being only about civic monuments, and not about incremental improvement in neighborhoods, were incorrect.

These musings are relevant to the theme of the third phase of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER: the transition from the sanitary to the sustainable city. The sanitary city is merely complicated. It is seen as a collection of individual problems to be individually solved. In reality, the problems that cities have to solve are systemic. They link across media of transport, such as air, water, and surface, across scales from households to regions, and across social and environmental realms, for example. It is not sufficient to solve problems by discipline – parks for the trees, transportation for traffic flow, solid waste, storm water, sanitary sewers, etc. Each of these issues has implications for the other, and in fact, each has energy or material flows that connect with others. The sustainably city goal recognizes cities as complex systems and the solution of urban problems to be multifaceted and require integration across disciplines and existing bureaucracies. Jane Jacobs was there in 1961.

My meanderings in this essay have three points. First, Jane Jacobs was ahead of her time in proposing cities as something we would now call complex adaptive systems. She called them complex problems. Second, a re-reading of Jacobs is worthwhile. Finally, Rybczynski’s new book on the Makeshift Metropolis should probably be the next BES Book of the Month. I’d recommend it to all members of our program, and others interested in urban systems.

Dimensions of complexity (from Cadenasso et al. 2006)

There’s one more thing to say about Jane Jacobs as an exemplar for BES. She took fine scale observation of the city seriously. She did not approach the city with the goal of supporting a specific general theory of urbanism, but to understand how cities were structured and how they worked. She was a consummate empiricist, and her insistent observations have contributed to new theories of the city.

[i] Familiar to ecologists through the Shannon-Weaver diversity index, which is based on information theory, one approach to complexity.

[ii] http://www.annewhistonspirn.com/

[iii] These are 1) the City Beautiful, 2) the Garden City, and 3) the Radiant City.

References:

Cadenasso, M. L., S. T. A. Pickett, and J. M. Grove. 2006. Dimensions of ecosystem complexity: heterogeneity, connectivity, and history. Ecological Complexity 3:1-12.

Interest in Urban Resilience: A Burgeoning Frontier

2011-04-25T14:51:00.000-04:00

Resilience is becoming an increasingly important concept in contemporary ecological science. Since the introduction of the resilience cycle, an open ended, ecological concept has guided the understanding of this important process (http://besdirector.blogspot.com/2011/01/resilience-ecology-evolution-and.html). Resilience has been a major stimulus for research in socio-ecological systems. It has been useful in understanding fisheries, and landscapes in which people manage both economic and subsistence resources, for example. However, most research and thinking about resilience have focused on systems outside of urban areas.

How the resilience concept can be applied in urban areas is a new theoretical and empirical frontier. This frontier was a major focus within the 2011 Resilience Conference, held from March 11-16 in Tempe, Arizona. The conference was entitled “Resilience, Innovation, and Sustainability: Navigating the Complexities of Global Change. This conference brought together several hundred researchers, educators, and policy experts to explore the status and future of resilience research and application. The conference program, videos and slides from plenary presentations, and some abstracts appear at http://www.resilience2011.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=26

The Stockholm Resilience Center sponsored a one day workshop prior to the meeting, at which BES was well represented. Along with researchers from the Resilience Center, the workshop included members of the Central Arizona Phoenix (CAP) LTER, and many representatives of the newly minted Urban Long-Term Ecological Research (ULTRA)-Exploratory projects. In this workshop the question was how does the concept of resilience as it applies to urban areas relate to the perceived need for adaptive transformation of urban areas, as socio-ecological systems, in response to global changes.

Important concepts and variables, which will prove useful to BES as we put into operation the research themes of BES III, were raised and discussed at the workshop. The organizers of the workshop, led by Thomas Elmqvist of the Stockholm Resilience Center, Urban Theme, proposed several key topics for evaluation, quoted here (with slight change in footnote numbering):

“Social-ecological resilience: the amount of disturbance a social-ecological system can absorb and still remain within the same state or domain of attraction, and the degree to which the system can build and increase its capacity for learning, adaptation and transformation. Important variables: (i) enabling high rates of innovations, (ii) maintaining diversity (both social and ecological), (iii) maintaining modularity, (iv) restoring lost ecological functions, (v) tightening feedback loops, (vi) building social capital and address equity, and (vii) building overlap in governance (cf.[i]).

“Social-ecological transformations: long-term, non-linear fundamental change in the ecological, economic, social and infrastructural domains of a social-ecological system. Important variables: (i) access and response to information at different scales, (ii) learn continually, (iii) participate in knowledge networks, (iv) use and restore ecosystems in innovative ways to reduce vulnerability, (v) engage multiple stakeholders, to benefit from embedded arenas for innovation, (vi) retain and, preferably, increase institutional flexibility (cf.[ii]).”

A further opportunity to interact and share ideas with others concerned with urban resilience was a Panel presentation and discussion, held during the 2011 Resilience Conference proper. This panel, entitled “Urban transitions – on urban resilience and human-dominated ecosystems,” included presentations by Steward T.A. Pickett – “On Urban Resilience and Transformations – lessons from urban research in North America,” and Henrik Ernstson – “On Urban Resilience and Transformations – lessons from urban research in Europe.” Pickett’s talk placed the guiding transformation of BES III, that from the sanitary to the sustainable city, in the context of other actual and potential transformations. The framing document for the panel, authored by Thomas Elmqvist, contrasted resilience in cities with resilience of cities, entailing a contrast of within urban areas to a concern with resilience across broader systems of cities. In addition, a recurrent issue that arose in discussing improved resilience of cities was the problem that maladaptive infrastructure or governance structures may be “locked in.”

Morgan Grove, along with several coauthors including Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, represented BES in the Panel on “An ‘All Lands, All Owners’ Approach: Urban Sustainability, Governance Theory, and Poly-Centric Networks.” He spoke on the topic of “Causes and consequences of urban stewardship footprints over time: a socio-spatial approach.”

These activities are just one indication of the excitement of applying resilience to urban systems. The BES III research theme – from sanitary to sustainable city – is firmly placed on this new frontier of understanding and applying the concept of resilience. Resilience serves as a crucial set of mechanisms by which sustainability can be achieved, and brings the values motivating sustainability into the realm of testable and measurable variables.

[i] Walker B and Salt D. 2006. Resilience Thinking. Island Press.

Ernstson H, S van der Leeuw, CL Redman, DJ Meffert, G Davis, C Alfsen, and T Elmqvist. 2010. Urban Transitions: On Urban Resilience and Human-Dominated Ecosystems. AMBIO Published On-line (DOI: 10.1007/s13280-010-0081-9)

[ii] Loorbach, D. 2007. Transition Management: New Mode of Governance for Sustainable Development. International Books, Utrecht.

Does Science Need Art?

2011-04-19T10:54:00.005-04:00

Here’s something to think about, from a recent article in the Business section of the Christian Science Monitor, one of the “newspapers of record” in the United States (www.csmonitor.com/business/2011/0323/What-do-Apple-GM-and-P-G-share-Design):

The need to hire 100,000 more teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math to make American students globally competitive is so urgent that President Obama has called it a ‘Sputnik moment.’ Yet a growing chorus of educators say something is missing from the plan.

‘It’s necessary but not sufficient’ to focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), says Larry Thompson, president of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla. ‘You don’t go anywhere with STEM if you don’t have STEAM – and that’s [adding “A” for] the arts, the creative part.

The article goes on to illustrate how major business enterprises have used design to promote competitiveness and engage consumers. What does this have to do with science? The same mind-stretching and creative generation of new ideas and exploration of the connections among existing ideas that powers art is a crucial part of the scientific process.

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in The Matter of Origins. Photo by Jacyln Borowski, courtesy Liz Lerman Dance Exchange

On one hand, people connect art with free association, leaps between different images, and metaphor, while neglecting the role of discipline and planning. In contrast, the popular mind thinks of science as a sterile, rule-based pursuit, devoid of or even hostile to creative process. But the generation of the hypotheses to be tested, the application of new techniques or approaches, and the way studies are planned and laid out are all stages on which creativity acts. Both scientists and society have given too little credit to the role of creativity in science. Scientists as well as artists and writers keep journals for ideas, sketch and doodle networks of ideas and interactions, and use analogy and metaphor to generate their raw materials.

Art in all its forms -- from sculpture, through writing, to dance -- uses skills, talents, and habits that stretch the imagination and open the mind to new ideas. So then a connection of art and science can be a part of a healthy diet for the sciences. STEAM power, as President Thompson said.

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study is exploring this connection. During the 2009 Annual Meeting performances and interactions with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange inaugurated our exploration of the connection between arts and science. For more on this nationally known and environmentally and scientifically engaged dance company, see http://danceexchange.org/ Did the experience of resilience through the eyes of artists help the socio-ecological researchers think more clearly or creatively about the concept? That’s hard to document. But the opportunity to ask ourselves such questions as these seems important: What does my research have to do with art? What images and connections does art suggest that have parallels in science? What does my work say that can be represented in some artistic way? Or perhaps simply the opportunity to open the mind, and take a chance on a new way of seeing a problem or a solution is good enough.

More interactions are planned with the Dance Exchange, which is headquartered in Takoma Park, MD. With the participation of USDA Forest Service researchers, members of BES, and school and after-school programs, members of the Dance Exchange will lead participating children in the creation of ‘moving field guides,’ a live, performative collection that animates local ecology in the Potomac watershed through a combination of movement, visuals and the act of outdoor walking. The project will be implemented in the spring and summer of 2011 through a series of sessions involving artists, scientists, and approximately 50 students ages 8-12. See more on this activity in the BES News.

We’ll also be experimenting with the connection between art and science in future BES Annual Meetings. Illustrated “zines” by secondary school students and photography are on the agenda for the near future. Music is a possibility too. A little mind stretching is good for the creative aspects of science. A little art is good for connecting with the larger world too. These are two needs of science that art can help satisfy.

Insights from the BES Communicating Science Meeting

2011-04-15T20:06:00.001-04:00


Common strategies for effective communication of science

This meeting, led by Dr. Chris Swan of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with my assistance, was designed to improve the ability to communicate the outcomes of our science with other members of BES and with the larger world.

To do this, the meeting drew on experts in journalism, policy, the use of video, science writing for the public, effective use of slides, and writing scientific papers and proposals. Unfortunately, our expert on photography was ill and was unable to attend. However, advice from other sources on photography is available, as noted below.

A brief way to summarize the insights of the meeting is the graphic at the head of this post. It suggests seven general strategies that are relevant to each of the communication channels explored in the meeting. Only one example is inserted in each cell of the table, but many more were presented and discussed in the meeting. Notice that the strategies are relevant to all communication channels and audiences.

Communicating Effectively with Reporters. Tim Wheeler, a veteran environmental reporter at the Baltimore Sun, shared his advice for interacting with journalists. He advised breaking down a story to its simplest form. Talk as you would to a non-scientist friend, and keep in mind that the reading level of a 12 year old is the target. This is not because people are not smart, but because they do not have a sophisticated background in science. It is crucial to keep in the question in mind, “What’s the point?” Scientists tend to pay too much attention to the qualifiers and the details.

Be patient and persistent in dealing with reporters. Remember that they have a lot on their plates. Also be aware that the best stories are those that develop over time. It helps to provide leads before the time arrives for a press release.

When you present your work, remember to think visually. Be prepared to share good video or photography to illustrate the story. Be sure that you have arranged access to photography, or are available for photography and are ready to provide access to research sites or laboratories for illustration or context.

If you depend on a press release to spread the word, read the press release before it goes out and be sure it is accurate and clear. Backtracking and correcting press releases will put you and your work in a bad light. Be careful that press releases don’t go beyond the science in suggesting policy relevance. Be sure you’re in town when the press release goes out. It’s bad to have your press office have to say, he/she is out of town and isn’t available for comment or photography. Coordinate with your press office to avoid such lapses.

Be prepared to contact more than one media organization. Pick your best shots, but do not be afraid to put out a wide net. These days, the electronic media provide powerful connections. So consider interacting with bloggers and podcasters Add such journalists to your contacts list and invite them to your scientific meetings. If you don’t have a press office to help with this, there is nothing wrong with reaching out directly.

Specialized science journalists, such as Wheeler at the Sun, are becoming a rarity (http://www.thenation.com/article/unpopular-science). They deserve our support and cooperation as they are among the best prepared and most experienced translators of the scientific process and its outcomes to the public. Subscribe to publications that have such people on their staff.

Guides and manuals available are available on communicating with the public. Here are some good recent ones:

Nancy Baron (2010). Escape from the Ivory Tower: A Guide to Making Your Science Matter. Published by Island Press, Washington, DC.

Cornelia Dean (2009). Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public. Harvard University Press.

Warner, J. S., G. M. Lovett, and J. Cadwallader. 1991. Scientists and journalists: a primer for scientists who talk to reporters. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. Volume 72, number 2, pages 116-118.

Communicating for Policy. The process of communicating with policy makers was covered by Julie Palakovich-Carr, a Senior Policy Associate with the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). She holds a degree in biology, and followed that up with Senate staff experience. AIBS is one of the foremost organizations engaged in translating science into the policy arena (http://www.aibs.org/public-policy/).

Who are important policy makers? Congressional and senatorial staff are important. They are the ones who do the research and often draft legislation. University administrators are also important policy makers. Engaging the policy process improves public awareness, and gives researchers a chance to share our passion for science and the benefits it can bring to the public discourse. An important outcome of effective communication of the insights and knowledge that science generates is to help sustain and improve investments in science.

In interacting with policy makers, scientists occupy a unique position. They are demonstrably respected and held to be honest brokers. They provide tools, such as data and models, that are useful to decision makers. Furthermore, policy makers commonly express a desire to hear from scientists. However, very few policy makers are trained as scientists, so it is scientists who need to meet the needs of policy makers.

To engage policy makers, scientists will need to employ a different paradigm for communication than they use within science. In science, the focus tends to be on “how” something is known. But for policy relevance, the focus should be on why rather than how. In other words, the big picture implications are key.

To communicate with policy makers framing the message appropriately is an important skill. Frames that often engage policy makers are economic growth and jobs, education and training of new generations, energy independence, national security, human health, and global competitiveness. A framing issue particularly relevant to Baltimore might include Chesapeake Bay recovery. What frames might be used require scientists to know the policy audience to be addressed. So, preparation with a clear understanding of the mindset of the intended audience is crucial. Which issues do they support or eschew?

There are some useful tools for helping scientists to formulate their message. One common one is the communications triangle, cast as an equilateral figure. The main message is placed in the center of the triangle and cast as a complete sentence. An action verb and active voice are helpful. The Three points of the triangle are the talking points, along with concrete support. To construct such a triangle, it is a good idea to brainstorm many possible talking points and potential supporting points before deciding on the three main points and the most compelling supporting points for the audience. The sides of the triangle represent the expected transitions between the three points.

It is important to prepare for meetings or interviews with policy makers. Scientists should anticipate the policy questions about their research. Furthermore, they should anticipate the arguments that opponents might make. These might include costs of implementation, unknowns, or controversies. Scientists should also be prepared to “bridge” from hostile or problematic questions back to their talking points and support.

To summarize effective communication with policy makers: Be succinct; stay on message; recall that repetition is key to being heard; approach questions with respect and bring focus back to your main points if the questions wander; be conversational and human; offer short anecdotes and facts to illustrate; avoid jargon and acronyms. In other words, explain as you would to a bright but beginning student. Speak slowly, and be respectful, positive, and attentive. If a question arises that is outside your expertise, offer to contact someone who knows about that area. Clarify what is your opinion versus that of your organization.

Things to avoid are overload with information and technical papers. A short one page “leave behind” is better. Don’t lecture. Do not make unrealistic demands or tell them how to do their job. Do not suggest a program to cut to increase funding for your project or profession. Above all don’t talk attacks personally or become partisan.

Additional advice was given on meeting structure and courteous treatment of policy makers’ time. Offer to help in the future if needed. Follow up after the meeting if you promised additional information, and a written thank you summarizing the main points is a good idea.

Several scientific societies offer ways to get involved with communicating with policy makers. AIBS is one of the leading ones. AIBS has a legislative action center available on its website (www.aibs.org) that alerts researchers to actions where their knowledge may be helpful. Also relevant to the specialties in BES is the Ecological Society of America (www.esa.org). These organizations deserve our support and participation. They organize Congressional visit days, maintain data bases of experts, and facilitate testimony on scientific issues. University or agency government relationships offices can also be helpful.

Photography for Communicating Science. Our photography expert, Molly Mehling, was unable to attend. However advice for using photography as a communication tool has been summarized in a number of places. Mehling’s website (http://web.me.com/mollymehling/mollymehling/home.html) contains many excellent examples. The Ecological Society of America has also posted advice on the use of photography on its website (http://www.esa.org/esablog/ecologist-2/ecology-education/taking-a-shot-at-photographing-science-and-nature/). The Ecological Society of America Student Section organizes an Eco-Arts Festival at each annual meeting, chaired by Molly Steinwald (http://web.me.com/mollysteinwald/mollysteinwald/main.html), who is also a photographer.

Members of BES are encouraged to share photographs of their research activities and the contexts of their research at (http://besdirector.blogspot.com/2011/01/bes-photo-album-now-publically.html). Please provide an informative caption, and be aware that posting on the BES Picasa website constitutes a grant of permission to use the photographs for non-commercial, academic and educational purposes both within BES and in the larger community. Indicate in the caption how you want the photo to be credited.

Video and Ecology. Brian McGrath is an architect who uses sophisticated visual modeling techniques in his practice and teaching. A specialist in urban design, he uses film theory and video techniques extensively in his studio mentoring at Parsons The New School of Design and in research for his own design firm, Urban Interface, LLC (http://www.urban-interface.com/). In 2007 he published, with Jean Gardner, Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today. This is the first book that is based on the understanding of how digital imaging differs from the pencil drawing traditionally used in architecture and urban design. It uses theory of imagery developed in cinema. This approach can be especially relevant in urban systems due to their dynamism over time, and the spatial fluxes they support. A patch dynamics perspective resonates strongly with a cinemetric approach to representation.

Cinemetrics of course, measures moving images. It does this by capturing sets of information on changing phenomena. It complements the fine scale, single site modeling of urbanism, and permits understanding of the impact of design on the city. The basic philosophy is of a sensory-motor system, which is fundamental to the organismal perspective. Organisms perceive their environment and react o act as a consequence. Cinema is an extension of this same perspective, and effective use of video requires understanding of this fact. Video in urban ecology and urban design captures the interaction of people and environment.

McGrath illustrated the theory of cinemetrics using clips from groundbreaking movies of the past. What happens when you keep a video camera still? He cautioned that there is too much motion of cameras now that hand held devices are in almost everyone’s pocket. Lack of focus and a sense of dizziness can result in the viewers. Keeping the view still allows us to see the matter flux. That, after all, is a key aspect of ecosystem science. The illustration of this principle was Yasujiro Ozu’s “Early Spring” (Tokyo 1956). The clips showed the power of static framing by keeping the camera still and allowing important motion within the frame. The framing was like a photographic composition to my eye, but gave meaning and context to the motion within it. McGrath invited the audience to notice such key aspects as the angle of framing and the distance to the subject.

Information is transferred through a series of images over time – a timeline. Each scene has enough duration so people understand what’s happening. The timeline presents different kinds of image that generate different understanding or feelings about the scene.

1. Perception image. This kind of shot introduces the environment in which you are working. Perception images place the camera at a distance so that a sense of the overall environment results. In BES the sites where we work offer different perceptions of the city. Perception shots can be relatively short, on the order of 10 seconds

2. Affection image. These are the images that generate an emotional impact concerning the subject. They are accomplished through close-ups, and invite the viewer into an intimate relationship with the scene. Affection images lead to an understanding intimate relationships. Since relationships are the core of socio-ecological research, such shots must be a part of our videographic communication.

3. Impulse image. Such images show a stimulus or an event that can generate a reaction in the actors. There can be different reactions by different agents in the scene. These scenes explain the motivation for actions that may occur immediately or later in the sequence.

4. Action image. These images show the responses to the impulse. In the clips shown, the actions were beautiful motions. McGrath encouraged us to think about our experiments and measurement activities as action images, and to find beauty in them. Action images are medium distance shots. It is important to frame the researchers’ bodies in these shots. Perform to the camera: face the camera and show the action. Science is a process – an action – and the human body is an action agent. This advice works as well for still photography as it does for video. Personally, I have seen too many bad photographs of researchers seen from the read, bending over a plot, obscuring both their faces and what they are doing.

In summarizing the use of the fixed camera, McGrath emphasized that this style of cinema is a tool for understanding environment and agency within that environment. It involves a sensory-motor schema consisting of perception, affection, impulse, and action images. It places the scene of action in a larger context. In essence it is a scaling up and introducing complexity. These ideas resonate strongly with how social scientists and ecologists organize their research and models.

A second major strategy introduced was moving the camera. The example clips came from Jean Luc Godard’s “Contempt” (Rome 1963). McGrath cautioned that even though the camera is moving, it shouldn’t be jerky and random. The lesson learned from this style of film making is to shoot any instance whatever. Don’t worry about whether it is a comedy or a drama. Don’t worry about being a filmmaker. Just be a scientist. The point to capture what you are doing. Possible examples in BES would be moving the camera to show – slowly – the topography or the architecture of a place where we work: Gwynns Falls under the I-95 bridge; the field where soils are being sampled, or birds censused.

Godard has slow pans from a single point. In “Contempt” he shows a couple avoiding one another as they move about their apartment. The film falls in love with the ordinary. Godard employed a continuously moving camera encompassing everything in one scene. There were no cuts from scene to scene. However, within this single scene there was slowness of change and presentation of different framings. The camera was essentially a “third person” in the apartment observing ordinary action that told a story.

The third model was Sensory Motor Breakdown, exemplified by John Cassavetes’ “Faces” (Los Angeles 1968). He was the first to use the hand held camera. This kind of cinematic strategy reveals a thinking processes by representing thoughts and memories. The scene looks very spontaneous and dynamic, but in reality it was carefully scripted. If you have a hand held camera, you have to script something. The scene of anything whatever works with a stable camera. The scripted can represent spontaneous or impulsive motion, but it actually needs to be highly scripted. The camera always anticipates the actor, rather than following the actor. The message for employing this third model is to try to get the components of the scenario from the first theory – perception, affection, impulse, action -- all incorporated.

A powerful result of video is the ability to assembling time images. In a long-term research program getting at history is an important activity. Histories or time series can follow a single agent through different, discontinuous scenes. Alternatively, as in Citizen Kane, history can be assembled via interviews back in time from a present event. Such interviews can interrogate the biophysical features of the human ecosystem as well as living persons and the archival record.

McGrath summed up his advice, for both video and still photography. Recognize three techniques: the permanent camera, the use of a medium long shot to represent infrastructure, and moving cameras to capture interconnections of actors in space. This last approach is especially appropriate for exposing social relationships.

Writing for the Public. Rebecca Wolf, freelance science writer and editor, principal of More Than Words in Odenton, MD, shared the fruits of her long experience with us. Wolf has an urban studies and metropolitan studies background. She began her professional writing career as a medical writer. The topics were challenging to understand and translate. Writing for the public is one of the most important tasks we as scientists have. Writing for the public is potent if the piece reflects the writer as a person and it is clear and concise. But it is hard work and it takes time. The writers who write about their craft are unanimous in he need to rewrite and rewrite.

Scientists have advantages in communicating their work to the public. First, we can tell the stories from experience. Second, the complex process of science can be presented in step-by-step. The big disadvantage is that scientists speak science-ese. We need to translate science stories into common, everyday English. The best assumption about a public audience is that they know nothing about your topic, and they haven’t had science since middle school. They may be smart and curious, but they don’t know the special terms. It is also safest to assume they are busy – they have many other things to read and do. One strategy to discover how to communicate to with the public is to engage people in communities. In other words, actually talk to people and discover their interests and their language.

The stage for good writing for the public is clear thinking. Articulating the purpose or the message is key to successfully conveying science to the public. Once the main message is determined, it is possible to decide what information to muster, what emotions can be engaged, and what support to bring to bear. This provides the basics of the structure you will use. Then, simply tell about it. It helps to envision the relationship of your audience to the project you are describing. How does your project affect them?

Keeping the reader reading is the big job one you have decided on the message and its structure. There are some simple things to keep in mind: Do not use abbreviations and acronyms; Define scientific terms and concepts; Define parenthetically by setting set off in commas; Explain the project within context; Simply explain the concept; Weave any necessary larger scientific concepts into the story step by step rather than introducing them as abstractions right away.

As an example Wolf’s article on the research of Bob Ulanowicz was analyzed. The audience was volunteers at the Chesapeake Biological Lab. The article started with a poetic quote from Muir. Then it worked through some of Ulanowicz’s work framed using the engaging phrase, “web of life within an ecosystem.” Scientific details were incorporated in context within the narrative. It emphasized the human side of the work, presenting Ulanowicz as a person, and highlighted the understandable bits of a complex story.

There are several principles that can be drawn from Wolf’s experience as a writer and editor.

The main principle is conciseness. Clutter is the enemy. Jargon and wordiness sap energy and make a narrative hard to follow. Redundant modifiers are a common flaw that needs to be deleted from public writing. Likewise, qualifiers can muddy the flow and make readers feel overwhelmed. Long phrases are a problem to overcome.

An example of good writing for the public is John McQuaid’s “Mining the Mountains” in Smithsonian Magazine, January 2009. The article showed the effect of mining by mountaintop removal on a town and its inhabitants. He explained the concept of aquatic food webs and their link with the forest through accessible details. The scientist took the writer out to the field to exemplify the components of the story. In this way, the concept was built from concrete cases in the field. Then the knock-on effects of mountaintop removal could be related to something that the readers had come to care about. The article didn’t start with the problem of stream obliteration or the abstract concept of food webs.

Wolf summarized her points this way:

• Think about audience

• Hook audience in first paragraph

• Structure the article for understanding

• Cut jargon and clutter

• Paint a picture

• Be yourself when you write – the 1st person OK

• Have someone unfamiliar with your subject read it for clarity and readability.

Recommended sources:

William Zinsser, On Writing Well.

W. Strunk and E.B. White, Elements of Style

Writing For Scientists. I presented recommendations, strategies, and rules for clear writing within science. Not surprisingly, many of the points echo ideas presented by Rebecca Wolf. My ideas are summarized in an more complete essay available elsewhere on the BES website (http://beslter.org/internal/frame8-stuff.html). It is located under Guides and Templates. Members of BES can access that with a password obtained from our Information Manager, Jonathan Walsh. I’ll just abstract some key points here.

The most important idea in scientific writing is to respect the audience. Don’t make them work to figure out what you are trying to say, or what the structure of your story is. Your job as a scientific writer is to make it as easy as possible for people to understand your message. Scientific narratives are effective if they start from a stated focus, move through a clear structure of support, and bring the story to fruition. In scientific writing, the author should lay out the problem or the point very early in the piece rather than letting the conclusion emerge gradually through the narrative. As a result, scientific writing is often described as “front loaded.” The organization and the order of ideas should be clear throughout any scientific narrative. Simple, straightforward sentences are better than complex, long, and convoluted ones. Exact or plain words are better than vague or fancy words. If a fancy word is required for the flow, use it. But be sure every word plays a role in presenting your case.

Strategies for writing in science echo those in general writing. The first thing to consider in preparing to write a piece is to clarify for yourself who the audience is. Is it the few people who are experts in your specific field? Is it ecologists in general? Is it scientists in other disciplines? One background strategy is the habit of thinking about writing. It is a good idea to read good writers in science and in other areas of life. What makes their writing good and compelling? Having a clear roadmap for yourself, in the form of an outline or a bulleted list of points, is key to moving forward in the writing process. Avoid the temptation to edit while you write the first draft. For some short pieces this is possible, but getting engaged in detailed cleaning up while the words are first being introduced to the paper can be distracting. Try always to leave enough time for your piece to rest before editing. You will be able to see the flaws in organization, support, and style after a time away from the draft. Even with a good sense of writing, there is always the need to have fresh eyes read your piece. A trusted friend outside of your specialty can provide that service.

Some specific rules apply to the things I like to read. These are justified in the essay linked above.

1. More sentences, fewer words.

2. Do not use full justification.

3. Avoid substantive parentheticals.

4. Avoid long series of modifying nouns – noun stacks.

Some of my recommended sources are these:

Lamott, Ann. 1994. Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Pantheon Books, New York.

McMurry, D.A. Sentence-Style Problems. http://www.io.com/~hcexres/style/ Accessed 29 April 2010.

Zinsser, William. 2006. On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. Harper Collins, New York.

“Zinsser on Friday” at the American Scholar. http://www.theamericanscholar.org/zinsser/

Making Effective Slides. Mary Cadenasso, Assistant Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Davis, is known for the clarity of her slide presentations. She has been engaged in mentoring undergraduate and graduate students for more than a decade, and has thought about how to introduce the strategy of effective presentations to diverse audiences. Here are some brief rules I extracted from her presentation. Her presentation is more nuanced and was illustrated very compellingly.

• Here is the main message: Don’t put too much information on each slide. This applies to graphics and text. The distance between you and the screen while you make slides on your laptop is proportionally closer than even the closest viewer in a large room. Slides that have four or five lines of text are the easiest to read in medium to large size rooms.

• If you feel many points have to be mentioned on one slide, consider using short phrases to introduce them, and flesh out each point on a separate slide later.

• Short phrases are better than complete sentences. Don’t construct slides so that people are distracted by reading text while you are saying something else. On the other hand, simply reading detailed text that is on the slides is condescending to the audience and misses the opportunity to engage them as a person rather than a robot. The slides should reinforce, not compete with, what you are saying. This is true of graphical content as well. Default clip art provided with presentation software is hardly ever useful for reinforcing your message.

• If you find that one or two slides are complex, use your pointer to guide people through the slide. On graphs, point out the axes, the units, and the trends you want people to follow. People will go where you point. Do not wave the pointer wildly about, or trace the path of a tornado funnel unless you want to make people ill.

• Avoid the problems of dense slides by using simple animations to build them up. But avoid using animations that are complicated or silly. Again, don’t make people ill.

• Watch out for color schemes that make text or graphics hard to read. Avoid low contrast between text and backgrounds, such as yellow on white. Avoid using red and green as discriminating colors due to the commonness of red-green color blindness. Also recognize that complicated color schemes tend to require ideal projection conditions, such as a new projector bulb and a room that can be darkened well but not too much. Colors typically show up differently when projected than they do on the source computer screen. Consider that when choosing color schemes. Black on white is the safest color scheme for general slides.

• Practice your presentation so that you don’t run out of time. Given that a common fault in slide presentations is that the author tries to say too much in the allotted time, practice alerts you to the need to shorten and focus the presentation. Practice also ensures that you are comfortable with the transitions between slides, and you remember what slide is coming next. Practice using the pointer, and practice doing without verbal tics such as “ah” and “uhm.” Practice looking at the audience and projecting your voice.

Summary. There were surprising commonalties among all the presentations. Here are the features of good scientific communication that apply to oral, visual, video, and written encounters.

• Have a clear point for the piece or meeting.

• Focus on a simple point, and do not present too much detail.

• Respect your audience; they have limited time and many activities competing for their attention. Make your presentation, in whatever medium, as clear and easy to follow as possible.

• Plan for the worst. Power outages, a room with bad acoustics and broken shades, having less time than you were promised, or encountering a hostile interviewer are all real happenings.

• Control the technology, not be controlled by it. PowerPoint can make people dizzy; Word claims to check our grammar.

• Prepare ahead of time. Leave enough time for letting early drafts rest and for your own and friendly editing to provide a fresh look.

• Revise based on input from friendly reviewers or practice with mock meetings or interviews.

The insights shared by the experts at the meeting were extremely valuable, and I encourage members of the BES community to take these to heart. Links will be provided when the talks are made available on the BES website.

Communicating Science for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study

2011-03-30T13:40:00.004-04:00

The theme of the BES Quarterly Research Meeting on Tuesday 5 April is Communicating Science. Featured speakers include Tim Wheeler of the Baltimore Sun, Julie Palakovich Carr from American Institute of Biological Sciences, and science writer Rebecca Wolf. Contributors also include BES members Mary Cadenasso, Brian McGrath, and Steward Pickett.

Topics include Communicating Effectively with Reporters, Communicating Effectively with Policymakers, Making Effective Use of Photography in Scientific Research, Video Techniques in Communicating Scientific Research, Scientific Writing for the Public, Effective Slide Design, and Clear Technical Writing. The morning consists of morning talks discussing best practice and successful strategies for each of the communication types. The afternoon will focus on working groups to provide hands on experience in some of the methods. The detailed agenda, information about location, and alerts of things to bring if you have them are given below.

BES Quarterly Research Meeting

Communicating Science

Organizers: Chris Swan (UMBC) and Steward Pickett (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies)

Tuesday April 5, 2011, 9:00 am-5:00 pm

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

Room 310, University Center, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250

Agenda

9:00 am Coffee—Gather & Schmooze

9:20 am Chris Swan

Associate Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Welcome

9:30 am Tim Wheeler

Environmental Reporter, The Baltimore Sun

Communicating Effectively with Reporters

10:00 am Julie Palakovich Carr

Senior Public Policy Associate, American Institute of Biological Sciences

Communicating Effectively with Policymakers

10:30 am Molly Mehling

Research Associate, Miami University

Making Effective Use of Photography in Scientific Research

11:00 am Brian McGrath

Associate Professor, Parsons The New School of Design

Video Techniques in Communicating Scientific Research

11:30 am Rebecca Wolf

Science Writer and Editor, More Than Words, Odenton MD

Scientific Writing for the Public

12:00 pm Mary Cadenasso

Associate Professor. University of California, Davis

Effective Slide Design

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:15 Steward Pickett

Cary Institute, Millbrook NY

Clear Technical Writing

2:15-4:30 Working groups on photography, video, writing for the public, slide

presentations, interview role play

4:30-5:00 Sharing group work and insights

5:00 Adjourn

Please bring, depending on your interest in the working group breakout sessions:

A digital camera.
A video recorder.
An abstract or short research summary.
A scientific presentation.
Your laptop computer.

We will supply a couple of cameras and video recorders for those who are interested in those technologies but who do not own the equipment.

You may park at the TRC without charge and walk to the Campus Center. You must obtain a permit from Sabrina Strohmier in room TRC 102. Metered parking spaces are also available in the UMBC parking facility near the Campus Center.