I'd read fragments of North America's story elsewhere and become intrigued. I knew, for instance, that bison were not "from" here in deep time, but ho...moreI'd read fragments of North America's story elsewhere and become intrigued. I knew, for instance, that bison were not "from" here in deep time, but horses were, and now the situation had ironically been restored (kind of) to its original state. I knew there used to be a rich mammalian fauna that was killed off and largely replaced by Eurasian species at the end of the Pleistocene. But these were just hints of a much larger story, and I wanted to go deeper and see the complete picture.
The Eternal Frontier was exactly the book I'd been looking for, and it for the most part lived up to its promise. It links all the disparate bodies of research - North American paleontology, geology, paleoecology and climatology, and history - into one big environmental history of the continent. It begins with the bottleneck 65 mya at the Chicxulub impact, when the continent was left with most of its niches open. Flannery traces the process of recovery from that event, with its strangely deciduous trees in tropical climates and rapidly diversifying mammals. He moves on to cover the various migration events between North America and its neighbors - first Europe, then Eurasia many many times, and finally once with South America. The origin of each mammal group and its peregrinations back and forth across the continents illustrates the historic depth of discussions of "native" species. Horses and camels evolved here, migrated to Eurasia, went extinct here (except llamas and alpacas) and returned with humans. There are also a lot of bite-sized explanations for modern phenomena, which was a treat. The coevolution between squirrels and nut trees, which resulted in North America possessing among the best suite of edible nuts in the world, stuck out to me. I'm interested in restoring a nut-based diet in North America.
Overall, the book is a superb history. Going much deeper into the past than most environmental histories, it gives an unusually strong sense of the age and majesty of the continent and of evolution. Unlike other books with similarly deep timescales Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years) it is place-specific. That combination of traits makes it an unparalleled text for deep ecology connectivity-thinking. Connie Barlow thought so much of it that she turned it into a seemingly much too long and detailed children's activity. As she puts it, "any telling less than this is shallow ecological history."
For all the awesome material here, there are a few flaws. Flannery concentrates heavily on mammals, with a few pages dedicated to reptiles, amphibians, and birds. He did talk about trees a fair amount, but in general plants were nearly absent, to the extent that he barely noted the emergence of grasses. Extending a similar net to plant evolutionary histories might be more difficult - I'm sure the research isn't nearly as thorough - but it would be appreciated.
In Barlow's review, she praises Flannery's "breathtakingly beautiful prose." Flannery's a fine prose stylist, but this is gross hyperbole. It is serviceable, but not especially eloquent.
I found the central theme a bit weak for some reason. Barlow is deeply taken by it, and I can see why, but Flannery didn't pull it off I think as well as he might have. It is essentially the message of Barry Lopez's Rediscovery of North America (EuroAmericans are trashing the continent because they treat it as exploitable frontier, not as long-term home) applied fractally across deep time. The continent was shaped by ecological release after the Chicxulub impact, and constantly altered by waves of immigrants coming in and out of larger Eurasia. Paleo-indians (Flannery is strongly in the Clovis-first camp, btw) are just a more recent expression of this theme, which of course reaches its apogee in the modern industrial US.
The culmination of this theme was a discussion of interesting modern issues - what to do about non-native plants, whether we ought to exercise prejudice against non-native plants, and most intriguingly, whether to introduce surrogates for the keystone roles we lost in the Pleistocene extinctions and earlier (lions, cheetahs, giraffes, elephants, camels, wild horses). I suppose these are each rich topics for books in their own right, and since Flannery wasn't writing any of them, it's not fair to expect him to hit any of them too hard. But I wasn't really satisfied. It would be interesting to read more about those issues and have a group discussion about them with experts. (less)
While some exceptions have made their way into popular purview - chiefly the understanding that industrial humans are destructive - ecology is still l...moreWhile some exceptions have made their way into popular purview - chiefly the understanding that industrial humans are destructive - ecology is still largely seen the way it was presented by William Paley: a web of interactions in which inefficiencies and waste are pared away by the exigencies of natural selection and where every piece has its function, even if it's not yet clear to us. This is evident in Optimal Foraging Theory and Optimal Defense Theory, which are essentially tautological: whatever organisms do must be the optimal choice to make, because of Evolution.
The Ghosts of Evolution is Barlow's attempt to explode that vision out into a historically complex picture of the world. The premise, of course, is that there are plant traits (mostly fruit, but a few thorns and growth habits are thrown in for good measure) that evolved in response to a specific sort of mutualism that no longer exists.
The book is initially kind of weak. Barlow's premised the whole thing on a "groundbreaking" paper Dan Janzen and Paul Martin wrote in 1982. She's enamored of the idea, she finds it romantic and exciting. Much of the book is structured around quotes from email exchanges she had with the two authors. For a book about such an old topic, it seems remarkably rich in speculation and low in primary research. She constantly presents these anecdotal "experiments" she's done, with the caveat that they're "not real science" so we shouldn't invest any Truth in them, but with the clear feeling that she really wants the suggestions they made to be true, just because she would find it Cool.
While the premise wears rather thin in the first few chapters - it's really sufficient to assert that honey locust, persimmon, pawpaw, avocado, and the Kentucky coffee tree are anachronisms and why without being so repetitive about it - the book picks up when Barlow broadens her scope.
There's a wonderfully intensive discussion of comparative digestive anatomy. She concludes, reasonably, that most of the anachronism fruit eaters were hindgut digesters - foregut digesters aren't made for fruit. She points out that the Pleistocene megafaunal extinction left a continent devoid of hindgut herbivores larger than a beaver - though she uncharacteristically fails to speculate on why this is. Most of the large animals that moved in from Eurasia were foregut digesters. I like discussions of digestive anatomy because they are inextricably linked with forage chemistry, which turns faunal assemblages into keys to and engineers of a chemical landscape.
The beautiful thing about the book is the way it expands our perceptions of the relationships among organisms. Anachronistic fruits are the living evidence of megafauna, and the present distribution of the plants that produce them is evidence of their absence. Barlow's knowledge of the specific histories of animals, plants, and their interactions as continents moved throughout North America's history seems rich and full, which is unusual. I find the whole thing complex and hard to wrap my head around - camels and horses arose in North America, while Bison arose in Eurasia, but they migrated across the Bering Straits at various different times up to the Pleistocene. I really want to learn this deep history with more familiarity, because I tthink the historical, evolutionary, dynamic perspective is the only way to understand the logic of a land community.
Overall, Barlow made an interesting picture and changed my view of ecology and evolutionary history (particularly just noting that evolution can leave anachronistic features as big as avocados for 13,000 years is remarkable). It's not the most eloquent or subtle book, but it works.(less)
I picked this up randomly from the 3rd floor of the Mudd (best floor) because I'm looking into performing restoration as part and parcel of my own Res...moreI picked this up randomly from the 3rd floor of the Mudd (best floor) because I'm looking into performing restoration as part and parcel of my own Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers project. I was hoping it'd be technical and practical, a sort of textbook on restoration. Instead, it's just a series of somewhat repetitive essays on the ways restoration projects are the perfect field study plots for ecologists. They make two nice points, again and again: restoration provides manipulable field sites, places ecologists can fuck with things and usually make them better no matter what; and successful restoration projects are the "acid test" of ecology as a predictive science.
They constantly make a watch analogy: you know you understand a watch when you can put it back together and tune it up to run at the right speed, and thus you know you understand an ecosytem when you can put it back together and have it function correctly, with all the appropriate levels of productivity, biological interactions, and ecosystem services. They point out that since ecosystems are self-healing, artificial systems are often better tests of knowledge. If you know what is important about each component of the system, you can replace each with another that fulfills the same functions. This is exciting, because it is the practice of restoration agriculture (eg, replacing bison with cows that are managed to graze like bison).
While they use the language of succession throughout but point out that the point of restoration is to speed up succession and that the science of succession has shown that it is not a linear process and it does not reach the same endpoint in all circumstances. Changing the nature of the disturbance, the rate of migration, and possibly altering the composition of key soil-influencing plants can shape the community towards desired conclusions. In my case, the desired conclusion is wildlife habitat that fills ecosystem services and produces truckloads and truckloads of nutritious food. There seems to be no moral issue with creating an intensive food-bearing ecosystem - after all, you're starting with a cornfield, so anything you do will improve it. As long as you aren't introducing exotics into the area, you're practicing restoration ecology!
The essays are repetitive and relatively simplistic, and in hindsight I'm not sure why I read the whole thing. Certainly none of it was helpful in practical terms. It did bring up several specific ideas for the farm - ensuring we have mound-building ants for prairie seed distribution; inoculating trees with MR fungi; planting in species-diverse clumps; creating a diverse age structure for the community; possibly encouraging hawks and owls with nests and perches until the trees are mature. It also inspired me to plan a trip to the UW Madison Arboretum later this spring and to try to meet with restoration ecologists there. (less)
I first came across Richard Manning when Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization jumped out at me from the "agriculture is bad" s...moreI first came across Richard Manning when Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization jumped out at me from the "agriculture is bad" section of the Mudd's wonderful third floor. Manning makes the "agriculture is bad" argument deftly in that book, covering each aspect thoroughly but quickly, with a deep understanding of his sources, and he provided me with probably the best reading list I've found in a single book. I knew there was something special about him then, but I didn't follow up until I saw Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution at the APL.
In Grassland, Manning shows what he is capable of when he's free of the tight constraints of argument and expository description. Given the deep ecology creds established in Against the Grain, it's really not that surprising that Manning would shine in deeply felt bioregional environmental history. Grassland is impressive. Manning's main goal is to really look at the biome, to see its parts and appreciate that its inhabitants and functions are as important and wonderful as any of the more well-loved systems like mountain valleys, rainforests, and tidepools.
It is somewhat general for a really place-based history, covering grasslands from western Montana to Kansas to western Wisconsin. Manning focuses on the big changes in ecological function and the associated cultural and economic factors. In the deep past, these include the Laramide orogeny, which put much of North America into the rain shadow that drove out the forests, the Pleistocene extinction (and the less well-known replacement with Eurasian mammals) and the immigration of the Clovis peoples, and the introduction of horses to Plains society and the associated shifts in lifestyle and politics.
Much more attention, of course, is focused on the ecological imperialism of European settlers, the central tragedy of the story. Manning focuses first on grazing, railroads, road construction, which allowed settlers to replace the bison-horse-native american system with ranches and begin the process of degradation.
Agricultural, Manning argues, was much worse. The ecological package that aided conquest of the East coast was ill-adapted to conquering the dry Plains, so the USDA actually sought out new plants to help them destroy the ecosystem. They brought in new varieties of winter wheat from Siberia, adapted to the dry conditions. Dozens of other invasives were sought that enabled settlers to plant trees, shrubs, and other civilized amenities on their grassland homesteads. Many of these species became noxious invasives, while others introduced devastating diseases to which North American plants had no immunity (this effort is supposedly responsible for the demise of the American Chestnut, for instance).
The process of wheat expansion turned rangeland that was relatively degraded but still hosted dozens of plant species into a monoculture. The moldboard plow and tile drainage essentially destroyed the pedological and hydrological basis for diverse life in the plains. It was the worst disaster the place had ever seen, and as agriculture has intensified, it has only gotten worse.
Manning finishes the book off with a discussion of activism, but he spares us the standard exhortations to action. He points out that the only sustainable way of life on the Plains is one that respects what the place wants to be - he says "the song the land calls forth" or something. He goes so far as to assert that the plains are not meant for writing, so our stories here must be written in the landscape of the place.
This is a clever way of dismissing the environmental activism narratives he seems to find rather cloying, based on Romantic ideals that favor sublime vistas and paint humans out of the landscape. The activism he sees, based on words not places, has not yet managed to really help the land. While conservation is well-established in various government agencies, it is a vision based on urbanite recreation, which leads, eg, the USFWS to stock streams with non-native fish and kill birds that compete with ducks, favored game birds. It is an extension of the ecological imperialist mindset, not a rejection of it, much less a return to the land. Worst is when people who are advocating just that solution - a bison and elk-based economy premised on the restoration of native vegetation and natural hydrology - are challenged by "animal rights" activists who fail to see that a healthy landscape is the only thing in the interest of animals, including humans. In general, Manning's cynical perspective is a refreshing change of pace from the standard activist book formula.
I failed to appreciate these aspects as much, but Manning delved pretty deeply into the literature of the Plains, a historical hub of bioregionalism and home to many authors who thought they needed such a literature. This may belie his earlier notion of an "illiterature of the Plains" but it does help flesh out and humanize his story. His coverage of Native American culture and history was way too thin, which is a shame.(less)
I picked this up on a whim while scanning the shelf at the APL; I'd read Manning's excellent Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilizat...moreI picked this up on a whim while scanning the shelf at the APL; I'd read Manning's excellent Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, which I think led me to more excellent recommendations than any other book I've read. Food's Frontier is a completely different kind of book. Manning really doesn't make an argument. Instead, he writes a vignette explaining the context and goals of each o the McKnight foundation's grant-funded projects in sustainable agriculture in the developing world.
The projects all center around removing an obstacle to yield increase - this is probably the reason that Manning continually frames the research as an attempt to extend, revitalize, or repeat the Green Revolution. The comparison is straightforward in some projects, where breeders are literally attempting to do the Green Revolution's classic short-stemmed modification on more obscure plants like teff and chickpeas. Other cases are more interesting.
Manning does an excellent job at communicating the complex interactions of ecology, culture, cuisine, and economics involved in each situation, the factors that make them both fascinatingly unique and frustratingly intractable. In China, scientists are attempting to genetically modify a microbial symbiont of the ricehopper that carries rice stripe virus to produce a vaccine to protect the rice. In Chile and Brazil, potato production involves massive pesticide overuse, a problem that could be overcome by breeding in sticky hairs, a trait wild potatoes use to trap insect predators - a system that has the advantage of being immune to simple biochemical arms race escalation.
The most interesting projects also seemed the least clear. One delved into the traditional agroforestry and permaculture practices perpetuated by only a few villages in rural Mexico. The system is fascinating and in danger from encroaching industrial ag, but I don't even know what McKnight was trying to do about it. Record it? Support it? Either way, it was fun to read about.
As much as the book jacket might make you think Manning is writing about some big issue in agriculture, this really is a book without a thesis or argument. It is chiefly descriptive, and for that it is great. But Manning does make some really nice arguments (I think he's great and love to hear his perspectives) about agriculture. He has particularly incisive things to say about GMOs.
"It takes some stretch of the imagination to agree with critics' charge that genetic modification could create an environmental catastrophe, but we know for sure that farming is already an environmental catastrophe."
Speaking more broadly, he means that whether genetic modification in the lab is involved is nearly irrelevant. What we should be concerned about in agriculture are more prosaic down to earth concerns: does making this change help the flora and fauna of the area, or hurt them? Does it help the nutritional status of local communities, or hurt it? Does it benefit local farmers and their children, or large foreign/elite corporations? Does it require inputs of imported and non-renewable resources? Is it sustainable? The answer to all of these questions can be negative in an organic system, a traditional peasant system, a progressive peasant system benefiting from research and new varieties, and even a progressive permaculture system, as much as in an industrial context. It's just that, when your goal is to help people and the planet, your more likely to accomplish that than you are if your goal is to profit at any cost.
For instance, many of the organic and breeding solutions applied to pest management suffer from the same problems as GMO pest resistance: the chemical arms race. Breeding corn to produce Bt (not legally organic) is no different from spraying Bt (certifiably organic) from the point of view of resistance. Solitary bees don't care if you use pyrethrin (OG) or DDT. It's about the system, and the consequences, not the ideology.
Manning does a lot of interviews with scientists and portrays them in an unusually human and compelling way, rare even among good pop science. He should be commended for that!(less)
Nutrition is tasked with answering the age-old question: what are the characteristics of a healthy diet? This is a rather complex problem. It involves...moreNutrition is tasked with answering the age-old question: what are the characteristics of a healthy diet? This is a rather complex problem. It involves tremendous individual variation due to gene interactions and life history. It requires a thorough grasp of metabolic pathways and the roles chemicals play in the body, how they move around, and how the body compensates for changes in their intake. It is tasked with sorting through an enormous bevy of phytochemicals only recently recognized as important. The techniques we have to go about answer the question are further limiting. Conducting a controlled experiment with sufficient replication is almost impossible given variations in individual diet and lifestyle. More invasive and direct experiments are generally unethical and/or impractical. On top of all that, the subject is further confounded by the role of corporate money in funding and thus guiding research agendas, influencing public agency recommendations, and marketing products that are cheap to produce or earn a premium as "healthy."
I was inspired to get a scientist's-eye-view of the nutrition question by my interest in food chemistry and physiology, by my own issues with wheat and possibly other things, and most of all by the desire to be an educated voice on the perennial debates that come up in our house. The nature of our diet at Greenfire is mostly dictated by preference and environmental/ethical concerns, but our community focuses so much on our food that food fads come and go all the time. We've had raw food diets, purges and cleanses, veganism, the primal diet, dairy and gluten free eaters, plenty of vegetarians, a few fish allergies, people who love tofu and hate butter, others who love butter and hate soy products, and a few sugar addicts (myself chief among them). This is all, from what I understand, a product of the human compulsion to load food choices with a significance, culturally and medicinally, that is found in few other issues, a way to deal with the immense burden of choice omnivory imposes.
For all those reasons and more, I buckled down and read this nutrition textbook cover to cover in ten days. This was a very useful exercise, though it ended up being somewhat unsatisfying on the recommendations end and gave a somewhat poor account of the history of research in the area. The book overwhelmingly describes physiology, biochemistry, and metabolic pathways at the expense of broader issues. This reflects the state of knowledge: biochemistry and physiology have been researched thoroughly for a century and this research has yielded insights that provide the groundwork for understanding more complex issues. It was occasionally a bit tedious, though I felt like I could have grasped most of it if I'd spent the time. I skipped the list sections and the extensive naming of enzymes in digestive pathways, knowing I can come back if I have more specific questions.
The occasional tedium is punctuated by a series of wonderful revelations about physiology and food chemistry, and I really enjoyed the first part of the book for that reason. I learned (view spoiler)[the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber (and why soluble fiber doesn't help with constipation – it consists of mucilages, gums, and pectin to begin with, and most of it is degraded by intestinal bacteria), why polyunsaturated fats are considered healthier than saturated fats (omega-3 and -6 PUFAs are essential precursors to a series of messenger molecules called eicosanoids; saturated fats increase “bad” low-density lipoprotein cholesterol), why poop is brown (red hemoglobin breaks down into brown stercobilin), what cooking accomplishes chemically for digestion (it breaks down crystalline starch groups), which protein represents the ideal amino acid ratio for humans (eggs; beef is around 65% as good), and why fermentation in the intestines causing changes in poop schedule (fermentation produces gases that expand the lumen, the trigger muscles await to begin squeezing food towards the rectum). (hide spoiler)]
Further, I know in some detail why various conventional wisdom dietary chestnuts are suggested. (view spoiler)[Saturated fats and trans fats raise the proportion of bad cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease. Unsaturated fats counteract that effect but are only half as effective – consuming equal amounts of each leaves cholesterol on the rise. The specific saturated fats dominant in butter, palm oil, and coconut oil are the chief culprits here. High PUFA diets also depress fat synthesis, decreasing weight gain. High Na:K ratio and low Ca are risk factors for heart disease as well, since they increase blood pressure. The ratio of energy from fat and carbs is not a clear factor in obesity the key in is ratio of total energy intake to expenditure. (hide spoiler)]
Given the support throughout for these rather mainstream dietary conventional wisdoms, I was somewhat surprised when they ended the book by suggesting that the “paleolithic diet probably provides a template for modern dietary design.” I was hoping to take the lessons I'd learned here and apply them to the paleo diet, as well as the recommendations I'll find in Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability (which I get the impression fall more on the Weston Price Foundation side than the paleo, but that might be wrong).
But the authors have done that for me, suggesting that the paleo diet provides high fiber, low phytate (a compound that chelates minerals and prevents their uptake), lean meat with great unsaturated fat contents, a low glycemic index, and a rich source of phytochemicals, nutrients, and minerals well above the standard American diet. They cast doubt on research suggesting high protein diets are linked to heart disease and some cancers, pointing out that saturated fat acts as a lurking variable with known causal links to those issues. That's exciting, because the paleo diet model is much easier to produce sustainably than vegetarian diets are.
Since the emphasis is squarely on the known biochemistry and physiology, the recommendations throughout the book are always offered with a grain of salt (sylvite, preferably!), and it seems a lot of them have been thrown into doubt by research since the publishing date. The saturated fat issue particularly has come into question, as research has dismantled the connection between them and heart disease. A lot of research, specifically, that seems to throw its weight behind the fat- and protein-loving, simple carb hating conventional wisdom research from the past few decades.
Questions I still have: why does glycogen break down/disappear, leaving meat a poor source of starch? Where does it go? What's up with fructose - is it as bad for you as Robert Lustig would have you believe? Am I really consuming an unhealthy amount of sugar? What's the deal with dietary antioxidants?
Most interestingly, what is the relationship between fats consumed and fats stored? I've heard it argued that fat storage comes from carbohydrates, not fats, that excess fats consumed are flushed out in urine; that energy intake is what determines fat storage, and ratio of carbs to fats as a source is irrelevant; that PUFAs decrease fat storage. What's up here?
Edit: I've spent the rest of the day reading various more modern diet sources - the Vegetarian Myth, MarksDailyApple.com, and this guy: http://authoritynutrition.com/11-bigg.... It's quickly become apparent that Medeiros overlooked a lot of interesting and important debates in nutrition science - the controversy over the lipid hypothesis v. the carbohydrate hypothesis, which was actively debated for decades before the book was published. In hindsight it's clear they did not thoroughly cover the debate in actual diet recommendations, in favor of focusing heavily on the known biochem and physiology. It's fine to focus on the known and elide the unknown, but they presented one side of the debate without making it clear there was a strong opposition to it, which is shameful.
There a host of other interesting issues I wish they'd covered, but which may be more recent topics of research, so I'll give them a pass there - lectins, phytates and other anti-nutrients, soy hormone mimics, inflammation and the possible negative side of effects of PUFAs (which are constantly touted in the book), the chemical role of cooking in digestion, etc.(less)
Yvonne Baskin is a skilled science writer who only seems to write about things I find really fascinating. There's a strangely institutional flavor to...moreYvonne Baskin is a skilled science writer who only seems to write about things I find really fascinating. There's a strangely institutional flavor to her works, since they're very explicitly hired out projects of SCOPE. It almost seems like this explicitly educational purpose has kept her from widely popularity, but maybe that's just because I imagine everyone would want to read about this stuff if they knew these books were around, and maybe that's not true.
In this work, Baskin sets out to present the then-new and burgeoning research on ecosystem services, the ways they are being assaulted and diminished, and the connection to biodiversity. I picked it up to review the breadth of ecosystem services in general, but more specifically because I had a few questions about conservation biology and restoration ecology and I knew this would be a good entry point.
My specific question stemmed from the recent trend in conservation towards "biodiversity," premised on the idea that species are valuable treasures and have a moral status that warrants against their blithe destruction, but more interestingly on the idea that there are serious consequences to losing too many species. That is the collapse concept: ecological degradation will trigger a rather sudden shift of state to a global situation that no longer supports industrial civilization. I wondered how well understood the connection between biodiversity (essentially, how many species are still around) and ecosystem services.
The Work of Nature undertakes to address that question. The answer, incidentally, is that diversity is correlated with stability and resilience. Communities with low diversity are more or less maximized for whatever set of conditions presently obtains. In high diversity communities, when conditions change, species groups better adapted to those conditions gain competitive advantage and take over the main work of the ecosystem; in low diversity communities, conditions adverse to whatever happens to be around directly impair functionality.
Beyond answering her basic question, however, Baskin surveys a vast array of interesting ecological research and paints a fairly thorough picture of the complex relationships involved. She chooses not to distract from her narrative by personifying the scientists at all, but she still always names them and places their research in the context of its region and biome. This brings home the fact that the research is extremely limited so far, and its conclusions generalize poorly: there are many relationships she describes that obtain in one place but not one I'd expect to behave similarly.
The overall impression is that this kind of research is fantastically productive and interesting, and infinitely necessary, though frustrating in its infinite complexity. It reassures me that agroecology is both a fertile and valuable field to enter! (less)
Altieri's book is one of the foundational texts of Agroecology, and it seemed like a logical read to pursue my interest in that field. But it turns ou...moreAltieri's book is one of the foundational texts of Agroecology, and it seemed like a logical read to pursue my interest in that field. But it turns out that it's not really a very good book. I skimmed it, reading a few of the examples they give.
The flaws: Way too many flowcharts, graphs, charts, etc. They rarely convey information but instead express these typologies and lists. The text is filled in with the exposition of the same ideas - few specifics, huge generalizations, and nothing concrete to grab on to. This is really problematic because of the complexity of agroecology. There are no generalizable solutions, and everything that is done ought to be deep place-based, with a thorough understanding of the natural history of your crops, of your markets, and of the environmental history of the area. All of that makes the discipline fascinating, but it makes it almost incomprehensibly abstract when discussed in non-specific terms.
The examples themselves are essentially just lists of crops with some basic descriptions of interactions. Difficult to focus on and without any concrete lessons.
The book comes from the early days of the field, so it suffers from an incredible dearth of data. Techniques used by traditional farmers are appropriately respected, and the authors usually just take the benefits and values of their systems at face value. That's fine, but data is one of the few relatively objective and convincing ways to present this stuff, and it really helps tie observed phenomena to the places and environments where they have been proven (this is key because much of this research is so underfunded that it is rarely reproduced in multiple places - extrapolation is the de facto best-case habit but it is not always justifiable).
Worse than all that, but not a fault of the book's, was that everything that was interesting or compelling was stuff I already knew. Having been to the MOSES Organic Farming conference three years in a row, using cover crops, biological pest management, and intercropping was no news to me. Having toured the Chagga homegardens, I understand the logic of perennial polycultures fairly well. The book may have been interesting and revelatory when it was first published, but this stuff has all been worked into the mainstream of the sustainable ag movement by now.(less)
“Animals in Translation” is premised on two concepts: autistic people are like animals insofar as both have less dominant frontal lobes than normal hu...more“Animals in Translation” is premised on two concepts: autistic people are like animals insofar as both have less dominant frontal lobes than normal humans; and that while most of the book consists of Grandin's educated guesses, her autism makes her guesses different because she often “happens to be right.” That is, her insights are corroborated if not proven by observable results. Her emphasis on the adaptive abilities of animals, their capacity to learn and teach cultures, their different-but-not-better/worse ways of perceiving and understanding the world makes a strong argument against the rapidly eroding chauvinism that puts humans above, rather than among, our closest relatives.
The book is structured in short vignettes told in a uniquely straightforward style. Each contains an insight informed either by an anecdote from Grandin's experience or a summary of an ethology or psychology or neuroscience experiment. The research is compelling and interesting, and while the book meanders gently without an arc or an agenda, it never seemed boring, repetitive, or pointless. The format simply reinforces the values in Grandin's mind, along with a few key take-away concepts about neuroscience and psychology.
The way the book is sold is a bit unfortunate – using the “mysteries of autism” to “decode” animal behavior, etc. The book often seemed self-conscious of the fact that people would read it looking for specific advice about animal decisions and behaviors in their lives. However, that never felt like the authors were distracting from what they wanted to say in order to give readers the dumbed-down take-home advice. Rather, it felt like Grandin was simply expressing something deeply pragmatic in her personality, which is exemplified in her work, which one would think she'd find emotionally traumatic: she abets the efficient slaughter of her favorite animal, cows, simply to ease their suffering.
There are quite a few memorable tidbits in the book. For instance, the fact that elephants communicate in sub-audible frequencies at distances up to 25 miles. Or that tigers have to be taught to restrain themselves from killing as many prey animals as they feel like (I'd always assumed predation was limited by availability of prey/energy budget of predator). Or that dogs are believed to have diverged genetically from wolves over 130,000 years ago, indicating that most of the lifespan of our species has been spent alongside domesticated dogs. Apparently some people think that many of the traits that make us relatively unique among primates – same-sex, non-kin friendships; complex social structures; hunting in groups; etc. Dogs may have enabled many of the differences that enabled our rapid evolution away from the lifestyles and biologies of other hominids. That's a pretty neat idea.(less)
While this book often suffered from a terrific laundry-list syndrome (that's not true; the book consisted of nothing BUT laundry lists), it offers som...moreWhile this book often suffered from a terrific laundry-list syndrome (that's not true; the book consisted of nothing BUT laundry lists), it offers some nice exposure to a wide range of natural organic chemicals and their properties/purposes. Hanson reviews the biosynthesis pathways (it's interesting how most of the products are synthesized from so few pathways - chiefly, terpenoids, made from one of two main pathways), chemical ecology, photochemistry, and olfactory chemistry of interesting garden-related plants, fungi, and insects.
Some of the interesting broad-brush take-aways: - every other chemical is a terpenoid :) - reddish-yellow plant colors (with the exception of beets) are usually due to carotenoids - darker red, purple, black colors are usually caused by anthocyanins - fruity smells are usually esters - asters often produce polyacetylenes - lily-of-the-valley produces allelopathic false amino acid that neighbors try to use and can't, causing death sometimes - sulfur compounds are responsible for both Allium family smells as well as asparagus pee - (since we are chemical beings), toxins nearly always work by inhibiting key biochemistry (tricking or deactivating enzymes) - chlorphyll breaks down easily, when plants are too dry to make them, they quickly lose their green color; chlorophyll also breaks down easily when cooking, especially in acidic conditions; when chlorophyll breaks down, the darker pheophytin is formed (chlorophyll - Mg) and the other (mostly carotenoid) pigments become the dominant color of the leaf (hence fall reds, yellows, and oranges) - plants often store toxins in two parts, so that mechanical damage combines them and poisons the unfortunate biter (preventing the healthy plant from being exposed to the active toxin) - plants produce compounds that attract predators and parasites of herbivores that are bothering them - sugars are often added to non-polar compounds to add solubility(less)
In a narrow sense, Nature's Economy could be considered a counterpart to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While Kuhn looks at evolution...moreIn a narrow sense, Nature's Economy could be considered a counterpart to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While Kuhn looks at evolution of scientific knowledge from the inside, looking for moments when accumulated evidence pushes scientists to a new paradigm, Worster looks at the mind of the scientist, examining how his (well over 90% of the players in the book are male) own predilections and his cultural frame guide his work. I found this fascinating, because it reveals that paradigms in ecology have been perhaps one part observation for every nine parts extrapolation, values, and ideology.
Through that lens, Worster's narrow history of ecology becomes a much broader history of the value sets applied to nature and its relationship with human society throughout the last 300 years of Western history. The first few parts focus on individuals - Gilbert White, Linnaeus, Thoreau, Darwin, - while as time goes on, the conversation becomes more rich and complex. The format of the book makes it surprisingly diverse. The milieu and locale within which each author developed are incredibly distinct, and it's kind of stunning whenever Worster points out that the debates of an era would be largely incomprehensible to authors of previous eras.
It's stunning because nearly every debate and conversation in the book feels familiar and fresh. I have often defended science from detractors who claim it abandons warmth, feeling, and an appreciation for holism in its pursuit of objectivity. Worster makes it clear that this argument has been going on since the emergence of science has a common and institutionalized pursuit, and that the Romantic sense of nature largely arose in response to that critique (incidentally, my response to that criticism is both deflated and upheld by Worster's analysis: I argue that science is a tool, and it is quite independent of the values scientists hold and by which they live their lives; Worster points out that it's not at all independent of those values, but those values can really be anything).
The section on Thoreau was especially fun. I realized that he was a badass, of course, but not how completely that was true. Worster implies he basically came up with the idea of environmental history, using tree rings and vegetation to read the history of land use and colonization. He also almost completely anticipates David Abram's argument, minus the bit about writing. Whenever he escaped Emerson's clutches, Thoreau embraced his body and looked for a totally sensual, physical embrace of nature - doing natural history with his nose, hands, and tongue as well his brain and eyes.
The central conflict, especially in the pre-crisis years, was between the Arcadian school, dominated by natural history, observation, and a portrayal of nature as warm, mutualist, and beautifully life-affirming; and the Imperial school, which emphasizes the violence, competition, waste, and annoyance in nature and invites human guidance to fix some of these issues and increase productivity. It was surprising to me how much the Imperial school seemed to be congruent with and suggestive of permaculture, adjusting nature to produce more human food and less human nuisances.
In the meantime, of course, none of the ideals the early thinkers suggest were actually implemented in any meaningful way, and the planet was utterly trashed. The transition to post-WWII ecology was a rather abrupt one. As Worster really tells only the story of how people think about the land, not how it is actually treated, you get the impression that people in the 1960's just looked around one day and realized "shit, we're really screwing this place up." By that point, ecology had developed a set of observations from which somewhat empirical principles could be derived. Society looked to the profession for guidance on how to deal with the problems their damage was causing, and, as far as Worster is concerned, they utterly failed to answer the call.
While early naturalists spent much of their time doing observational natural history and extrapolating what they noticed into sweeping pictures of nature, modern empirical scientists do much the same thing with experimental data. Nature is vast and complex enough to supply convincing evidence for nearly any vision; it is full of stability and disturbance, competition and cooperation, profligacy and thrift. Worster's story of modern ecology depicts competing schools differing in their focus (and, since what they look for determines what they find, their conclusions), driven in competition by faddism. Succession, food webs, chaos, complexity, mosaic landscape ecology, and more had their moment in the sun, and each contributed to a more complete knowledge of nature.
Unfortunately, it seems that this conflict of opinion, especially the realization that nature relies on its own disturbance, destruction, and catastrophe, has been taken advantage of to push preservationist logic off kilter. A nearly equal contributor was the New Ecology school's emphasis on reducing ecosystems to mathematically described populations and energy budgets. This may be how science moves forward, and ultimately it is neatly compatible with a Deep Ecological viewpoint (I find the whole thing rather magical) but at the time it was associated with a scorn for subjective attachments, an unrestrained willingness to destroy ecosystems to dissect them, and the sense that science didn't yet know enough to guide policy.
Worster plays into this too. His epilogue makes it sound like the shifting sands of environmental value systems (what he describes as "historicism") invoke moral relativism, setting our policy makers and citizens adrift in a moral ocean with no anchor. He does helpfully suggest that environmental history and paleoecology can contribute to grounding ecology in a value system that makes some sense, and I agree with him strongly on that point.
Like most environmental historians, Worster does a great job with prose and narrative. He very carefully manages his own voice, assiduously avoiding inserting his own perspective and opinion in the story until the very end. It's interesting, because what he does throughout the book is essentially to deflate earnest ecological thinkers' ideas by pointing out their recapitulation of ancient tenets of Western thought, so when he does reveal some of his own thoughts at the end, it's clear they are subject to the same critique and limitations. And I guess that's his lesson, that no matter how far you push into new territory, your ideas are always just going to be variations on these same old themes. Kind of discouraging, if you find Western thought to be fundamentally violent, imperialistic, and placeless.(less)
This series of articles on mycoremediation was modestly helpful, but I found that it didn't focus on the things I had hoped it would. Instead of pract...moreThis series of articles on mycoremediation was modestly helpful, but I found that it didn't focus on the things I had hoped it would. Instead of practical, experimental setup-level comments, the book is very much about the biochemistry of contaminant degradation. This is very interesting to me but very much over my head at the moment, and it was of little help in putting together our experimental design. Focus was on the most intractable portions of petroleum, pesticides, and other contaminants - while my research will focus on kerosene, which includes at most a fraction of a percent PAHs. Finally, very little wild fungal degradation was discussed - applicable to the compost portion of my experiment. Only introduced species were addressed specifically.
I read only the chapters that seemed relevant to my research (those on petroleum).(less)
I was vaguely aware of James Lovelock as one of the developers of the Gaia hypothesis, something I thought was cool but didn't know much about in acti...moreI was vaguely aware of James Lovelock as one of the developers of the Gaia hypothesis, something I thought was cool but didn't know much about in action. At the end of our case study in climate change politics, my Global Environmental Politics professor showed us this video of James Lovelock speaking about his more recent book, the Vanishing Face of Gaia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRQ-Nq...
In the video, Lovelock comes off as an eminently reasonable but quite cantankerous old British scientist, with all the charm that implies. His ideas, however, are extremely sensationalized (note the APOCALYPSE banner in the background), and I was curious to both spend more time with this charming old man and to see what his ideas were really like.
James Lovelock's perspective is similar to that of Derrick Jensen in many ways, though the men and their personalities are vastly different. Both decry the mainstream environmentalist movement that tells us we can save the planet if we just change our lifestyles, or that "sustainable development" is a panacea that will allow us to have and eat our cake (the Earth). Lovelock goes even further, criticizing the environmental movement viciously for two crimes: putting human concerns in the short term over the long-term health of the planet (which is, of course, ironic) and for doing more harm than good in their lobbying for changed policies.
He cites in the first case the irrational fear of nuclear energy that the green movement is championing, which prevents us from switching over much of our grid to nuclear as a way to quickly and feasibly reduce CO2 emissions. This makes sense to me. As a pragmatist, I understand that we aren't going to undergo a voluntary transition away from the over-energetic society of today. This means that in order to get off fossil fuels immediately, we need to implement all of the large-scale replacements we can. Nuclear has some disadvantages, of course, and plenty more than Lovelock believes it has, but they pale in comparison with accelerated climate change.
In the latter example, I was quite a bit less convinced. For example, he argues that the banning of DDT by cancer-paranoid Westerners was a crime against the malaria-ridden third-world. This may have an element of truth to it, but it ignores the fact that pesticides are a Sisyphean, not cost-effective method of reducing pests that also happens to poison the environment.
The differences are also striking, however. Lovelock is in every sense a civilizationist. He loves the boons of civilization, and thinks it has done great things (on a philosophical level) for Gaia (seeing herself from space, etc). Jensen thinks civilizations as he defines them are not merely unsustainable but inherently undesirable, for the oppression and class division they seem to breed inherently.
Lovelock never espouses in this book the doomsday recklessness he is supposed to in that interview. He suggests that we may have passed the climate tipping point, but not that we already have, and in any case says that regardless, it is still in our interests to drastically reduce emissions at the same time as we prepare for the now-inevitable consequences of the GHGs we have released already. He is suggested what he calls a "powered landing," in which we use the resources of technology to carefully and intentionally reduce civilization to a sustainable, 1 billion member level. This is, again, similar to what Jensen argues, except that Jensen seeks "primitivism."
Lovelock has an interesting perspective and an interesting personality, and it's far more realistic and credible than those of most environmentalists. His thesis is that the way humans are living today is disastrous for the Earth and its self-regulation regime, and that by fussing with it we are moving towards a new permanent hot state. He acknowledges that we have already set the ball rolling on this, and that it would be nearly impossible for us to hold it back now. We have failed to develop a land ethic, and our decisions are still motivated by profit and comfort in the short term. (less)
A travesty of blandness and mediocrity for a book about such a fascinating subject. Instead of emphasizing the things that are actually interesting ab...moreA travesty of blandness and mediocrity for a book about such a fascinating subject. Instead of emphasizing the things that are actually interesting about fungi (their ecology), Hudler emphasizes their impact on human lives. I feel that this is done because the author seems desperate to prove to his audience that his subject of interest isn't worthless or disgusting. If that doesn't seem like a terrible reason to write a book to you, then maybe you'd like this one. (less)
The Selfish Gene is an attempt to expand the conceptual framework of biologists and laypeople as they apply the Theory of Evolution. As the title sugg...moreThe Selfish Gene is an attempt to expand the conceptual framework of biologists and laypeople as they apply the Theory of Evolution. As the title suggests, it emphasizes one of the first principles of that theory: that the gene is the replicator driving life as we know it, that it is the 'unit' of selection. This is both central to the theory of evolution in its modern form and also quite obvious - in fact, as Dawkins points out, the gene is, in part, defined as the unit of selection. Dawkins spends most of the book delving into interesting applications of these basic principles, not in specific, anecdotal case studies but in theoretical models and thought experiments.
The point of such an exercise is to widen our understanding of the implications of the straightforward principles of evolution. Much of his logic is easy to follow and, one hopes, one could have come up with some of it oneself. The more interesting part, as Dawkins points out, is the kind of questions he asks. "It was harder to work out that there was a question than to think of the answer!" He is attempting to combat the limitations of the human imagination, as well as our biases towards one or another kind of explanation. Since the work largely synthesizes academic results on the topic and presents them to lay readers, a large portion of the book, seemingly rightfully, is spent debunking myths that are not surprisingly prevalent among lay readers - group selection or individual selection rather than gene selection, chiefly. Scientists are people too, however, and so while one might expect these sorts of debunking to be directed at the layperson, they are almost always phrased against particular authors, including well-regarded scientists.
And unless I'm wrong on this count, Dawkins himself occasionally makes the mistakes for which he castigates others. My particular evidence regards his assertion that "we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature." Now, to be clear, he means here a kind of altruism that goes beyond what is seen in other species, a kind of altruism that inhibits one's own reproductive success in order to benefit others. A stereotypical example (straight out of 'Tragedy of the Commons') might be foregoing the opportunity to breed, saving those in the future from the burden of one more child on the over-crowded, over-stressed Eaarth. The mistake I see Dawkins making here is assuming what really ought to be determined experimentally. After all, the peculiar environmental, social, cultural, and genetic conditions in which modern humans live may very well encourage precisely this sort of altruism. The situation is complicated enough that such a thing might have emerged, and assuming it hasn't is fairly unscientific. (less)
Botany for Gardeners is an excellent intro to botany for anyone. Luckily, gardeners in this context seems to simply refer to anyone who wants to learn...moreBotany for Gardeners is an excellent intro to botany for anyone. Luckily, gardeners in this context seems to simply refer to anyone who wants to learn about botany outside of a school course and from a book that isn't a textbook (unlike several other agroecology-focused books I've read recently that were more about gardening advice somewhat informed by science than about the science itself).
While perhaps not as compelling as David Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants, Botany for Gardeners had much more of the basic how-plants-work knowledge that I was seeking at the moment. Attenborough's book focuses on the really incredible natural history of plants all around the world, rather than their basic biology. If you're really interested in plants, I'd suggest you read both, but start with this one.
The only qualm I had with the book was that he kept talking about fungi as though they belonged in a book about botany. He did clarify that they are not plants, but then went right on saying things like "Plants like fungi this, other plants that." Highly unprofessional.
After finishing the book, I skimmed my Intro Biology textbook's chapter on plants. While Capon is a more compelling, tolerable writer, the textbook was substantially more informative.(less)
The Kingdom Fungi seems to suffer from an identity crisis. On one hand, it uses a LOT of technical jargon, and it is arranged phylogenetically in the...moreThe Kingdom Fungi seems to suffer from an identity crisis. On one hand, it uses a LOT of technical jargon, and it is arranged phylogenetically in the same way most mycology textbooks are. On the other hand, every topic is examined very superficially, and it seems directed to spur the interest of lay readers.
That said, however, I got a decent amount out of the book. I really appreciate that the book is organized phylogenetically rather than by morphology, and that he uses up-to-date phylogenetic speculations on fungal cladistics. It makes me feel more comfortable reviewing and learning up-to-date stuff than older, wackier material. I appreciate the review and the update, and I got several new facts out of the book. For example: I finally understand slime mold life cycles well. Lungworm nematodes can hitch rides on Pilobolus sporangia. 75% of the photobionts in lichens are in the genus Trebouxia. Some lichens have normal algae and cyanobacteria (cyanobacteria include Nostoc, and often fix Nitrogen). There are endophytic fungi that live inside plants and help them produce secondary metabolites that deter predation. There are fossils of essentially modern nematophagous fungi in amber from 100 mya. There is also a slime mold preserved in amber. The same myxomycete species occupy a given niche worldwide.
So that's all valuable, and it's always fun to read about fungi, but I'm not really sure what Stephenson was trying to accomplish with this one, since most of it would go completely over the head of anyone not intimately involved with fungal morphology.(less)
I thought mycorrhizas were really cool and I wanted to learn more about them, so I got this seemingly basic, readable book to do so. It has a lot of p...moreI thought mycorrhizas were really cool and I wanted to learn more about them, so I got this seemingly basic, readable book to do so. It has a lot of pictures and is relatively short. While that makes it readable and quick, it also kept it from having very much interesting material in it. The book is set up by major mycorrhizal type category (ectomycorrhizae, arbuscular, ericoid, monotropoid, orchid, etc). Within those categories, the anatomy of the symbiosis is shown (with many, many illustrations) and its functions are explained. I found most of this quite boring, as it went into too much detail about the things I found least interesting.
I had been hoping for more cool ecological interactions - and there are a few of those, like the bacteria that mycorrhizae bring into plant roots and those that live on the surface of the extraradical mycelia and aid in decomposition and fix nitrogen. It was just not what I hoped it to be. If you were intending to do some research on the anatomy and physiology of mycorrhizae, this would be a great place to start, and that's all the authors ever hoped to accomplish.(less)
Harold Brodie is a very charmingly old-timey mycologist (the book has a preamble) who does his best to poetically explore the beauties of the fungal w...moreHarold Brodie is a very charmingly old-timey mycologist (the book has a preamble) who does his best to poetically explore the beauties of the fungal world. The book is comprised of short vignettes about particularly interesting fungi, some of which were familiar to me and some relatively new. Brodie makes some very good points, but he unfortunately has some bad, antiquated attitudes. He constantly emphasizes that the story and function of an individual fungus or a species deserves attention, and that naturalists who merely note the Latin name of everything they find and move on are quite missing the point. However, he's extremely deprecating about the worth of fungi to humans. Having just finished Paul Stamets' Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World and now considering a possible career in mycorestoration and myco-ecology in general, I find this view quite unfortunate and anachronistic. But that's apparently what you get when you're into mycology: most of the works were written back before people really knew what they were getting into. In fact, Stamets seems to be the guiding light of a new period in mycology. (less)
Colin Tudge attracted my attention for having written several books about diverse subjects I am fascinated by, not the least of which is trees. In 'Th...moreColin Tudge attracted my attention for having written several books about diverse subjects I am fascinated by, not the least of which is trees. In 'The Tree,' Tudge lives up to that promise, proving himself a very likable man who thinks about the world in many ways similarly to the way I do. This is in general a boon, but can be a downfall.
The book has no real goal, no thesis, no object. It is a well-organized series of writings about the trees of the world, including explanations of many facets of what it means to be a tree, portraits of individual trees, and a broad survey of all the tree phyla in the modern world. This middle section seems to have been largely a mistake. The rest of the book proceeds in narrative form through a number of very interesting aspects of the ecology, physiology, evolution, and human relevance of trees. The phylogeny, however, stifles the narrative voice and forces boring listing. I didn't read it, suffice it to say, so I perhaps shouldn't knock it too much. But it reminded me in format much of The Kingdom Fungi, which fell prey to the same impulse.
The impulse is noble and I share it: rather than discuss the variety of trees in the world in a series of random groupings, it should be done phylogenetically, to emphasize the relationships among trees. And if you're going about it phylogenetically, you might as well include all the major phyla of trees . . . But how can you provide anything very interesting about all of them, and present all this knowledge in a meaningful way? The answer seems to be that you can't, really. This kind of knowledge, broad but particular, of the whole group of things we call "trees," must be earned through a lifetime of observation, a lifetime of meeting trees. It can't be condensed and transferred in even 150 pages. And it most certainly can't be done without pictures! This is perhaps what killed the middle of the book - there are no pictures to give the reader a taste of the phyla described.
The rest of the book, which I read entirely, was great, as I've said. Tudge includes a lot of details, but condenses them into a form that is intuitive and dense with information without becoming slow to read. Much that could have been included was left out - a more in-depth look at the relationship between trees and humans in history, a la A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, or more detailed coverage of tree ecology, focusing on things like mycorrhizae, or more adequate coverage of tree physiology, including some nice diagrams, like Botany for Gardeners. I could think of dozens of others. The book is very long and quite valuable as it is, but such topics would have better suited Tudge's style (and, I think, the style of books other than field guides and coffee table books in general) than what he chose to do in the middle section of the book.
I very much appreciate the fact that Tudge chose to close the book with a serious look at the relationship between the social structure of our civilization and the ecological health of the planet, principally seen, in this, from the point of view of trees. While the fact that the treatment of the issue is necessarily superficial, it acknowledges there is a very big problem in the world of trees, and that it is rooted in economics and culture. Tudge emphasizes, quite astutely, that if that problem can be 'solved,' then many other problems will be solved along with it - exploitation of workers, the indigenous, and poor nations; the food issue; the energy issue; the decline of coherent local communities; etc. It would have been easy for Tudge (or his editors) to say 'let this be a happy book about trees; don't bring up all those controversial bad things - save that for another book.' That he did not indicates some extra goodness in his soil [typo?].(less)
Loading...
