During the COVID-19 outbreak, I will be posting information and hosting discussions related to my work with the Parks Canada Agency. The lack of access to internal documents makes this interim measure necessary. The information shared here is not classified. The opinions expressed do not represent those of the Government of Canada. Well-considered thresholds in… (read more)
During the COVID-19 outbreak, I will be posting information and hosting discussions related to my work with the Parks Canada Agency. The lack of access to internal documents makes this interim measure necessary. The information shared here is not classified. The opinions expressed do not represent those of the Government of Canada. One of the… (read more)
My wife and I wrap cheese when we put it into our lunchbags. I use plastic and she uses waxpaper. As the waxpaper is at least twice as thick as the low density polyethylene in my lunch bag, I initially create a smaller waste burden in our local landfill. Of course, over time, the waxpaper… (read more)
Mosses stay close to the ground. Their humble habit belies their importance to evolution and ecology. For one thing, they have been on the banner of this blog right from the beginning. I think I instictively chose mosses as the essential combination of biology and physical geography that underpins all the topics dealt with in these… (read more)
Saving a planet is a complex business. World government is already a tricky concept but when you layer that over with the inability of ecosystems to speak for themselves and the concentration of biodiversity near the equator -far from centres of economic and political power- you get a process that has many actors and little… (read more)
E.O. Wilson, a Harvard ecologist, has never shied from controversy. His latest bold statement is found in the title of his most recent book, “Half Earth“, an argument for conserving a substantial portion of the landscape for natural systems to function properly. Previously, we have discussed the early estimates of the percentage of land required for… (read more)
It began with a mislabelled graph. My comment on that simple mistake led to my name being linked with those of the leading ecologists of my day and the designation of an entirely new pattern of seed dispersal and survival. I was a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario in 1984 and I… (read more)
Ecosystems are messy places. The number of possible relationships between species grows exponentially with every species that enters the system. A fairly typical foodweb (see image below) of 70 species has 4900 possible predator-prey interactions. Despite that, food webs are suprisingly predictable. For one thing, most foodwebs have only 10-30% of the possible feeding relationships. This… (read more)
The fourth of five fundamental theories in ecology that I outlined in my last post states that landscapes – and the services they offer us -will wear out if too much natural habitat is removed. The actual percentage of the landscape that qualifies as “too much” is up for debate. The original “percolation theory” simulations… (read more)
Ecology, like chemistry and physics, can be explained as the interaction of particles. The particles in this case are individual plants and animals ( and I do include fungi and microbes ). True, they do not look or act like billiard balls but they do have measurable properties that allow us to predict their behaviour… (read more)
