So Ch. 5 of the Roseland book is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.
I'm interested in how we use water resources because it's always been a scare commodity for me. Growing up in California, we experienced some pretty severe drought conditions from the late 80's through the mid 90's. The water conservation measures we had to adopt during this time period ingrained in me how precious this one particular resource is. After graduating from high school, I moved to southern Arizona, which, as you may know, is a desert. Deserts, as you may also know, are known for their scarcity of water. What's worse, the area was (and still is) in a long-term drought. I probably don't have to tell you that droughts in the desert are not good. So the lessons learned growing up continued to pay dividends in my new home. After spending six years in Arizona, I picked up stakes and headed to North Carolina. While I was living there, for a couple of summers, we experienced extreme heat and little precipitation, leading to a situation in which we had less than one hundred days left before our water supply ran dry. After another six years there, I once again picked up stakes and moved to Bloomington for graduate school. What did I find when I got here last summer? More drought, and more 100 degree heat.
The moral of the story is: where I go, water shortages tend to follow. Sorry 'bout that. So you can understand that I am a wee bit concerned about our use of water. That's why this particular chapter resonates with me.
There are two aspects in particular of this chapter that caught my attention. One is the use of solar aquatic systems (SAS). These are basically greenhouses that function as wetlands that help filter wastewater and make it safe for human use again. This reminded me of an experience I had this summer. I spent part of the summer in South Lake Tahoe, CA, interning with the Sierra Nevada Alliance, which is a non-profit environmental organization. One of the projects I worked on was a meadow forum, where we gathered a group of local and regional experts on meadows and wetlands to visit some restored wetlands and discuss some of the best ways to preserve and protect them. In the process, I learned a bit about how wetlands function and what ecosystem services they provide. Basically, they act as both a water filter and as a way to replenish water supplies. As water flows downhill (in the form of run-off from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in this case), the vegetation helps absorb some of the water and let it percolate to replenish groundwater supplies, while also slowing its progress so downstream communities don't get inundated with overflowing water.
That's what these artificial SAS systems sound like to me. I'm sure they're good things (and apparently tourist attractions, too), but I can't help but wonder: wouldn't it just be easier to preserve wetlands in the first place instead of constructing fake ones? You know, stop building subdivisions on top of them, overgrazing them, etc.? It just seems to make sense to me. It sounds like this approach is starting to gain some momentum; I read somewhere (don't remember where) recently that Massachusetts recently protected a bunch of wetlands to help preserve Boston's water supply. So that's good.
The second topic that struck me in this chapter was the idea of integrated resource planning. As Roseland discusses it, this means integrating all parts of water management and planning, like irrigation and wastewater treatment. I think this is great, but I think it can and should be taken further. Last week, I had a conversation with someone from the California Department of Water Resources (whom I met at the aforementioned meadow forum) about his work. He mentioned that what he and others are trying to do is integrate water planning with land use planning, urban planning, forest management, wildlife management, etc., etc. Basically, the idea is to integrate lots of different ecosystem service management departments to deal with all aspects of the environment as a whole instead of treating each resource independently. This to me seems like an amazing idea. As we've already learned, you can't just wall off different pieces of the environment, manage them independently, and hope it all turns out okay. Treating the environment as one big whole I think will result in a much better outcome (not to mention cheaper because I imagine we can streamline the bureaucracy in that case). Maybe this is an idea that can be further developed, put into place, and then adopted widely.
Until next time, when I promise not to write a post entitled "The Postman"...
Two points:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it's interesting to me to read about your experiences living in California and experiencing water issues. I'm from Michigan, so our water issues are quite different from the West. Obviously, we have the Great Lakes, and we also have many inland lakes and streams. So instead of dealing with scarcity issues, we are dealing with ways to protect our waterways from pollution and wetland destruction.
Which kind of brings me to my second point, which deals with the SAS concept. In my Urban Ecology class (which, for some reason, overlaps a lot more than I originally thought with this class), we just talked about wetland preservation, and strategies for conservation. The authors of the paper included a sliding scale that listed benefits to conservation, where one end represented benefits to nature and the other represented benefits to humans. One person asked the class where along the continuum was the best place to convince people that preservation was worthwhile. Everyone in the class said the exact same thing: that we'd have to appeal to the fact that conservation improves human well-being, in order to get any change to occur. Which is sad, but I think a good point: if we can convince people that preserving the wetlands in the first place has a value to them, maybe we can stop them from destroying it in the first place.
And I'm waiting for the blog called "Dances with Wolves" myself... :)
Some good thoughts, Andrew. Preserving wetlands in the first place would be ideal. However, I think SAS can have its own place where wetlands are not originally there, but their services good be beneficial.
ReplyDeleteI also love the idea of integrating ecosystem management programs for a more comprehensive approach to environmental/resource health. To continue Jen's point, i think people would understand natural ecosystems a lot better if they equated them to something that is relatable to themselves. Much like the body is an interconnected system, where illness in one part of the body can escalate and cause problems in other areas; so too for the environment. If wetlands, deserts, plains, and oceans are not properly managed and protected, the ill effects will spread and damage the intricate processes of other ecosystems, as well.
ReplyDeleteYour personal history of dealing with drought and heat will serve you well in the future. 130 million people in the US were under a heat advisory on July 18, 2011. Therefore, we will not hold you responsible for the local weather or the climate.
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