Haley Conroy - 2/21/23 - Caleb Redick Guest Presentation: Ecological Restoration

 Today Dr. Redick’s son presented to us about ecological restoration. Particularly from anthropocentric design to design for the ecological community. In terms of anthropogenic land use, it can correlate directly to the simplification of landscape. Biodiversity, geographic diversity, abundance of organisms, and nutrient cycles are all related terms. Now that the way that forestry has changed over the years, there has grown a deeper and more complex goal in terms of lesser human impact, disturbance, and effects. By taking maritime forests and turning them into plantations, it truly depicts how these complex systems are difficult to control. Additionally, the removal of various individuals, species, or characteristics negatively affects the environment as a whole. An interesting point that Caleb made was that the phrase ‘let nature run its course’ which is a very broad statement due to the fact that it could take hundreds of years or even generations for that to happen. I had never really thought about that and it was a very thought provoking idea he shared! Additionally, Caleb explained how an ecosystem could get to a certain point where the dynamic equilibrium is disturbed, and then that can allow communities to develop and replace each other after a disturbance. An example of this can be depicted as a chain flow: a mature forest > gets disturbed > shrubland is affected > trees colonize > then a young forest > and the cycle repeats. At any point in time a disturbance could occur which could recycle and regenerate the sequence. For example, deer love our crop land forest metrics of edge habitats and recently abandoned farm fields and as this happens, deer are at much higher levels than they used to be and also at a much higher rate than the ecosystem can support. In turn, this can prevent trees from colonizing and turning into a forest which is also a surprising factor. However, this is why we have ecological restoration which is a practice that aims to return ecosystems that have been damaged, degraded, or destroyed to a desired level of recovery. Overall it was a very interesting and eye opening presentation which reminded me much of the conversations from a previous course I took with Dr. Redick (Religion and Ecology). 

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