Merger of Environmental and Ecological Sciences
April 4, 2008 by NEIL MILLER , John Morelli and Frances | Filed under: The EM as an Industrial Ecologist [1]
Hello, my name is Neil Miller and I would like to contribute to this EM discussion topic and will be attending the Environmental Management Workshop. I would like to move forward in the discussion and talk about the two paradigms that are associated between the merger of both the environmental and ecological sciences.
“With the beginning of interdisciplinary efforts between the two fields, some of the fundamental differences between them are generating conflicts caused more by misunderstanding of basic concepts than by any difference in social purposes or methods. Those differences are most vivid in that part of ecology called ecosystem science, for it is there that it is obvious that both the biota and the physical environment interact such that not only does the environment shape the biota but the biota transforms the environment.”
This can be a very involved discussion because of the immense amount of project or work specific situations. To get through the management portion of this career there has to be a fundamental understanding of how the environment works, ecology, and a strong understanding of new methods for planning solutions or creating alternate designs.
For example if we look at the article by C.S. Holling “Engineering Resilience versus Ecological Resilience” : There are examples of managed ecosystems that work as efficiently as the original, sustainable, and also there are ones that have a gradual lose functional diversity. With the overwhelming amount of inter-connecting biological interactions between the biological and plant life, it can be impossible to, accurately, forecast the future conditions of an improvement to the environment. As I understand, there is no universally accepted definition of an Industrial Ecologist. The article I have linked below has a very nice list of attributes that are tied to the field, located on page 4. As a suggestion, I would like to start a discussion, with an end goal of establishing a defining that we all agree on. Since I am new to the concepts, I believe that it will come together as we discuss other topics and that there might not be a need for separate discussions. Input from professionals in the field could help out “beginners”, like myself, and others to learn about the field and the difficulties associated with the multi-disciplinary approach.
Also, here is a link for supplemental information on the relation of Life-Cycle Analysis, which I am also interested in, to support an Industrial Ecologist (pg. 12-26), this could lead to some very good discussions in the future.
http://www.umich.edu/~nppcpub/resources/compendia/INDEpdfs/INDEintro.pdf
Great link. I link the question on page 4 about whether industrial ecology tries to integrate industrial systems into nature (like the Kalundborg example) or tries to get industrial systems to emulate ecological systems. Hollings is definitely leaning towards the second interpretation of industrial ecology.
LCA would be a good example of a way to answer the second question of this discussion group: If we intend to design systems to mimic the processes in the natural world, how do we integrate these uncertain, unpredictable, and dynamic characteristics into our approaches and our designs? An environmental manager could collect his/her information through an LCA.
I agree Frances, the link mentions that going through a LCA can nail down the environmental consequences of a process, which I would think has to help the development process for desiging new methods. Thanks for your response!