LAND CLASSIFICATION AND E C O S Y S T E M CLASSIFICATION J. STAN ROWE Professor Emeritus, University of Saskatchewan, P.O. Box 11, New Denver, British Columbia, VOG 1S0, Canada
Abstract. Earth, the ecosphere, is a unified functional ecosystem. Ecological land classification (ELC) and regionalization divides and categorizes this unity into similar and dissimilar pieces - sectoral ecosystems - at various scales, in the interests of admiration and understanding. The recognition of land/water ecosystems in a hierarchy of sizes provides a rational base for the many-scaled problems of protection and careful exploitation in the fields of agriculture, forestry, wildlife and recreation. In forested terrain the protection of biodiversity, old growth forests, watersheds and wildlife habitat depends on spatial-temporal planning of forestry operations to maintain a preferred mosaic structure of local ecosystems within each ecological region. Without ecological understanding and a good ELC, this is impossible. Conceiving the world as comprising nested land/water ecosystems that are the source of life, elevates the role of Earth-as-context, an antidote to destructive anthropocentrism.
1. Introduction Of all social issues on the global agenda, the most important now and in the years ahead, is how shall humanity come to terms with its Earth home? Every thinking person knows that "environmental problems" are basically people problems. The planet's water, land, air and biota are being degraded and depleted by the impact of booming human populations and their escalating material wants. As heirs of an ancient, false and mischievous tradition that separates our species from all others, and from Earth itself, people continue to treat land and water as commodities rather than as life-giving matrixes. Incorrigibly anthropocentric, the human race has yet to assimilate Thoreau's wisdom that "this curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful, more to be admired and enjoyed than used." Small wonder, when people well educated in the sciences and humanities are illiterate when it comes to their "ecologies" (Orr, 1992). Those who study forestland and its various sites are necessarily ecologists, whether or not they are formally trained as such. The search for relationships between organisms and their vital context of air/land/water lies at the heart of forest "site classification" and regionalization. Awareness of the importance of context is the beginning of ecological literacy. Once grasped, it is difficult to avoid seeing ourselves as we really are: organic parts of greater wholes, one of many species existing within and dependent on the sectoral ecosystems of the planet. An awareness of human ecology encourages a truer valuation of nature and of human nature. This is simply to restate an old Buddhist maxim to the effect that vocations are important, far beyond the pay cheques they bring in. The subjects and tasks to which we devote our professional lives strongly influence what we value and Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 39:11-20, 1996. (~) 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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therefore the kind of people we become. An understanding of the importance of our Earthly context inevitably makes us preservationists. The title of the Conference, "Global to Local," is appropriate, bearing as it does on the importance of both the global philosophy that recognizes the ecosphereas-context and on practical approaches to understanding and ministering to Earth and its local ecosystems. Here note that in 1986, the USDA Forest Service led the way for use of such sympathetic language, substituting "caring for the land" for the more traditional, clinical and macho "management of the land" (quoted in Kennedy and Quigley, 1994). In this symposium, Dr. Bailey has outlined the big picture, the universal framework, while also setting out a useful methodology (see Bailey, this volume). To form a conception of Earth's realities "from the top down" is advantageous, providing a meaningful global context for local concepts and problems. The "bottom up" approach - starting with the Small and Local, building toward the Large and Global - has its useful place in our thinking, but it is strewn with pitfalls for the unwary. An example is provided by the subject matter of ecology, strongly biased toward biology. A focus on organisms, rather than on Earth's ecosystems, has narrowed and confined ecological thinking. This is a consequence of the natural interest in our own kind, and in things like us, but it has made difficult the conceptual jump to ecosystems as supra-organic entities in which organisms are embedded. The definition of ecology by Odum (1975) as "study of the structure and function of nature" (i.e., of ecosystems) failed to win popularity, presumably because main-stream ecology developed as a branch of biology focussed on organisms as individuals, singly or in groups. Most of today's conservation biology literature uses "ecosystem" as a loose synonym for "biotic community," although by definition or implication a vague physical "environment" or "habitat" is also involved. The same fixation on organisms as the be-all and end-all of importance is apparent in much of the forestry literature. And a number of influential voices at leading universities have warned that the idea of "ecosystem" is unnecessary if not downright dangerous, that at best it is no more than a useful conceptual device. The problem stems from a "bottom up" evolution of the ecosystem concept, by summation, starting from biased biological ideas. This particular development sequence or ontogeny is illustrated by the typical organization of ecology textbooks: first attention to the individual organism (autecology), then to species and groups of similar individuals (population ecology), then all organisms found occupying the same milieu (community ecology) and finally at the end of the book the ecosystem as "community plus abiotic resources" (ecosystemology). Because of this additive approach, the idea of ecosystem as a studiable object that exceeds the biotic community in importance has not emerged. Therefore academic ecology in North America has little to contribute as the world goes to hell in a handbasket with acid rain, greenhouse warming, ozone holes, deforestation, soil depletion, water-air pollution, human overpopulation, mass consumption, and urban-industrial consti-
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pation. Only the vast die-off of species, the loss of biodiversity - which is a symptom, not a cause - has engaged widespread biological-ecological attention. Lest this seem too harsh a criticism, consider the source documents of the "Sustainable Biosphere Initiative" recently undertaken by the Ecological Society of America (ESA). When aquatic ecologist David Schindler reviewed the proposal, he pointed out in Conservation Biology that few of the background citations were from the ESA's two journals, Ecology and Ecological Monographs! In other words, traditional academic ecology has been spinning its wheels on organisms, populations and communities for 100 years without coming to grips with the fundamental problem of assuring a sustained ecosphere and sustained sectoral ecosystems. At root is a conceptual problem. In a recent review of the history of Landscape Ecology, Golly (1994) noted that "ecosystem" has referred more "to an orientation to research and management" than to an object in the landscape. And even when "ecosystem" is objectified, it carries different meanings for earth-science and biology-science workers. For example, members of the US Soil Ecological Society recently wrote an aggrieved letter to the ESA asking why three-dimensional soil systems were not given full attention in the ESA's Sustainable Biosphere Initiative? Is not "the below-ground c o m p o n e n t . . , essential for all terrestrial ecosystems?" they asked (Klopatek et al., 1992). Clarification of the issue was attempted by Rowe and B ames (1994). Biologistecologists and earth-science ecologists develop their concepts from different viewpoints. Bio-ecologists center their ecosystems on organisms, whether mobile (animal ecologists) or relatively static (plant ecologists), adding thereto a non-specific "abiotic" environment. "The sub-entities that make up an ecosystem are the biotic community and the abiotic resources" (emphasis added), according to Scheiner et al. (1993). In contrast, geo-ecologists center their ecosystems on geographic spaces, their particular focus being the three-dimensional landforms, polypedons, waterforms and overlying air-stratum topoclimates, within which organisms dwell and interact as inseparable components (see, for example, Simpson et al., 1990) Therefore the bio-ecologist's ecosystem concept is vague and elastic in its space/time dimensions, deriving its meaning or lack of meaning from organisms of interest wherever they chance to roam. "I have struggled unsuccessfully with the problem of defining ecosystems into which a seagull can be fitted," said Drury in 1969 and similar sentiments are expressed by animal ecologists today. Geo-ecologists and ecogeographers have no such problem. Their ecosystem resembles a giant terrarium or aquarium with a particular developmental history at a particular location. It is a volumetric, layered, site-specific object - such as a lake, a particular landform-based forest or a more complex tract of land-water terrain - into and out of which mobile organisms come and go. Where the bioecologist's ecosystem tends to be abstract and heuristic, its purpose to add an "abiotic" dimension to studies of individual, population and community, the geoecologist's ecosystem is a real live chunk of earth space, less abstract than the taxonomic categories population/community and with the same spatial/structural
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concreteness (once boundaries have been set) as an individual organism (Rowe, 1992a). For those interested in the history of concepts, these ideas were discussed by forest ecologists at the World Botanical Conference of 1959 in Montreal (see Hustich, 1960) and at the 5th World Forestry Congress in Seattle in the following year (see Rowe et al., 1961). The conceptualization of "ecosystem" by the add-on of abiotic resources to a dealer's choice of organisms reduces it to the same vague and subjective status as "environment". By this route, organisms define their own ecosystems - which makes the latter infinite in number, non-coincident in boundaries and virtually unstudiable. Such a definition trivializes Ecological Land Classification (ELC). If there is to be a concise field of ecosystem science (ecosystemology) that includes, along with organisms, the air-water-land matrix of interest to earth scientists, then the concept of ecosystem - no matter how it is arrived at - must be that of a real structural-functional volumetric system occupying a relatively fixed earth space. An additional argument for the geo-ecosystem concept attributes the organizing principle we call "life" to ecosystems rather than to organisms p e r se (Rowe, 1992b). The fact that organisms are dead without their Earth matrixes means that ecosystems, not organisms, are the vital bearers of life. The usual definition of ecosystem as "all the organisms in a given place in interaction with their non-living environment" is ecological nonsense. The North American aborigines had it right: life is as much in air, water, soil and rocks as in organisms. Whatever "life" may be, it somehow blends both organic and inorganic. Planet Earth, the ecosphere, is the most important integrated unit, the largest and completest ecosystem. It is the creative entity, bearer of the organizing principle called "life," composed of improbable air, water, rocks, soils, sediments and organisms. For those interested in Earth-surface phenomena, lesser ecosystems can realistically be conceived as comprising chunks of the ecosphere that contain all the foregoing life-giving constituents at any chosen scale/size. Thus Earth-space ecosystems emerge conceptually as three-dimensional objects, containing organisms as one important constituent along with the no-less-important gas-liquid-solid matrix. From this, several important implications that are perhaps recognized by ELC practitioners but have yet to be universally acknowledged: 1. The "inorganic" earth sciences are as important as the "organic" sciences in their contribution to understanding the dynamics of ecosystems; i.e., to understanding ecosystem structure, function and developmental processes. Here be it noted that there is more to ecosystems than vegetation and soil (Rowe, 1984). 2. A more radical implication is that the discipline of biology, like the disciplines of geomorphology, pedology and topoclimatology, should be placed as a subdiscipline of ecosystemology, reversing current thought and the organization of University departments. 3. Concern for ecodiversity - the diversity of Earth's ecosystems - takes centre stage, because without the world-wide preservation and maintenance of
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ecosystems, biodiversity is bound to fade away. "Gap analysis" based on vegetation communities is a poor substitute for gap analysis based on the more enduring features of land/water ecosystems. In order to understand this Earth that brought us forth, that envelops and sustains us, a broadening of the focus of attention from organisms to Earth's sectoral ecosystems is necessary. A useful connection can be made between forestland, its regionalization into units at various scale/sizes, and the classification of these units both as sites for and as parts of terrestrial ecosystems. The topic has been explored theoretically and in practice, recently for example, by the contributors to "Forest Site Classification in Canada: A Current Perspective" (Sims, 1992), by Barnes (1993) and by Bailey et al. (1994). Nevertheless, the connection in theory and practice between land, site and ecosystem seems still to be a minority view. And if that connection is not clearly made, what does all the literature on "ecosystem management" and "ecosystem sustainability" mean? What is "the ecosystem approach?" What are "ecosystem health" and "ecosystem integrity" unless they pertain to concrete land and water entities? Academics can argue that ecosystems are convenient artifices, or that they refer to what is happening in our eyelashes, in our gut, in Lake Ontario or in the boreal forest, but surely for practical purposes the concept has to be "grounded" by definition as Earth-based units. Recognition of land/water ecosystems in a hierarchy of sizes can provide a rational base for the many-scaled problems of protection and careful exploitation in the fields of forestry, agriculture, wildlife and recreation. In forested terrain, for example, the protection of biodiversity, old growth forests, watersheds and wildlife habitat depends on wide-and-deep spatialtemporal planning of forestry operations to maintain a preferred mosaic structure of local ecosystems within each ecological region (Rowe, 1993, 1994). Perhaps this is where the practitioners of ELC can make their greatest contribution, giving substance through their regionalizations and classifications to what at present are hazy concepts. Four of the five principal strategies set out in the Canadian Forest Service's 1994 Strategic Plan for Science and Technology from 1995-2000 ("Toward a New Era in Sustainable Forestry") concern the study, monitoring, protection and management of forest ecosystems. What, operationally, does this important strategy mean when it leaves "forest ecosystem" undefined? Again, the policy of the federal/provincial Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, Sustainable Forests, a Canadian Commitment (Anonymous, 1992), gave as its first goal: (1.1) "Governments will complete an ecological classification of forest lands," justified as necessary "To improve our ability to manage forest ecosystems and to maintain their productive capacity and resilience." The message errs on the utilitarian side for those of us who try to be less anthropocentric and more ecocentric, but at least by implication the connection between forestland and forest ecosystems is expressed. Here one discerns the glimmering of a truth: that before people can be non-destructive custodians of forest ecosystems they must have at least minimal ecological understanding in the form of a classification of forestland.
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2. Delineating Ecosystem Units As frequently noted, the two chief aspects of ELC are classification and regionalization/mapping (Bailey, 1976; Rowe, 1979). Ideally the budgets of ELC workers should be large enough to support both, for they are synergistic. It is possible of course to dispense with maps and still develop useful site classifications from sample plot data. Such schemes provide a number of categories into which the land's diversity is fitted. The advantage of mapping a n d classifying is that every part of the terrain has to be confronted; there is no avoiding those in-between and oddball units that an a priori classification is apt to ignore. Further, map boundaries are hypotheses expressing the mapper's belief that important compositional and functional differences lie on either side. Such hypotheses are on view for everyone to see. They can be tested, returned to by new investigators, confirmed, rejected, improved. Another virtue of mapping is its educative potentialities. Mapping teaches ecology. One cannot examine air photos without evoking a host of relational questions. The stimuli that generated the original "landscape ecology" in the late '30s in Europe (e.g., see the review by Troll, 1963) were such questions as, "Why is this terrain pattern different from that? Why the sharp break in vegetation here or in surface drainage there?" Fortunately, two of the endurii~g or slowly changing terrain features that are visible at Earth's surface - landforms and the drainage patterns that help to reveal them - are also among the most important for understanding and delineating ecosystems and their sites. The rationale for using landforms as the basis of terrain mapping seems self-evident at intermediate scales in such recently glaciated places as northern Europe, northern USA and Canada. The changes in organic and inorganic features of terrain on aerial photos as the eye moves from ice-contact stratified drift to glaciolacustrine flats, from moraine to outwash plains, from alluvium to duned deltas, are unmistakably clear and ecologically significant. But even in unglaciated regions, landform - as the combined surficial material and its surface topography - is the underlying key to the patterning of coincident climate, vegetation and soil. Logic supports this statement. Concerning soil genesis, Hans Jenny (1941) made the argument for five relatively independent "genetic" influences: climate, relief/topography, geological parent material, biota and time, and variability of the same factors accounts for the diversity of ecosystems that incorporate soils as their lower strata. If within a region any four of the five are held constant, said Jenny, then soil formation (and landscape ecosystem formation) will faithfully reflect the variations of the fifth. Jenny's formulation can be simplified to four genetic influences by combining geological parent material and relief/topography as "landform" (i.e., both the composition of the surficial stratum and its topographic form). Therefore, within any climatic region (macro, meso or micro) given an equivalent time span and equal access overall to the same biota, all fundamental variations in landscape ecosystems can initially (in primary succession) be attributed to variations in land-
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forms as they modify climate (i.e., radiation and moisture regimes), select the "fit" plants and animals from the available biota, and thus control the formation of soils on their topographic facets. Overlaid on the basic terrain mosaics thus formed are the modifying influences of a variety of disturbances - fires, insect depredations, landslides, wind, human land uses (plus the secondary successions they initiate) - which distort and sometimes conceal the primary patterns. It is important to recognize that forest stand boundaries do not always coincide with ecological site boundaries (SmaUey, 1986). From a climatic perspective, Earth-surface energy-moisture regimes at all scale/sizes are the dynamic driving variables of functional ecosystems at all scale/sizes. The differentiation of ecological units of land and/or water by regionalizations and ELCs is a differentiation of energy regimes, of climatic regimes. Though spotty climatic data may sometimes be available, climatic regimes are primarily interpreted from visible terrain features known to be ecologically linked to the regimes of radiation and moisture; viz. landform and vegetation. If the world were one smooth sphere, air-mass climates or macroclimates would fall into neat latitudinal zones. This theoretical symmetry is broken by the configuration of seas and continents and by the relief or surface roughness of the latter, resulting in irregular macroclimatic zones and belts. Within such zones and belts the climate would be essentially uniform (i.e. expressing the same regime of solar radiation and precipitation throughout) were it not for relief-topography and vegetation cover; i.e., surface roughness at meso and micro scales. Thus landforms with their vegetations, over the full range of scale/sizes, modify and shape their coincident climates. For example, the positions of subarctic and arctic air-mass climates of northern Canada are at least partly dependent on the position of tree-line as the divider between tundra to the north and lichen woodland to the south. Here as elsewhere the Earth-surface molds its climates even as the latter shape their coincident vegetations (Hare and Ritchie, 1972).
3. Boundaries
Earth, the ecosphere - the largest and most complete ecological system - is mostly powered by solar energy as are (with few exceptions around volcanic vents) its sectoral ecosystems: marine, continental, regional and local. As to the disposition of solar energy, about 2 percent maintains the organic world through photosynthesis and heterotrophy while 49 times as much (98 percent) sustains the ecosphere by warming its components (land, water, air, organisms) and by moving water through the phases of the hydrologic cycle. Therefore, as structural-functional entities, the sectoral ecosystems that the ecosphere comprises can be conceived as functionally centered on energy-moisture regimes (on climate) and secondarily on organic regimes (food webs, trophic levels) - despite the undeniable importance of the latter to heterotrophs such as we.
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From an energy-ecosystem rather than biota-ecosystem viewpoint, those features at and near Earth's surface which control the reception and transformation of energy and moisture are paramount in importance for the ecosystems that include them. Attention is thus directed to landform and its vegetative "skin," the two strongly influencing the climatic regime of landscape/waterscape ecosystems. To repeat: different kinds of landforms and their pelages at all scales/sizes are climatically different, signifying important differences in the coincident ecosystems of which they are parts. Boundaries are recognized by perceived changes in the ecological relationships of vegetation, landform, drainage and soil, from whose expression climate is inferred. But when vegetation and soil have been drastically disturbed or even destroyed, boundaries between potential ecosystems can still be mapped to coincide with changes in those landform characteristics known to regulate the reception and retention of energy and water. At the local scale, for example, the change in contour from convex-upward to concave-upward, from the run-off to the run-in position on hill slopes, is always ecologically significant.
4. Awareness of Context
The worldview or ideological paradigm that is destroying nature and our Earth-born human nature is anthropocentrism or perhaps more exactly andropocentrism, the naive belief that the world exists solely for the sake of man. Here I purposely avoid gender-neutral language because environmental problems, ecosystem problems, have historically stemmed largely from the thoughts and activities of the male side of the race. I take it as axiomatic, given man's exploitive history, that contemporary males can improve their minds and attitudes by listening carefully to feminists and ecofeminists. At conferences such as this we tend to zero in on scientific problems in the good old reductionist way, focussing on thematic data (the "GIS trap", see Bailey, 1988), exploring new gadgets and techniques that we hope in some miraculous way will lead us to the light, while setting aside the big global ecological issues whose violent superficial aspects are the media's daily fare. To cocoon ourselves off from the messy Real World, discussing disciplinary problems with our peers, is comforting. We feel adequate to handle business-as-usual on relatively simple human-centered problems. It is not enough anymore. Whatever our professions, whatever we work at, we have to begin thinking more broadly and deeply and critically about context, about what we are doing to the Earth. Western culture constantly exhorts us to be active, to be "productive" - though what the world needs is fewer of us, doing less. The work ethic foisted on us by Puritan ancestors is profoundly immoral. Apart from conceiving music and inconceivably making love, everyone of us should be slowing down, taking it easier, letting things be. Another trap is the old idea that scientists are value-free,
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disinterested observers and experimenters. But scientists too are value motivated; they are the same as everyone else, except perhaps more dogmatic. Not only is it O K to ask about the values and attitudes that are brought to ELC; it is essential. What's going on here, what is the purpose? Is it only service to the human race? Does flat-out anthropocentrism still rule? Or is our ecological comprehension a step toward more sensitive and less exploitive land use and planning? Is the distant goal, to which we hope to contribute, a symbiosis between our species and the 20 or 30 million others on Earth, a symbiosis with air, land and water? A symbiosis with wildness, recognized as precious both outside and inside ourselves? Or is it only to continue the selfish species-centered overpowering and bulldozing that has been the hallmark o f our western culture during the last several hundred years? Ecological Land Classifications are being sponsored the w o r d over by ecologically illiterate governments and industries because of the promise they hold for more productive land use, for more efficient land use, for the increase of human wealth and well-being. As ecologists with some inkling of the importance of Earthas-context, we have a duty to look beyond such short-sighted and dangerous goals. First and foremost is an educative task, to shift the focus of attention from people to the planet, from human welfare to the welfare of the creative surrounding and sustaining world.
References Anonymous: 1992, 'Sustainable forests, a Canadian commitment', Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, 351 St. Joseph Boulevard, Hull, Qu6bec. Bailey, R.G.: 1976, 'Ecoregions of the United States', Mapsheet at 1:7 500 000 scale, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Intermountain Region, Ogden, Utah. Bailey, R.G.: 1988, 'Problems with using overlay mapping for planning and their implications for Geographic Information Systems', Environmental Management 12, 11-17. Bailey, R.G.: 1996, 'Multi-scale ecosystem analysis', Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, (this volume). Bailey, R.G., Jensen, M.E., Cleland, D.T. and Bourgeron, P.S.: 1994, 'Design and use of ecological mapping units', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron, (eds.), Ecosystem Management, Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNW-GTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 95-106. Barnes, B.V.: 1993, 'The landscape ecosystem approach and conservation of endangered spaces', Endangered Species Update 10(3&4), 13-19. Canadian Forest Service: 1994, 'Toward a new era in sustainableforestry', The CFS Strategic Plan for Science & Technology 1995-2000, Science and Sustainable Development Directorate, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. Drury, W.H.: 1969, 'Discussion on concepts of ecosystem and landscapes (an excerpt)', In: K.N.H. Greenidge (ed.), Essays in Plant Geography and Ecology, Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 78 pp. Golley, F.B.: 1994, 'Development of landscape ecology and its relation to environmental management', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron (eds.), Ecosystem Management, Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNW-GTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 34-41. Hare, EK. and Ritchie, J.C.: 1972, 'The boreal bioclimates', Geographical Review 62, 334--365. Hustich, I. (ed.): 1960, 'Can we find a common platform for the different schools of forest type classification?', Silva Fennica 105, Helsinki, Finland.
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Jenny, H.: 1941, Factors of Soil Formation, McGraw-Hill, New York. Kennedy, J.J. and Quigley, T.M.: 1994, 'Evolution of forest service organizational culture and adaptation issues in embracing ecosystem management', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron (eds.), Ecosystem Management: Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNWGTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 16-26. Klopatek, C., O Neill, E.G., Freckman, D.W., Bledsoe, C.S., Coleman, C., Crossley Jr., D.A., lngham, E.R., Parkinson, D. and Klopatek, J.M: 1992, 'The sustainable biosphere initiative: a commentary from the US Soil Ecology Society', Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer. 73, 223-228. Odum, E.P.: 1975, Ecology (2nd edition), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 244 pp. Orr, D.W.: 1992, EcologicalLiteracy, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 210 pp. Rowe, J.S.: 1979, 'Revised working paper on methodology/philosophy of ecological land classification in Canada', In: C.D.A. Rubec (ed.), Applications of Ecological (Biophysical) Land Classification in Canada, Ecological Land Classification Series No. 7, Lands Direct., Environ. Can., Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 23-29. Rowe, J.S.: 1984, 'Forestland classification: limitations of the use of vegetation', In: J.G. Bockheim (ed.), Proceedings of the Symposium, Forest Land Classification: Experience, Problems and Perspectives, Dep. of Soil Science, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, pp. 132-147. Rowe, J.S." 1992a, 'The integration of ecological studies', Functional Ecology 6, 115-119. Rowe, J.S.: 1992b, 'Viewpoint. Biological fallacy: life equals organisms', BioScience 42(6), 394. Rowe, J.S.: 1993, 'Old growth forests', In: G. Blouin and R. Comeau (eds.), Forestry on the Hill: Old Growth Forests, Special Issue No. 5, Canadian Forestry Association, Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 26-28. Rowe, J.S.: 1994, 'Protected areas', In: G. Blouin and R. Comeau (eds.), Forestry on the Hill: Protected Areas, Special Issue No. 6, Canadian Forestry Association, Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 6567. Rowe, J.S. and Barnes, B.V.: 1994, 'Get-ecosystems and bit-ecosystems', Bull. Ecol. Soc, Amer. 75(1), 40--41. Rowe, J.S., Haddock, P.G., Hills, G.A., Krajina, V. and Linteau, A.: 1961, The ecosystem concept in forestry', Special Papers in the Field of Ecology, Silviculture and Management, Fifth World Forestry Congress Proceedings, 3 pp. Scheiner, S.M., Hudson, A.J. and VanderMeulen, M.A.: 1993, 'An epistemology for ecology', Bull, Ecol. Soc. Amer. 74, 17-21. Simpson, T.A., Stuart, P.E. and Barnes, B.V.: 1990, 'Landscape ecosystems and cover types of the Reserve Area and adjoining lands of the Huron Mountain Club, Marquette Co., Michigan', Occasional Paper No. 4, Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, Marquette, Michigan, 128 pp. Sims, R.A. (author & compiler): 1992, 'Forest site classification in Canada: a current perspective', Forestry Chronicle 68(1), 21-120. Smalley, G.W.: 1986, 'Site classification and evaluation for the interior uplands: forest sites of the Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim/Pennyroyal', Tech. Report No. R8-TP9, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Southern Forest Experiment Station, New Orleans, Louisiana. Troll, C.: 1963, 'Landscape ecology and land development with special reference to the tropics', Journal of Tropical Geography 17, 1-11.
Abstract. Earth, the ecosphere, is a unified functional ecosystem. Ecological land classification (ELC) and regionalization divides and categorizes this unity into similar and dissimilar pieces - sectoral ecosystems - at various scales, in the interests of admiration and understanding. The recognition of land/water ecosystems in a hierarchy of sizes provides a rational base for the many-scaled problems of protection and careful exploitation in the fields of agriculture, forestry, wildlife and recreation. In forested terrain the protection of biodiversity, old growth forests, watersheds and wildlife habitat depends on spatial-temporal planning of forestry operations to maintain a preferred mosaic structure of local ecosystems within each ecological region. Without ecological understanding and a good ELC, this is impossible. Conceiving the world as comprising nested land/water ecosystems that are the source of life, elevates the role of Earth-as-context, an antidote to destructive anthropocentrism.
1. Introduction Of all social issues on the global agenda, the most important now and in the years ahead, is how shall humanity come to terms with its Earth home? Every thinking person knows that "environmental problems" are basically people problems. The planet's water, land, air and biota are being degraded and depleted by the impact of booming human populations and their escalating material wants. As heirs of an ancient, false and mischievous tradition that separates our species from all others, and from Earth itself, people continue to treat land and water as commodities rather than as life-giving matrixes. Incorrigibly anthropocentric, the human race has yet to assimilate Thoreau's wisdom that "this curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful, more to be admired and enjoyed than used." Small wonder, when people well educated in the sciences and humanities are illiterate when it comes to their "ecologies" (Orr, 1992). Those who study forestland and its various sites are necessarily ecologists, whether or not they are formally trained as such. The search for relationships between organisms and their vital context of air/land/water lies at the heart of forest "site classification" and regionalization. Awareness of the importance of context is the beginning of ecological literacy. Once grasped, it is difficult to avoid seeing ourselves as we really are: organic parts of greater wholes, one of many species existing within and dependent on the sectoral ecosystems of the planet. An awareness of human ecology encourages a truer valuation of nature and of human nature. This is simply to restate an old Buddhist maxim to the effect that vocations are important, far beyond the pay cheques they bring in. The subjects and tasks to which we devote our professional lives strongly influence what we value and Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 39:11-20, 1996. (~) 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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therefore the kind of people we become. An understanding of the importance of our Earthly context inevitably makes us preservationists. The title of the Conference, "Global to Local," is appropriate, bearing as it does on the importance of both the global philosophy that recognizes the ecosphereas-context and on practical approaches to understanding and ministering to Earth and its local ecosystems. Here note that in 1986, the USDA Forest Service led the way for use of such sympathetic language, substituting "caring for the land" for the more traditional, clinical and macho "management of the land" (quoted in Kennedy and Quigley, 1994). In this symposium, Dr. Bailey has outlined the big picture, the universal framework, while also setting out a useful methodology (see Bailey, this volume). To form a conception of Earth's realities "from the top down" is advantageous, providing a meaningful global context for local concepts and problems. The "bottom up" approach - starting with the Small and Local, building toward the Large and Global - has its useful place in our thinking, but it is strewn with pitfalls for the unwary. An example is provided by the subject matter of ecology, strongly biased toward biology. A focus on organisms, rather than on Earth's ecosystems, has narrowed and confined ecological thinking. This is a consequence of the natural interest in our own kind, and in things like us, but it has made difficult the conceptual jump to ecosystems as supra-organic entities in which organisms are embedded. The definition of ecology by Odum (1975) as "study of the structure and function of nature" (i.e., of ecosystems) failed to win popularity, presumably because main-stream ecology developed as a branch of biology focussed on organisms as individuals, singly or in groups. Most of today's conservation biology literature uses "ecosystem" as a loose synonym for "biotic community," although by definition or implication a vague physical "environment" or "habitat" is also involved. The same fixation on organisms as the be-all and end-all of importance is apparent in much of the forestry literature. And a number of influential voices at leading universities have warned that the idea of "ecosystem" is unnecessary if not downright dangerous, that at best it is no more than a useful conceptual device. The problem stems from a "bottom up" evolution of the ecosystem concept, by summation, starting from biased biological ideas. This particular development sequence or ontogeny is illustrated by the typical organization of ecology textbooks: first attention to the individual organism (autecology), then to species and groups of similar individuals (population ecology), then all organisms found occupying the same milieu (community ecology) and finally at the end of the book the ecosystem as "community plus abiotic resources" (ecosystemology). Because of this additive approach, the idea of ecosystem as a studiable object that exceeds the biotic community in importance has not emerged. Therefore academic ecology in North America has little to contribute as the world goes to hell in a handbasket with acid rain, greenhouse warming, ozone holes, deforestation, soil depletion, water-air pollution, human overpopulation, mass consumption, and urban-industrial consti-
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pation. Only the vast die-off of species, the loss of biodiversity - which is a symptom, not a cause - has engaged widespread biological-ecological attention. Lest this seem too harsh a criticism, consider the source documents of the "Sustainable Biosphere Initiative" recently undertaken by the Ecological Society of America (ESA). When aquatic ecologist David Schindler reviewed the proposal, he pointed out in Conservation Biology that few of the background citations were from the ESA's two journals, Ecology and Ecological Monographs! In other words, traditional academic ecology has been spinning its wheels on organisms, populations and communities for 100 years without coming to grips with the fundamental problem of assuring a sustained ecosphere and sustained sectoral ecosystems. At root is a conceptual problem. In a recent review of the history of Landscape Ecology, Golly (1994) noted that "ecosystem" has referred more "to an orientation to research and management" than to an object in the landscape. And even when "ecosystem" is objectified, it carries different meanings for earth-science and biology-science workers. For example, members of the US Soil Ecological Society recently wrote an aggrieved letter to the ESA asking why three-dimensional soil systems were not given full attention in the ESA's Sustainable Biosphere Initiative? Is not "the below-ground c o m p o n e n t . . , essential for all terrestrial ecosystems?" they asked (Klopatek et al., 1992). Clarification of the issue was attempted by Rowe and B ames (1994). Biologistecologists and earth-science ecologists develop their concepts from different viewpoints. Bio-ecologists center their ecosystems on organisms, whether mobile (animal ecologists) or relatively static (plant ecologists), adding thereto a non-specific "abiotic" environment. "The sub-entities that make up an ecosystem are the biotic community and the abiotic resources" (emphasis added), according to Scheiner et al. (1993). In contrast, geo-ecologists center their ecosystems on geographic spaces, their particular focus being the three-dimensional landforms, polypedons, waterforms and overlying air-stratum topoclimates, within which organisms dwell and interact as inseparable components (see, for example, Simpson et al., 1990) Therefore the bio-ecologist's ecosystem concept is vague and elastic in its space/time dimensions, deriving its meaning or lack of meaning from organisms of interest wherever they chance to roam. "I have struggled unsuccessfully with the problem of defining ecosystems into which a seagull can be fitted," said Drury in 1969 and similar sentiments are expressed by animal ecologists today. Geo-ecologists and ecogeographers have no such problem. Their ecosystem resembles a giant terrarium or aquarium with a particular developmental history at a particular location. It is a volumetric, layered, site-specific object - such as a lake, a particular landform-based forest or a more complex tract of land-water terrain - into and out of which mobile organisms come and go. Where the bioecologist's ecosystem tends to be abstract and heuristic, its purpose to add an "abiotic" dimension to studies of individual, population and community, the geoecologist's ecosystem is a real live chunk of earth space, less abstract than the taxonomic categories population/community and with the same spatial/structural
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concreteness (once boundaries have been set) as an individual organism (Rowe, 1992a). For those interested in the history of concepts, these ideas were discussed by forest ecologists at the World Botanical Conference of 1959 in Montreal (see Hustich, 1960) and at the 5th World Forestry Congress in Seattle in the following year (see Rowe et al., 1961). The conceptualization of "ecosystem" by the add-on of abiotic resources to a dealer's choice of organisms reduces it to the same vague and subjective status as "environment". By this route, organisms define their own ecosystems - which makes the latter infinite in number, non-coincident in boundaries and virtually unstudiable. Such a definition trivializes Ecological Land Classification (ELC). If there is to be a concise field of ecosystem science (ecosystemology) that includes, along with organisms, the air-water-land matrix of interest to earth scientists, then the concept of ecosystem - no matter how it is arrived at - must be that of a real structural-functional volumetric system occupying a relatively fixed earth space. An additional argument for the geo-ecosystem concept attributes the organizing principle we call "life" to ecosystems rather than to organisms p e r se (Rowe, 1992b). The fact that organisms are dead without their Earth matrixes means that ecosystems, not organisms, are the vital bearers of life. The usual definition of ecosystem as "all the organisms in a given place in interaction with their non-living environment" is ecological nonsense. The North American aborigines had it right: life is as much in air, water, soil and rocks as in organisms. Whatever "life" may be, it somehow blends both organic and inorganic. Planet Earth, the ecosphere, is the most important integrated unit, the largest and completest ecosystem. It is the creative entity, bearer of the organizing principle called "life," composed of improbable air, water, rocks, soils, sediments and organisms. For those interested in Earth-surface phenomena, lesser ecosystems can realistically be conceived as comprising chunks of the ecosphere that contain all the foregoing life-giving constituents at any chosen scale/size. Thus Earth-space ecosystems emerge conceptually as three-dimensional objects, containing organisms as one important constituent along with the no-less-important gas-liquid-solid matrix. From this, several important implications that are perhaps recognized by ELC practitioners but have yet to be universally acknowledged: 1. The "inorganic" earth sciences are as important as the "organic" sciences in their contribution to understanding the dynamics of ecosystems; i.e., to understanding ecosystem structure, function and developmental processes. Here be it noted that there is more to ecosystems than vegetation and soil (Rowe, 1984). 2. A more radical implication is that the discipline of biology, like the disciplines of geomorphology, pedology and topoclimatology, should be placed as a subdiscipline of ecosystemology, reversing current thought and the organization of University departments. 3. Concern for ecodiversity - the diversity of Earth's ecosystems - takes centre stage, because without the world-wide preservation and maintenance of
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ecosystems, biodiversity is bound to fade away. "Gap analysis" based on vegetation communities is a poor substitute for gap analysis based on the more enduring features of land/water ecosystems. In order to understand this Earth that brought us forth, that envelops and sustains us, a broadening of the focus of attention from organisms to Earth's sectoral ecosystems is necessary. A useful connection can be made between forestland, its regionalization into units at various scale/sizes, and the classification of these units both as sites for and as parts of terrestrial ecosystems. The topic has been explored theoretically and in practice, recently for example, by the contributors to "Forest Site Classification in Canada: A Current Perspective" (Sims, 1992), by Barnes (1993) and by Bailey et al. (1994). Nevertheless, the connection in theory and practice between land, site and ecosystem seems still to be a minority view. And if that connection is not clearly made, what does all the literature on "ecosystem management" and "ecosystem sustainability" mean? What is "the ecosystem approach?" What are "ecosystem health" and "ecosystem integrity" unless they pertain to concrete land and water entities? Academics can argue that ecosystems are convenient artifices, or that they refer to what is happening in our eyelashes, in our gut, in Lake Ontario or in the boreal forest, but surely for practical purposes the concept has to be "grounded" by definition as Earth-based units. Recognition of land/water ecosystems in a hierarchy of sizes can provide a rational base for the many-scaled problems of protection and careful exploitation in the fields of forestry, agriculture, wildlife and recreation. In forested terrain, for example, the protection of biodiversity, old growth forests, watersheds and wildlife habitat depends on wide-and-deep spatialtemporal planning of forestry operations to maintain a preferred mosaic structure of local ecosystems within each ecological region (Rowe, 1993, 1994). Perhaps this is where the practitioners of ELC can make their greatest contribution, giving substance through their regionalizations and classifications to what at present are hazy concepts. Four of the five principal strategies set out in the Canadian Forest Service's 1994 Strategic Plan for Science and Technology from 1995-2000 ("Toward a New Era in Sustainable Forestry") concern the study, monitoring, protection and management of forest ecosystems. What, operationally, does this important strategy mean when it leaves "forest ecosystem" undefined? Again, the policy of the federal/provincial Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, Sustainable Forests, a Canadian Commitment (Anonymous, 1992), gave as its first goal: (1.1) "Governments will complete an ecological classification of forest lands," justified as necessary "To improve our ability to manage forest ecosystems and to maintain their productive capacity and resilience." The message errs on the utilitarian side for those of us who try to be less anthropocentric and more ecocentric, but at least by implication the connection between forestland and forest ecosystems is expressed. Here one discerns the glimmering of a truth: that before people can be non-destructive custodians of forest ecosystems they must have at least minimal ecological understanding in the form of a classification of forestland.
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2. Delineating Ecosystem Units As frequently noted, the two chief aspects of ELC are classification and regionalization/mapping (Bailey, 1976; Rowe, 1979). Ideally the budgets of ELC workers should be large enough to support both, for they are synergistic. It is possible of course to dispense with maps and still develop useful site classifications from sample plot data. Such schemes provide a number of categories into which the land's diversity is fitted. The advantage of mapping a n d classifying is that every part of the terrain has to be confronted; there is no avoiding those in-between and oddball units that an a priori classification is apt to ignore. Further, map boundaries are hypotheses expressing the mapper's belief that important compositional and functional differences lie on either side. Such hypotheses are on view for everyone to see. They can be tested, returned to by new investigators, confirmed, rejected, improved. Another virtue of mapping is its educative potentialities. Mapping teaches ecology. One cannot examine air photos without evoking a host of relational questions. The stimuli that generated the original "landscape ecology" in the late '30s in Europe (e.g., see the review by Troll, 1963) were such questions as, "Why is this terrain pattern different from that? Why the sharp break in vegetation here or in surface drainage there?" Fortunately, two of the endurii~g or slowly changing terrain features that are visible at Earth's surface - landforms and the drainage patterns that help to reveal them - are also among the most important for understanding and delineating ecosystems and their sites. The rationale for using landforms as the basis of terrain mapping seems self-evident at intermediate scales in such recently glaciated places as northern Europe, northern USA and Canada. The changes in organic and inorganic features of terrain on aerial photos as the eye moves from ice-contact stratified drift to glaciolacustrine flats, from moraine to outwash plains, from alluvium to duned deltas, are unmistakably clear and ecologically significant. But even in unglaciated regions, landform - as the combined surficial material and its surface topography - is the underlying key to the patterning of coincident climate, vegetation and soil. Logic supports this statement. Concerning soil genesis, Hans Jenny (1941) made the argument for five relatively independent "genetic" influences: climate, relief/topography, geological parent material, biota and time, and variability of the same factors accounts for the diversity of ecosystems that incorporate soils as their lower strata. If within a region any four of the five are held constant, said Jenny, then soil formation (and landscape ecosystem formation) will faithfully reflect the variations of the fifth. Jenny's formulation can be simplified to four genetic influences by combining geological parent material and relief/topography as "landform" (i.e., both the composition of the surficial stratum and its topographic form). Therefore, within any climatic region (macro, meso or micro) given an equivalent time span and equal access overall to the same biota, all fundamental variations in landscape ecosystems can initially (in primary succession) be attributed to variations in land-
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forms as they modify climate (i.e., radiation and moisture regimes), select the "fit" plants and animals from the available biota, and thus control the formation of soils on their topographic facets. Overlaid on the basic terrain mosaics thus formed are the modifying influences of a variety of disturbances - fires, insect depredations, landslides, wind, human land uses (plus the secondary successions they initiate) - which distort and sometimes conceal the primary patterns. It is important to recognize that forest stand boundaries do not always coincide with ecological site boundaries (SmaUey, 1986). From a climatic perspective, Earth-surface energy-moisture regimes at all scale/sizes are the dynamic driving variables of functional ecosystems at all scale/sizes. The differentiation of ecological units of land and/or water by regionalizations and ELCs is a differentiation of energy regimes, of climatic regimes. Though spotty climatic data may sometimes be available, climatic regimes are primarily interpreted from visible terrain features known to be ecologically linked to the regimes of radiation and moisture; viz. landform and vegetation. If the world were one smooth sphere, air-mass climates or macroclimates would fall into neat latitudinal zones. This theoretical symmetry is broken by the configuration of seas and continents and by the relief or surface roughness of the latter, resulting in irregular macroclimatic zones and belts. Within such zones and belts the climate would be essentially uniform (i.e. expressing the same regime of solar radiation and precipitation throughout) were it not for relief-topography and vegetation cover; i.e., surface roughness at meso and micro scales. Thus landforms with their vegetations, over the full range of scale/sizes, modify and shape their coincident climates. For example, the positions of subarctic and arctic air-mass climates of northern Canada are at least partly dependent on the position of tree-line as the divider between tundra to the north and lichen woodland to the south. Here as elsewhere the Earth-surface molds its climates even as the latter shape their coincident vegetations (Hare and Ritchie, 1972).
3. Boundaries
Earth, the ecosphere - the largest and most complete ecological system - is mostly powered by solar energy as are (with few exceptions around volcanic vents) its sectoral ecosystems: marine, continental, regional and local. As to the disposition of solar energy, about 2 percent maintains the organic world through photosynthesis and heterotrophy while 49 times as much (98 percent) sustains the ecosphere by warming its components (land, water, air, organisms) and by moving water through the phases of the hydrologic cycle. Therefore, as structural-functional entities, the sectoral ecosystems that the ecosphere comprises can be conceived as functionally centered on energy-moisture regimes (on climate) and secondarily on organic regimes (food webs, trophic levels) - despite the undeniable importance of the latter to heterotrophs such as we.
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From an energy-ecosystem rather than biota-ecosystem viewpoint, those features at and near Earth's surface which control the reception and transformation of energy and moisture are paramount in importance for the ecosystems that include them. Attention is thus directed to landform and its vegetative "skin," the two strongly influencing the climatic regime of landscape/waterscape ecosystems. To repeat: different kinds of landforms and their pelages at all scales/sizes are climatically different, signifying important differences in the coincident ecosystems of which they are parts. Boundaries are recognized by perceived changes in the ecological relationships of vegetation, landform, drainage and soil, from whose expression climate is inferred. But when vegetation and soil have been drastically disturbed or even destroyed, boundaries between potential ecosystems can still be mapped to coincide with changes in those landform characteristics known to regulate the reception and retention of energy and water. At the local scale, for example, the change in contour from convex-upward to concave-upward, from the run-off to the run-in position on hill slopes, is always ecologically significant.
4. Awareness of Context
The worldview or ideological paradigm that is destroying nature and our Earth-born human nature is anthropocentrism or perhaps more exactly andropocentrism, the naive belief that the world exists solely for the sake of man. Here I purposely avoid gender-neutral language because environmental problems, ecosystem problems, have historically stemmed largely from the thoughts and activities of the male side of the race. I take it as axiomatic, given man's exploitive history, that contemporary males can improve their minds and attitudes by listening carefully to feminists and ecofeminists. At conferences such as this we tend to zero in on scientific problems in the good old reductionist way, focussing on thematic data (the "GIS trap", see Bailey, 1988), exploring new gadgets and techniques that we hope in some miraculous way will lead us to the light, while setting aside the big global ecological issues whose violent superficial aspects are the media's daily fare. To cocoon ourselves off from the messy Real World, discussing disciplinary problems with our peers, is comforting. We feel adequate to handle business-as-usual on relatively simple human-centered problems. It is not enough anymore. Whatever our professions, whatever we work at, we have to begin thinking more broadly and deeply and critically about context, about what we are doing to the Earth. Western culture constantly exhorts us to be active, to be "productive" - though what the world needs is fewer of us, doing less. The work ethic foisted on us by Puritan ancestors is profoundly immoral. Apart from conceiving music and inconceivably making love, everyone of us should be slowing down, taking it easier, letting things be. Another trap is the old idea that scientists are value-free,
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disinterested observers and experimenters. But scientists too are value motivated; they are the same as everyone else, except perhaps more dogmatic. Not only is it O K to ask about the values and attitudes that are brought to ELC; it is essential. What's going on here, what is the purpose? Is it only service to the human race? Does flat-out anthropocentrism still rule? Or is our ecological comprehension a step toward more sensitive and less exploitive land use and planning? Is the distant goal, to which we hope to contribute, a symbiosis between our species and the 20 or 30 million others on Earth, a symbiosis with air, land and water? A symbiosis with wildness, recognized as precious both outside and inside ourselves? Or is it only to continue the selfish species-centered overpowering and bulldozing that has been the hallmark o f our western culture during the last several hundred years? Ecological Land Classifications are being sponsored the w o r d over by ecologically illiterate governments and industries because of the promise they hold for more productive land use, for more efficient land use, for the increase of human wealth and well-being. As ecologists with some inkling of the importance of Earthas-context, we have a duty to look beyond such short-sighted and dangerous goals. First and foremost is an educative task, to shift the focus of attention from people to the planet, from human welfare to the welfare of the creative surrounding and sustaining world.
References Anonymous: 1992, 'Sustainable forests, a Canadian commitment', Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, 351 St. Joseph Boulevard, Hull, Qu6bec. Bailey, R.G.: 1976, 'Ecoregions of the United States', Mapsheet at 1:7 500 000 scale, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Intermountain Region, Ogden, Utah. Bailey, R.G.: 1988, 'Problems with using overlay mapping for planning and their implications for Geographic Information Systems', Environmental Management 12, 11-17. Bailey, R.G.: 1996, 'Multi-scale ecosystem analysis', Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, (this volume). Bailey, R.G., Jensen, M.E., Cleland, D.T. and Bourgeron, P.S.: 1994, 'Design and use of ecological mapping units', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron, (eds.), Ecosystem Management, Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNW-GTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 95-106. Barnes, B.V.: 1993, 'The landscape ecosystem approach and conservation of endangered spaces', Endangered Species Update 10(3&4), 13-19. Canadian Forest Service: 1994, 'Toward a new era in sustainableforestry', The CFS Strategic Plan for Science & Technology 1995-2000, Science and Sustainable Development Directorate, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. Drury, W.H.: 1969, 'Discussion on concepts of ecosystem and landscapes (an excerpt)', In: K.N.H. Greenidge (ed.), Essays in Plant Geography and Ecology, Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 78 pp. Golley, F.B.: 1994, 'Development of landscape ecology and its relation to environmental management', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron (eds.), Ecosystem Management, Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNW-GTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 34-41. Hare, EK. and Ritchie, J.C.: 1972, 'The boreal bioclimates', Geographical Review 62, 334--365. Hustich, I. (ed.): 1960, 'Can we find a common platform for the different schools of forest type classification?', Silva Fennica 105, Helsinki, Finland.
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Jenny, H.: 1941, Factors of Soil Formation, McGraw-Hill, New York. Kennedy, J.J. and Quigley, T.M.: 1994, 'Evolution of forest service organizational culture and adaptation issues in embracing ecosystem management', In: M.E. Jensen and P.S. Bourgeron (eds.), Ecosystem Management: Volume 2: Principles and Applications, Gen. Tech. Report No. PNWGTR-318, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, pp. 16-26. Klopatek, C., O Neill, E.G., Freckman, D.W., Bledsoe, C.S., Coleman, C., Crossley Jr., D.A., lngham, E.R., Parkinson, D. and Klopatek, J.M: 1992, 'The sustainable biosphere initiative: a commentary from the US Soil Ecology Society', Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer. 73, 223-228. Odum, E.P.: 1975, Ecology (2nd edition), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 244 pp. Orr, D.W.: 1992, EcologicalLiteracy, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 210 pp. Rowe, J.S.: 1979, 'Revised working paper on methodology/philosophy of ecological land classification in Canada', In: C.D.A. Rubec (ed.), Applications of Ecological (Biophysical) Land Classification in Canada, Ecological Land Classification Series No. 7, Lands Direct., Environ. Can., Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 23-29. Rowe, J.S.: 1984, 'Forestland classification: limitations of the use of vegetation', In: J.G. Bockheim (ed.), Proceedings of the Symposium, Forest Land Classification: Experience, Problems and Perspectives, Dep. of Soil Science, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, pp. 132-147. Rowe, J.S." 1992a, 'The integration of ecological studies', Functional Ecology 6, 115-119. Rowe, J.S.: 1992b, 'Viewpoint. Biological fallacy: life equals organisms', BioScience 42(6), 394. Rowe, J.S.: 1993, 'Old growth forests', In: G. Blouin and R. Comeau (eds.), Forestry on the Hill: Old Growth Forests, Special Issue No. 5, Canadian Forestry Association, Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 26-28. Rowe, J.S.: 1994, 'Protected areas', In: G. Blouin and R. Comeau (eds.), Forestry on the Hill: Protected Areas, Special Issue No. 6, Canadian Forestry Association, Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 6567. Rowe, J.S. and Barnes, B.V.: 1994, 'Get-ecosystems and bit-ecosystems', Bull. Ecol. Soc, Amer. 75(1), 40--41. Rowe, J.S., Haddock, P.G., Hills, G.A., Krajina, V. and Linteau, A.: 1961, The ecosystem concept in forestry', Special Papers in the Field of Ecology, Silviculture and Management, Fifth World Forestry Congress Proceedings, 3 pp. Scheiner, S.M., Hudson, A.J. and VanderMeulen, M.A.: 1993, 'An epistemology for ecology', Bull, Ecol. Soc. Amer. 74, 17-21. Simpson, T.A., Stuart, P.E. and Barnes, B.V.: 1990, 'Landscape ecosystems and cover types of the Reserve Area and adjoining lands of the Huron Mountain Club, Marquette Co., Michigan', Occasional Paper No. 4, Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, Marquette, Michigan, 128 pp. Sims, R.A. (author & compiler): 1992, 'Forest site classification in Canada: a current perspective', Forestry Chronicle 68(1), 21-120. Smalley, G.W.: 1986, 'Site classification and evaluation for the interior uplands: forest sites of the Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim/Pennyroyal', Tech. Report No. R8-TP9, US Dep. Agric., For. Serv., Southern Forest Experiment Station, New Orleans, Louisiana. Troll, C.: 1963, 'Landscape ecology and land development with special reference to the tropics', Journal of Tropical Geography 17, 1-11.
