Managing uncertainty important in ecological balance: ASU ...( BOSTON -- The balance of nature loom...)

BOSTON -- The balance of nature looms prominently in the public mind these days. Climate change, genetically modified plants and animals, and globally declining fish stocks are but a few of the issues that remind us that ours is a fragile world. Or is it?

It depends on whom you ask, says Ann Kinzig, an Arizona State University associate professor in the School of Life Sciences specializing in biology and society. According to her research, ideas about natures balance diverge across lines of culture, livelihood and political ideology.

Kinzig will present her observations on Feb. 17 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

Some view nature as fragile, easily upset by human activity and in need of protection, Kinzig says. Others view nature as extremely robust and nearly endless in its capacity to continue to supply needed resources in the face of heavy human exploitation. Still others have more nuanced viewpoints or inconsistent perceptions.

The condition of the natural world is not an either-or proposition the biosphere is never perfectly balanced or wholly poised on the brink of a precipitous crash, Kinzig says. It can be at once robust and fragile, stable and unstable. Moreover, instability in one part of the ecological system may be required to maintain stability in another, as when variations in the populations of individual plant species act to stabilize the overall biomass of an ecosystem. Ones interpretation is greatly dependent upon which features are examined and at what scale.

Similarly, humans can have a beneficial or a detrimental effect on resilience, or both. According to Kinzig, there is no theoretical reason to conclude that ecological systems would grow more resilient in absence of human influences.

Human interaction could, in theory, serve to either increase or decrease resilience, she says. In practice, it does both, though the examples of human int
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