Big Ecology: The Emergence of Ecosystem Science

Preface

vii PREFACE Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T. S. Eliot This historical account presents the personal side of how a major discipline like ecosystem science developed, and how individual scientists hagtve been able to grow with and, in turn, influence and shape wholesystem studies over more than forty years. There are several dozen survivors who were literally “present at the Creation,” in the sense used by Dean Acheson in his memoirs about his experience as Secretary of State during the tumultuous post–World War II years. Drawing, in part, on accounts from several of my colleagues, I present this account as “our story” of an incredibly active and fortunate generation who participated in what were, and what have continued to be, exciting times. This book is a logical outgrowth of “A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology” by Frank B. Golley (1993). Much of the early history of the ecosystem concept, and how ecosystems have been viewed from the time of Sir Arthur G. Tansley (1935) onward, is reviewed by Golley. The time since the mid-twentieth century led to the development of what became known as ecosystem science, funded principally by viii / Preface the Ecosystem Studies office of the U.S. National Science Foundation. Golley delineated these early developments, up to and including the International Biological Program.This book attempts to pick up the discussion where Golley left off. It recounts the seminal influence of the IBP and its successor programs up to the present time. As has been noted often, “history is the record of the victorious.” What is offered here is an account of a group of colleagues who were beneficiaries of peer-reviewed research funding across more than four decades. The review process, although stringent, is stimulating in generating insights and influencing individual scientists. Sometimes reviewers’ comments energize individuals to demonstrate their ideas as correct, if not perhaps clearly communicated to reviewers initially. It may surprise members of the general public, and nonscientists in general , that science, although it relies on objective, verifiable phenomena (capable of being independently tested), has engendered vehement arguments and discussion along every step of the way. As is true in many other creative endeavors, scientists care deeply about their particular viewpoints, and defend them quite vigorously. Wherever possible, I try to demonstrate the roles of key personalities in ecosystem science, and the ways in which they influenced the field. Ecosystem science involves the study of the assemblage of plants, animals, and microbes and their abiotic environment within a given area of study, and their conjoint effects, which are at times “greater than the sums of their parts,” sensu E. P. Odum (1953, 1969). Because of the utility of measuring inputs and outputs of inorganic and organic compounds in an ecosystem, the favored unit of study has been the watershed, which is bounded geographically, and more readily studied (Likens et al., 1977). Questions about widespread human-driven alteration of biogeochemical cycles (e.g., of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus), biological complexity and biodiversity, and ecological responses to climate change often focus on ecosystems (Pace and Groffman, 1998). Ecosystems can be considered at many levels of resolution. Holistic studies of plant, animal, microbial, and faunal interactions and the Preface / ix abiotic factors affecting them can exist in a range of size dimensions from microaggregates in soil or in the ocean, to field sites, watersheds, regions, and the entire geosphere–biosphere that constitutes the planet Earth (O’Neill and King, 1998). In order to study ecosystems on larger scales, experience over the last forty years has shown that it is most effective to assemble teams of researchers from a variety of disciplines, working on common experimental questions. This approach was initiated in the early 1960s by the International Biological Program, and then pursued subsequently by the Long-Term Ecological Research Network, which encompasses research projects being carried out in more than fifty countries worldwide, and which is entering its fourth decade. Ecology received a major boost in funding after World War II in the United States with the strong support of theAtomic Energy Commission and the formation of the National Science Foundation in 1950. Much of this growth, which reached its most rapid rate of increase in the “decade of the environment,” the 1960s, has been documented in major reviews, including those of Bocking (1995, 1997), Hagen (1992), and McIntosh...