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Influencing
the Social and Political Metabolism of Landscapes
Orie L. Loucks Presented
at the 16th Annual Symposium of the International Association of
Landscape Ecology (IALE) Abstract This paper assumes that we know about the natural processes of landscapes, including hydrologic interactions, carbon capture, secondary production, population and metapopulation dynamics, perturbation processes, and ecological succession. Beyond that, weíve learned much in recent years about human-generated processes that overlay natural landscapes, including land clearing, abandonment, fragmentation and recovery, conversion to commercial uses, reservoir development, irrigation, chemical enrichment of land and water, deposition of stressors, and introduction of exotic species. A further level of understanding is taking shape now. Here we need to consider how local to regional organizations, public and private, use policies or decision making to influence the above processes. The result is a social and political integration of processes, a kind of metabolism, that is different for each landscape. Our economic and policy surveys on landscapes in the greater Columbus area of Central Ohio have sought to estimate the willingness of people to pay for good stream water quality and biodiversity in the face of impending urban sprawl from Columbus into the Big Darby Creek watershed. We found the institutional influence is net-like, as well as hierarchical, capable of influencing pattern and process in both the natural and human-dominated system. Although essentially homeorhetic, however, the dynamics of this landscape system are capable of being redirected by human institutions. A second case study will illustrate why we believe financial institutions, such as the national capital markets, also can be enlisted to change human influence on the metabolism of landscapes. |
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