Ecological Concepts: What Are They, What Is Their Value, And For Whom?

Lockwood

et al. 2017

Ecological Monographs

Self Cite

On the occasion of the Ecological Society of America's centennial, we sought to learn which ecological concepts members value in terms of their utility. This required defining “concept,” and selecting concepts from current ecology textbooks that might arguably belong to a normative set. All ESA members were invited to participate in an online survey in October 2014 in which they rated 70, randomly selected concepts (out of a total set of 131) in terms of utility. Alternative to rating, respondents could mark the concept as unfamiliar. Respondents were also able list concepts that were important to them that were not encountered in the survey. Fifteen percent (1324) of the ESA membership participated in the survey. Of these, 89% were addressed in North America, 62% were male, 77% held Ph.D. degrees, 67% were involved in academia through employment or as students, and about one‐half of the total were divided between community and ecosystem ecology domains of interest. The 10 highest ranked concepts (in descending order) for utility were scales (small, local, regional, global, etc.), ecosystem, habitat, species, disturbance/perturbation, organism, population, community, competition, and species life history. The 10 lowest ranked concepts (in descending order) for utility were Lotka‐Volterra predator–prey/competition models, Allee effect, nutrient spiraling, character displacement, doubling time, climax, Hardy‐Weinberg equation, red queen hypothesis, chemoautotroph/chemoautotrophy, and mimicry. Respondents entered 2800 terms not encountered in the survey. After parsing for concepts missed due to the survey's random presentation process, for semantic redundancy and for terms deemed non‐concepts, 119 candidate concepts emerged. Many of these deserve consideration for inclusion in a normative set and introduction in textbooks. This research provides a well‐considered definition of “concept,” a basis for defining a normative set of concepts expected to be known to all ecologists, and a measure of familiarity but, more importantly, a measure of usage by contemporary ecologists who were members of ESA. These results help us to understand ourselves and our science, to better teach ecology, to guide the initiatives of the collective ecological community, and to further explore the extent and intellectual structure of the principal concepts by which ecologists pursue their work.

Section: Choosing Concepts For Evaluation By Ecologistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

100 years of ecology: what are our concepts and are they useful?

Lockwood

et al. 2017

Ecological Monographs

Self Cite

“…Ensuring permaculture contributes to such change through a decolonizing lens depends on clearly defining what permaculture is and is not, particularly in relation to alternative Indigenous knowledge and beliefs. Conceptual semantics matter: they shape and are shaped by the perspectives, actions, and discourses that they encompass [48,49] and help make communication for ecological change more effective [50]. The processes of (re-)defining permaculture are embedded and embodied in the daily actions and landscapes by which it is grounded [32,37].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re-)Defining Permaculture: Perspectives of Permaculture Teachers and Practitioners across the United States

2021

The solutions-based design framework of permaculture exhibits transformative potential, working to holistically integrate natural and human systems toward a more just society. The term can be defined and applied in a breadth of ways, contributing to both strengths and weaknesses for its capacity toward change. To explore the tension of breadth as strength and weakness, we interviewed 25 prominent permaculture teachers and practitioners across the United States (US) regarding how they define permaculture as a concept and perceive the term’s utility. We find that permaculture casts a wide net that participants grapple with in their own work. They engaged in a negotiation process of how they associate or disassociate themselves with the term, recognizing that it can be both unifying and polarizing. Further, there was noted concern of permaculture’s failure to cite and acknowledge its rootedness in Indigenous knowledge, as well as distinguish itself from Indigenous alternatives. We contextualize these findings within the resounding call for a decolonization of modern ways of living and the science of sustainability, of which permaculture can be critically part of. We conclude with recommended best practices for how to continuously (re-)define permaculture in an embodied and dynamic way to work toward these goals.

“…Previous studies have also noted differences in concept ranking among age classes (Reiners et al. ). This difference in the tendency of use of ecological concepts may be reflected in the term pools from papers published by different generations of ecologists.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…, Reiners et al. ) and group discussions among experienced scientists. To efficiently utilize our text‐mining results, we compared the relative volume of terms from our text mining with the concept term rankings from previous survey methods.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Through 100 years of Ecological Society of America publications: development of ecological research topics and scientific collaborations

Kim

Joo

2018

Ecosphere

Abstract. We reviewed the texts from 22,179 publications in journals published in the last 100 yr by the Ecological Society of America. We quantified the relative use of terms and identified temporal trends and research collaborations using text-mining methods. Terms concerning ecological topics at the population level such as structure, function, and competition and terms relating to the influences of environmental factors were frequently used throughout this century. Relative use of higher hierarchical levels (i.e., ecosystem, landscape) has rapidly increased, but the use of population and community was stable. Research collaboration networks revealed geographically concentrated clusters at the organizational level. To understand global-scale ecosystem processes and responses, multinational collaboration in ecological fields should increase. Our review further demonstrates the importance of conserving historical ecological texts as they reflect the attitude of the ecological community toward academic concepts over time.