This semester I am co-teaching the first year course Society and the Environment in the McGill School of Environment. I teach a diverse set of lectures that are mainly focussed on commons, urban ecosystems, and resilience, but also include cost-benefit analysis and ecological futures. My colleagues cover a whack of other topics. Below are the assinged readings for my sections of the course.
Making environmental decisions: Assessing costs & benefits (1)
- Leung, B., Lodge, D.M., Finnoff, D., Shogren, J.F., Lewis, M, Lamberti, G. 2002. An ounce of prevention or a pound of cure: bioeconomic risk analysis of invasive species. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 269:2407-2413
Managing the Commons (3)
- Hardin, G. 1968. Tragedy of the commons.. Science, 162(1968): 1243-1248.
- Feeny, D, et.al. 1990. The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited: Twenty Years Later. Human Ecology. 18:1-19
- Dietz, Thomas., Elinor Ostrom, Paul C. Stern. 2003. “The Struggle to Govern the Commons.” Science. 302(5652): 1907-1912.
Urban Ecosystems (3)
- Davis, M.. 2004. Planet of slums. New Left Review 26, March-April.
- Lee, K. N. 2006. Urban sustainability and the limits of classical environmentalism. Environment and Urbanization; 18(1) 9-22
- Jannson et al 1999 Linking Freshwater Flows and Ecosystem Services Appropriated by People: The Case of the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin. Ecosystems 2(4) 351-366.
- Colding, Johan, Jakob Lundberg, and Carl Folke. 2006 Incorporating Green-area User Groups in Urban Ecosystem Management AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment: 35(5) 237–244.
Resilience and Surprise (4)
Ecological Futures (1)
From Conservation magazine’s Journal Watch Online
Revved-up evolution allows invasive species to rampage through new habitat, a study published in Molecular Ecology shows. The seeming ease with which chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha colonized New Zealand in the early part of the twentieth century was a complex combination of ecology and evolution, according to University of Maine biologist Michael Kinnison and colleagues.
Studies of biological invasions have often considered ecology — freedom from predators and/or parasites, lack of competition and so on — but evolution on a short timescale has seldom been seen as a major factor. Kinnison’s neat experimental approach, which involved releasing captive-bred salmon to several NZ river systems, showed that substantial and rapid evolutionary change has taken place among populations with differing local ecological conditions. The ever-worsening threat that invasive species pose to global biodiversity suggests the need to take evolvability very seriously, and these findings raise many questions about how we tackle the problem.
Source: Kinnison MT, Unwin MJ & Quinn TP (2007) Eco-evolutionary vs. habitat contributions to invasion in salmon: experimental evaluation in the wild. Molecular Ecology DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03495.x
From the Natural Resources Management group at Systems Ecology at Stockholm University, which does a lot of research on social-ecological resilience, suggested papers for doctoral students:
- Adger W.N. 2000. Social and ecological resilience: are they related? Progress in Human Geography 24(3): 347-364.
- Becker, C. D., and E. Ostrom. 1995. Human-Ecology and Resource Sustainability - the Importance of Institutional Diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 26:113-133.
- Bengtsson, J., P. Angelstam, T. Elmqvist, U. Emanuelsson, C. Folke, M. Ihse, F. Moberg, and M. Nyström. 2003. Reserves, Resilience and Dynamic Landscapes. Ambio 32:389-396.
- Berkes F, Hughes TP, Steneck RS, Wilson J, Bellwood DR, Crona B, Folke C, Gunderson LH, Leslie HM, Norberg J,. Nyström M, Olsson P, Österblom H, Scheffer, M, Worm B. (2006). Globalization, roving bandits and marine resources. Science 311: 1557-1558.
- Bodin Ö., Crona B. and Ernstson H. 2006. Social networks in natural resource management: What is there to learn from a structural perspective? Ecology and Society 11(2): r2. [also available at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss2/resp2/]
- Costanza, R., M. Daly, C. Folke, P. Hawken, C. S. Holling, A. J. McMichael, D. Pimentel, and D. Rapport. 2000. Managing our environmental portfolio. Bioscience 50:149-155
- CS Holling, and G. K. Meffe. 1996. Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management. Conservation Biology 10(2): 328-37
- CS Holling. 2001. Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological and social systems. Ecosystems 4: 390–405.
- Daily, G. C., T. Soderqvist, S. Aniyar, K. Arrow, P. Dasgupta, P. R. Ehrlich, C. Folke, A. Jansson, B. O. Jansson, N. Kautsky, S. Levin, J. Lubchenco, K. G. Maler, D. Simpson, D. Starrett, D. Tilman, and B. Walker. 2000. Ecology - The value of nature and the nature of value. Science 289:395-396.
- de la Torre-Castro, M. (2006). Beyond regulations in fisheries management: the dilemmas of the “beach recorders” Bwana Dikos in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Ecology and Society 11(2): 35. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss2/art35/
- Díaz S., Fargione J., Chapin III F.S. and Tilman D. 2006. Biodiversity Loss Threatens Human well-being. Vol 4, issue 8, e277. PLOS Biology open access on-line, www.plosbiology.org
- Elmqvist, T., C. Folke, M. Nyström, G. Peterson, J. Bengtsson, B. Walker, and J. Norberg. 2003. Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1(9):488-494.
- Fischer, J., D. B. Lindenmayer, and A. D. Manning. 2006. Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and resilience: ten guiding principles for commodity production landscapes. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 4(2):80-86
- Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses Global Environmental Change 16 (2006) 253–267
- Folke, C., S. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Elmqvist, L. Gunderson, and C. S. Holling. 2004. Regime shifts, resilience, and biodiversity in ecosystem management. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 35:557-581.
- Goodstein, E. S. Economics and the environment. 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York. pp. 485-488, 495-510
- Holling, C. S., L. H. Gunderson and D. Ludwig. 2002. In Quest of a Theory of Adaptive Change. In: Gunderson, L.H. and Holling C. S. (Eds). Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington DC.
- Holloway, M. 1998. Trade rules: a World Trade Organization decision about sea turtles raises doubts about reconciling economics and the environment. Scientific American. Vol. 279, No. 2, pp 33-35.
- Kremen, C. and R. S. Ostfeld. 2005. A call to ecologists: measuring, analyzing, and managing ecosystem services. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Vol. 3, No. 10, pp. 540–548.
- Olsson, P., and C. Folke. 2001. Local ecological knowledge and institutional dynamics for ecosystem management: A study of Lake Racken Watershed, Sweden. Ecosystems 4:85-104.
- Ostrom, E., J. Burger, C. B. Field, R. B. Norgaard, and D. Policansky. 1999. Sustainability - Revisiting the commons: Local lessons, global challenges. Science 284:278-282.
- Peterson G., C.R. Allen, and C.S. Holling. 1998. Ecological resilience, biodiversity, and scale. Ecosystems 1:6-18.
- Richard J.T. Klein, Nicholls R.J., and Thomalla F. 2003. Resilience to natural hazards: how useful is the concept? Environmental hazards 5: 35-45.
- Scheffer, M., S. Carpenter, J. A. Foley, C. Folke, and B. Walker. 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413:591-596.
- Thomas Dietz, Elinor Ostrom, Paul C. Stern. 2003. The Struggle to Govern the Commons. Science. Vol. 302. no. 5652, pp. 1907 - 1912.
via Maricela de la Torre Castro
Update:
Any further suggestions would be great. If you have any additional suggestions of readgins, leave a comment, with the reference and a note explaining why the reading is interesting.