All posts by Garry Peterson

Prof. of Environmental science at Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University in Sweden.
Cities

Transforming a concrete slab into a garden

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Crack Gardens was a winner of the American association of landscape professional award

in the residental design category.

The Crack Garden

Materials: existing site, soil amendment, plants; Size: 800 square feet; Cost: $500; Builders: homeowners

From the project’s statement.

The Crack Garden is an exploration of the identity of site and the clarity of intervention. Pre-existing places have an inherent identity that is based on their history, materiality, and activities. The design is conceived as an intervention that functions as a lens, altering perception of a place rather than completely remaking it. The intervention can reveal the physical and material qualities of the place, and/or become a catalyst to incite new program activities. In the case of The Crack Garden, completely remaking the garden was highly unlikely because of the tiny budget. By fully embracing a strategy of design as intervention, the garden relies on its previous identity as much as it does on the changes that were imposed.

The conceptual basis of The Crack Garden is to reveal the potential for beauty that underlies the concrete and asphalt that is the predominant ground plane material of the urban landscape. The interventions into the site of The Crack Garden were primarily actions of removal rather than the addition of new layers and material. By eliminating portions of the existing concrete and exposing the soil beneath, potential is released, and new opportunities for the garden arise.

Although minimal in scope and budget, The Crack Garden is refined in its creation of well-programmed spaces for the residents of this four-unit building. The edges of the garden are well-defined by existing buildings and new fences, including a stainless steel cable trellis that stretches continuously across the top of the fence and continues across the neighbor’s garage. The side of the garden along the residents’ building is kept open for social activities, and plants selected for the cracks can tolerate foot traffic, which allows for multiple uses throughout the garden. A Jacaranda tree adds scale, creates an anchor for the garden, provides needed overhead definition to help contain the space, and offers filtered shade and summer color. Potato Vine is planted along the fences and back wall to grow on the cable trellis, and a beautiful Five-Leaf Akebia vine creates textural interest on the back wall. The planting within the cracks is somewhat random, changing regularly depending on the whims and desires of the resident gardeners, but usually includes a wide range of vegetables, herbs, flowers and weeds.

via Pruned

General

Postdoctoral Position: Amazonian indigenous people, cultural change, and biodiversity

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An interesting post-doc opportunity:

Join an exciting team on a unique project investigating the
consequences on biodiversity of cultural changes in Amazonian
indigenous communities. They are seeking enthusiastic candidates for
an 18 mo postdoctoral position, jointly based in Stanford University
(USA) and Toulouse University (France).

Responsibilities: The successful candidate will contribute to an NSF-
funded project, by developing a mathematical model of the hunting
practices of Makusi and Wapichana people in Southern Guyana and
northern Brazil. Duties will include integration and synthesis of existing
socioeconomic, hunting and environmental data sets, statistical
analyses, model building, and manuscript preparation. Opportunities to
develop independent research projects using data generated by the
project are encouraged.

Qualifications: A PhD with a background in ecology/evolution,
demonstrated interest in the broader questions in social studies and
tropical systems, a proven publication record especially in
mathematical modeling, and strong motivation. Research experience in
social systems is desirable.

Employment Conditions: The starting date is negotiable between July
and August 2009. We will offer a competitive salary commensurate
with the experience of the successful candidate.

To Apply: Please send a single PDF file containing letter of application
with statement of interest, CV and two letters of reference to Jose
Fragoso (fragoso@stanford.edu), with cc to Jerome Chave
(chave@cict.fr). For full consideration, apply by June 15 2009. The
position will remain open until filled.

General

Erle Ellis on “Postnatural” Environmentalism

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Erle Ellis, whom has mapped the world’s anthromes, writes an provocative editorial in Wired about what environmentalism means in the Anthopocene. In  Stop Trying to Save the Planet he proposes a “postnatural” environmentalism:

Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet.

If this bothers you, get over it. We now live in the Anthropocene ― a geological epoch in which Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere are shaped primarily by human forces.

Yes, nature is still around ― back-seat driving, annoying us with natural disasters from time to time, and everywhere present in the background ― but definitely in no position to take the wheel. That’s our job now. Don’t blame nature for global warming, sea level rise, invasive species, mass extinctions, crop failures and poverty. That’s our thing.

… Ours is a used planet. Thanks to us, Earth has become warmer, less forested and less biodiverse for millenniums.

So what now? First of all, we’ve got to stop trying to save the planet. For better or for worse, nature has long been what we have made it, and what we will make it.

And it’s time for a “postnatural” environmentalism. Postnaturalism is not about recycling your garbage, it is about making something good out of grandpa’s garbage and leaving the very best garbage for your grandchildren. Postnaturalism means loving and embracing our human nature, the nature we have created to feed ourselves, the nature we live in. What good is environmentalism if it makes you depressed about the future?

To fully embrace the principles of postnatural environmentalism, it is essential to recognize the potential of repurposing and recycling waste as a means of building a sustainable future. By utilizing Dumpster Rental Services – Grissman Dumpsters, we can efficiently manage and repurpose our discarded materials, transforming them into valuable resources. This approach aligns with the core tenets of post-naturalism, where we strive to create something good out of what may initially appear as “garbage.” By responsibly managing waste through recycling and repurposing, we not only reduce our impact on the environment but also contribute to the creation of a more vibrant and resilient ecosystem within our farms, backyards, and cities. Embracing this mindset allows us to find hope and inspiration in our ability to shape a better future for both current and future generations.

This is about recognizing that our farms, and even our backyards and cities, are the most important wildlife refuges in the world and should be managed as such. We can keep people out of places we want to think of as wild, but these places will still be changing because of global warming and the alien species we introduce without even trying.

Visualization

Mapping farms in the USA

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organicmap_us2007

totalfarms

New York Times reports on the 2007 USA agricultural census to map US organic farms

The map of organic farms in the United States is clustered into a few geographic centers, a strikingly different pattern than the map of all farms, which spreads densely over many regions, breaking only for the Rockies and Western deserts.

Areas in the Northeast and Northwest have many small organic farms that sell produce directly to consumers. Large organic farms, which some critics call organic agribusiness, have flourished in California.

The largest organic markets by far are for vegetables, fruit and dairy products, according to Catherine Greene, an economist at the Agriculture Department.

Organic vegetables now account for 5 percent of all vegetable sales; organic dairies, which are the fastest-growing sector, now produce 1 percent of the nation’s milk.

Via Agricultural biodiversity weblog

Adaptation, Ecological Management, Vulnerability

Should climate change research be 90 percent social science?

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Nature’s Climate Feedback reports that Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in his talk at the Open Meeting of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) urged social scientists to become more involved in climate change research:

“Speaking as a natural scientist,” he said, “I think 90% of research [on global change] will have to be done by the social scientists.”

…Physicists, he told me at the coffee break, can describe climate threats increasingly vividly and can tell decision-makers that technological solutions are out there. But it’s up to social science, he says, to figure out how we bring about massive economic and social transformation on a tight deadline.

Case in point: feeding solar power from the Sahara where it’s plentiful to Europe where it’s highly in demand, one of Schellnhuber’s favorite ideas. “All the technical problems have been solved,” he says, “but it cannot be done.” We don’t have the legal framework, the transboundary agreements, the international will for this mode of energy delivery.

This is where policy experts, economists, and even anthropologists come in. But, he says, “I don’t think the social science community has grasped the scope of the challenge.” Operating on the basic principle that all groups are different, 95% of social science papers are local case studies, not global-scale work, he says. And indeed, there are an awful lot of case studies among this week’s 800 talks. It remains to be seen whether the picture emerging from the conference will be piecemeal or planet-wide.

Big Back Loop, Greenlash, Regime Shifts

Lovelock, climatic regime shifts, and soft sociology

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In Nature, biogeochemist Andrew Watson reviews The Vanishing Face Of Gaia by James Lovelock in Final warning from a sceptical prophet:

In The Vanishing Face Of Gaia, Lovelock argues that model projections of the climate a century ahead are of little use. The models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) extrapolate from a smooth trend of warming, yet the real climate system, complex and fully coupled to the biology of land and ocean, is unlikely to change in this simple way. It is more likely to flip from one state to another, with non-linear tipping points that the IPCC models are too simplistic to capture. Lovelock fears that the climate will shift to a new and considerably hotter regime, and that once underway, this shift will be irreversible.

This view is not officially sanctioned ‘IPCC-speak’, but he is fully within the envelope of scientific consensus when he warns of the possibility of rapid and irreversible change. Other climate scientists — notably Wally Broecker (see Nature 328, 123–126; 1987) — have said much the same for a long time, although Lovelock uses more graphic language and his popular voice will carry further. Palaeoclimate records show that rapid flips have happened before, so this must be a strong possibility for the future if we continue to force up the levels of greenhouse gases at the current rate.

What is controversial is Lovelock’s vision for humanity: rapid climate change will lead to the deaths of most people on the planet, and to mass migrations to those places that are still habitable. He does not spell out exactly how this might happen, but is convinced a hotter Earth will be able to sustain only a few per cent of the current human population. The implication is that Gaia and human society are close to a cliff-edge, and could unravel rapidly and catastrophically.

The controversy lies less in the climatology and more in the sociology. How will societies behave in the face of such change? Will we pull together with a wartime spirit, or will we fragment, fight and kill one another over Gaia’s carcass? Lovelock is on softer ground here. His only special qualification for discussing human behaviour is his longevity — having lived through the Second World War, he knows what people sometimes do to one another during evil times.

Lovelock’s vision of sudden and imminent collapse is apocalyptic, but for our long-term future and that of the planet it might be preferable to some of the alternatives. Suppose, for instance, that our profligate ways and expanding population are sustained for the rest of this century, but at a huge cost — the complete loss of all the natural ecosystems of the world. Most of us, living in cities and insulated from the natural environment, would barely notice until it was too late to do anything about it. This is what many politicians, economists and industrialists seem to want — their mantra of unceasing economic growth implies that we should take for ourselves all Gaia’s resources and squeeze from them the maximum short-term gain, leaving nothing for the future.

Following this vision, we will need to transform the entire planet into a factory farm to feed our 10 billion or 15 billion mouths. There will be no room on this giant spherical feedlot for anything but ourselves and our half-dozen species of domestic plants and animals. Gaia, the natural Earth system, will have disappeared. As for the underpinning biogeochemical cycles, the best we can hope is that we can manage them ourselves, taking over the heavy responsibility for keeping Earth habitable, which Gaia once did for us automatically.

The more likely outcome is that we would barely manage them at all. In that case, we would face a sequence of global environmental crises and a steady degradation of the planetary environment that would eventually kill just as many of us as a sudden collapse. Given that, perhaps we had better hope that Lovelock is right, and Gaia does for us — or most of us — before we do for her.

General

Modelling leverage and the financial crisis

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Science reports on agent based models of financial leverage –Leverage: The Root of All Financial Turmoil:

Given that in the buildup to the recent global economic meltdown hedge funds had been leveraging their deals by ratios of 30-to-1 (that is, borrowing $30 for every $1 of their own that they put in), it may seem obvious that massive leverage leads to trouble. But Stefan Thurner, an econophysicist and director of the complex systems research group at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues say their model shows that many of the distinctive statistical properties of financial markets emerge together as rates of leverage climb. “Leverage is the driver,” Thurner says. “That wasn’t obvious.”

Financial markets behave in ways that, econophysicists say, classical economic theory cannot explain. Classical economics assumes that the fluctuations in stock prices conform to a so-called Gaussian distribution—a bell curve that gives little probability to large swings. In reality, the distribution has “fat tails” that make big changes more likely, and the shapes of those tails conform to a mathematical formula known as a power law. Classical economics assumes that the fluctuations are uncorrelated from one moment to the next, whereas big swings in prices tend to come together in the so-called clustering of volatility.

To try to explain those characteristics, over the past 5 years Thurner and colleagues have developed an “agent-based model” of a market. In such a computer model, virtual agents of various types interact according to certain rules, like robots playing a game. The researchers included hedge funds that could borrow to make their investments; banks to loan the money; “noise investors” who, like day traders, simply react to the market and have no other insight into the value of assets; and general investors who played the role of, for example, state pension funds.

The model contains more than a dozen adjustable parameters. However, Thurner and colleagues found that the maximum level of leverage exerts a curious, unifying effect. If they forbade leverage, the market behaved largely as classical economics would predict. But as they increased the maximum leverage, the characteristics of real markets emerged together. “We can explain the fat tails, the right [power law], the clustering of volatility, all this,” Thurner says. And when the leverage limit climbed to levels of 5-to-1 and beyond, the market became unstable and hedge funds went bust much more often.

“I thought it was rather brilliant,” says Christoph Jan Hamer, an econophysicist with Solvency Fabrik in Köln, Germany. Hamer says he was impressed with a detail of the model: If leverage is high, then a tiny fluctuation created by the noise traders can trigger a much bigger swing. But Christian Hirtreiter of the University of Regensburg says, “I would think that leverage itself is not the problem. I would think it is a symptom of the problem.”

Thurner, who managed a hedge fund that tanked, says that limiting leverage should help prevent crashes. He admits, however, that he would not have embraced that idea when the market was still going strong.

Cities, Scenarios

Ballard and architecture

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Noted science fiction author J.G. Ballard died April 19, 2009. on Omnivoracious Geoff Manaugh, of BLDG BLOG, offers an architectural appreciation – Between the Tower and the Parking Lot: A Spatial Appreciation of J.G. Ballard:

J.G. Ballard, who died on Sunday at the age of 78, leaves behind far more than his status as a “cult author,” science fiction novelist, or agent provocateur. Although most of his novels are still all but impossible to find in the U.S., I would argue that Ballard is one of the most important writers on architecture in the last century. But what do I mean by architecture, and why would that be the source of much of his works’ continued relevance?

Ballard is best known for his look at the erotic nature of car accidents (Crash) and his semi-autobiographical account of a childhood spent in a Japanese internship camp during the Second World War (Empire of the Sun), but it’s also worth looking at the settings of his less well-known novels: the architectural structures and urban landscapes in which they take place. Among other things, what makes Ballard’s fiction so spatially valuable is that he explores the psychological implications of everyday non-places–like parking lots, high-rise apartment towers, highway embankments, shopping malls, well-policed corporate enclaves, and even British suburbia–without resorting to the flippant condemnation one might expect. Instead, Ballard describes these spaces in terms of their effects: how they mutate and rearrange the mental lives of their inhabitants.

It’s as if these buildings, malls, empty plazas, and parking lots do, in fact, inspire a new type of humanity–as modernism’s high priests once predicted–but Ballard shows that what they are bringing into existence is something altogether darker and unexpected. In other words, our contemporary built landscape has not ushered in the enlightened utopia once promised by Le Corbusier, for instance, with his isolated towers, or by Mies van der Rohe with his unornamented glass boxes. Instead, there is a slow-burning psychopathy here, a dementia inspired by space itself. Architecture becomes a kind of psychological Manhattan Project, so to speak: a vast, poorly supervised experiment in which new species of human personality are incubated.

…

At its best, Ballard’s work is a devastating and original contribution to architectural thought, articulating the often sinister impacts of our built environment with a sense of humor, and an aphoristic memorability, that is all too lacking in contemporary fiction and architectural criticism alike.

Cities

Managing disturbance by planned city shrinkage

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Managing collapse?

Creative urban shrinkage in Flint, Michigan from the New York Times  An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It

“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” said Dan Kildee, the Genesee County treasurer and chief spokesman for the movement to shrink Flint. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

The recession in Flint, as in many old-line manufacturing cities, is quickly making a bad situation worse. Firefighters and police officers are being laid off as the city struggles with a $15 million budget deficit. Many public schools are likely to be closed.

“A lot of people remember the past, when we were a successful city that others looked to as a model, and they hope. But you can’t base government policy on hope,” said Jim Ananich, president of the Flint City Council. “We have to do something drastic.”

In searching for a way out, Flint is becoming a model for a different era.

Planned shrinkage became a workable concept in Michigan a few years ago, when the state changed its laws regarding properties foreclosed for delinquent taxes. Before, these buildings and land tended to become mired in legal limbo, contributing to blight. Now they quickly become the domain of county land banks, giving communities a powerful tool for change.

Indianapolis and Little Rock, Ark., have recently set up land banks, and other cities are in the process of doing so. “Shrinkage is moving from an idea to a fact,” said Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective Program at the University of California, Berkeley. “There’s finally the insight that some cities just don’t have a choice.”

…

A block adjacent to downtown has the potential for renewal; it would make sense to fill in the vacant lots there, since it is a few steps from a University of Michigan campus.

A short distance away, the scene is more problematic. Only a few houses remain on the street; the sidewalk is so tattered it barely exists. “When was the last time someone walked on that?” Mr. Kildee said. “Most rural communities don’t have sidewalks.”

But what about the people who do live here and might want their sidewalk fixed rather than removed?

“Not everyone’s going to win,” he said. “But now, everyone’s losing.”

…

“If it’s going to look abandoned, let it be clean and green,” he said. “Create the new Flint forest — something people will choose to live near, rather than something that symbolizes failure.”

Watching suspiciously from next door is Charlotte Kelly. Her house breaks the pattern: it is immaculate, all polished wood and fresh paint. When Ms. Kelly, a city worker, moved to the street in 2002, all the houses were occupied and the neighborhood seemed viable.

These days, crime is brazen: two men recently stripped the siding off Mr. Kildee’s old house, “laughing like they were going to a picnic,” Ms. Kelly said. Down the street are many more abandoned houses, as well as a huge hand-painted sign that proclaims, “No prostitution zone.”

…

Mr. Kildee makes his pitch. Would she be interested in moving if the city offered her an equivalent or better house in a more stable and safer neighborhood?

Despite her pride in her home, the calculation takes Ms. Kelly about a second. “Yes,” she said, “I would be willing.”