Ecology’s New Paradigm: What Does It Offer Designers and Planners
Ecology is in a paradigm shift due to the fact that there is now a drastically different view of how the natural world works. This shift has not only changed ecology as a whole but also makes an impact on landscape designs and planning. The two main changes are a shift from an equilibrium point of view where local populations and ecosystems are viewed as in balance with local resources and conditions, to a disequilibrium point of view where history matters and populations and ecosystems are continually being influenced by disturbances; and a shift from considering populations and ecosystems as relatively closed or autonomous systems independent of their surroundings, to considering both populations and ecosystems as “open” and strongly influenced by the input and output or “flux” of material and individuals across system borders. These changes have an impact on how planners and Landscape designers have to take into account global ecological events when designing.
Robert MacArthur was a defender of the equilibrium paradigm with the propositions consisting of: 1. Species, and the biological communities and ecosystems in which they are found, are usually at, or close to, equilibrium with their resources. 2. Disturbances such as fire, storms, floods, and the like temporarily dislodge biological communities from their natural equilibrium condition, but such perturbations are relatively short-lived, and the strong biological interactions among species quickly restore equilibrium. 3. Although nature is spatially heterogeneous, each local patch can be viewed as a homogeneous, relatively autonomous ecological system in equilibrium with its own local resources. This proposition did not deny the movement of individuals, energy, and materials among patches, but rather argued that this interchange is relatively unimportant compared to the strong nature of interactions among species and resources within the separate patches. This is considered the old paradigm now due to the fact that he paved the way to the disequilibrium paradigm.
The article overall speaks about how ecology is changing and how the human population makes an impact on it. The same goes the other way around about how planning and designing now has to take ecology into consideration seeing how they need to take into effect global ecological changed that are occurring when designing.
Ecology is constantly changing and evolving with the vast amount of information and ideas that are out there now. Ecologists, landscape designers, and planners all have a lot to gain from working in tandem with each other. Ecologists working with landscape designers and planners is crucial as the human population is so dominant. If ecologists want to make an impact on the global scale, then working with designers is how that can be accomplished. Working hand in hand can lead to designs that not only benefit humans but also species and ecosystems. The future of design and the future of the earth can very well lie within the collaboration of both parties.
