http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04232.x/abstract

GARDNER-SANTANA, L.C. “Commensal Ecology, Urban Landscapes, and Their Influence on the Genetic Characteristics of City-dwelling Norway Rats (Rattus Norvegicus).” Molecular Ecology. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 2766-778. Wiley Online Library. July 2009. Web. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04232.x/abstract>.

Very little is known about wild Norway rats even though they live in urbanized communities and may spread disease and invade new areas. The movement of people can spread these infectious diseases that these pests contain. Wild Norway rats are also known as Rattus norvegicus. The experiment sampled 11 individuals different locations within Baltimore, Maryland to characterize the genetic structure and extent of gene flow between areas within the city. Most people were assigned to their area of capture, and the rats were of an axial dispersal distance of 62meters, which fell within typical alley length. There were some rats that were assigned to area which were 2-11.5 kilometers away and demonstrated long distance movement within the city.  Although the individual movement of each rat seems to be limited, locations up to 1.7 kilometers are made up of relatives. The differentiation between identified clusters of rats indicates that the regular genes flow either via recruitment of other rats or migration leading to the prevention of isolation. This information shows that the ecology of rodents in urban areas and the life-history characteristics of Norway rats likely counter many expected effects of isolation. This is important to public health because these rodents possess the ability to spread diseases and now that they show signs of movement within urban areas, people should be aware that their health is at risk.

The New York City supply serves approximately 9 million people primarily through surface water retained from 19 reservoirs and 3 lakes. These sources of water, deliver approximately 1.1 billion gallons per day of water to the city. Recently the Marcellus Shale has been viewed as a source of natural gas. It covers about 95,000 square miles, which underlies the entire NYC watershed.

Hydrofracking, is the process of injecting water along with chemicals into the gas which results in the release of natural gas. This brings numerous risks to the NYC water supply. One of the impacts is the potential small scale surface spills and contamination incidents which will be inevitable with the magnitude of these projects. These spills will cause operational impacts, potential MCL violations and further undermine confidence in the ability to maintain current high water quality standards. One of the major risks is that the wastewater and gas resulting from operations will produce an industrial strength water stream with potential for adverse health and water quality effects. This problem occurs because of the complicated disposal options of the wastewater and gas. Other risks may include direct penetration by drilling, differential pressure, migration of gas and induced seismicity. The risk to the NYC water supply for our 9 million people must be looked at differently than to a private homeowner or small community because this is an enormous number of people that a bad mistake could impact. It has been proposed to ban drilling using high volume fracturing within the watershed and 4,0000 buffer. Along with that, we could reopen SEQRA if drilling using low volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed within the watershed. Finally, there are Delaware tunnels that have 2 mile exclusion zones and the Catskill and Delaware Aqueducts that can have 7 mile exclusion zones. The impact of natural gas hydrofracking has many chances to impact NYC’s population adversely and any decision made must be assessed incredibly because the possible negative impacts are unlimited.

Garcia, Kathryn. “Natural Gas Development and the NYC Water Supply.” American Academy of Environmental Engineers. AAEE, 14 May 2012. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. <http://aaee.net/>.

1. Do you believe that superstorm Sandy will actually bring political change on global warming and saving the environment?

2. What area in New York represents the best example of a Rambunctious Garden?

3. If you had to choose one area in the United States to conserve what would it be?

4. From the seven different goals you listed at the end of your book,  which goal do you think New Yorkers should concentrate on most?

In the last chapter of Rambunctious Gardens, Emma Marris discusses seven different ecological goals. These seven goals are: protecting the rights of other species, protecting megafauna, slowing the rate of extinctions, protecting genetic diversity, defending biodiversity, maximizing ecosystem services and protecting the beauty of nature. The way to accomplish these goals is through much collaboration between the government and its people, but would could prove most difficult is providing the necessary funds to support these initiatives.

The first goal was protecting the rights of other species. Humans unfortunately, don’t view all species as equal and therefore spend more time and money concentrating on the species they value most. We love the exotic species and the beautiful plant life, while somewhat ignoring the species that have intrinsic values such as shrubs or worms.  The second goal was protecting megafauna. One criticism of protecting the megafauna is that it may lead to the extinction of smaller mammals and plants. With the overpopulation of megafuana, this will cause the equilibriums of ecosystem to change, which could have dire consequences.

The third goal was slowing the rate of extinctions. The main criticism for this goal was that it is financially as well as time consuming to save every single species from the risk of extinction. Asking humans for their opinions about which species should be saved from extinction is really biased and yet again such species as shrubs and worms who aren’t as appealing as exotic tropical species will not be chosen to be saved. It is very time consuming because species must be brought into captivity while we are repairing their habitats simultaneously. Also, there is no guarantee that when we drop the captive species back into their old habitats that they will be able to adapt to it. Goal four was protecting genetic diversity which could be achieved through the interbreeding of different species which helps diversity their genetics making it increasingly difficult for them to get extinct.

Goal five was defending biodiversity. Yet again, this goal takes a lot of time and money to be successful. That problem combined with the peoples bias over which species to save and which ones to let go, make this goal not feasible. Goal six advocates for maximizing ecosystem services. Some of the most diverse ecosystems don’t provide services that humans want which may provide a problem for them if they are only looking at ecosystems that are most cost benefit. Humans will be looking at ecosystems that bring them the most profit, which may lead to the destruction of those ecosystems that are vastly diverse.  Finally, goal seven advocated for the beauty of nature. This goal is definitely the most important because beauty is something that cannot be measured by money but only through the happiness it conveys. Marris’s goal that humans must manage nature, I believe is the right coarse of action to take for only when we can literally play god when it comes to nature, will be take our roles more seriously and produce results.

Chapter 8 of the Rambunctious Gardens by Emma Marris talks about the concept of the designer ecosystem. Designer ecosystems are created to make the habitat better than it already is. Their main goal is to make the area thrive most efficiently and effectively. Restoring areas to their original baseline is a lot of work, especially because at the end of the day, the area will not be 100% identical to its baseline. “The organisms and the relations between them that have emerged from millions of years of natural selection are likely going to outperform anything we cobble together in our computers, whether the goal is spaces for recreation, management of energy and nutrients, protection of biodiversity, or provision of services” (130). An example of this designer ecosystem is using large boulders to maximize the output of plant and animal communities in streambeds. Another example was sinking old ships to provide places for coral reefs to live. The thought behind designer ecosystems is that human involvement doesn’t always have to be thought of as a bad thing. In these situations, human involvement is actually helping the ecosystems exponentially.

Chapter 9 is titled “Conservation Everywhere” and spoke about how conservation should be taking place everywhere, not just in secluded national parks such as Yellowstone. With the Yellowstone, the goal was to create corridors in order to allow for more space for the larger animals.  Marris says,  “Rewilding, assisted migration, and embracing some exotic species and novel ecosystems may seem like disparate strategies, but they are all at some level about making the most of every scrap of land and water, no matter its condition” (page 135).” Through connectivity with nature, will scientists be able to bring about some of the best ecosystems. “Ideally, reserves should be scientifically designed to achieve conservation goals agreed upon by interested parties while being sensitive to the needs of the people who now live or once lived on the sites in question (page 138).” Marris tries to expand on her idea that conservation can everywhere by stating that “project of conservation is not just defending what we have, but adding lands to our portfolio and deepening value of the lands in play (page 135).” Regular people can help connect with nature by allowing nature to take over their garden. This process may not look pleasing to the eye, but this type of gardening creates a much more diverse as well as rambunctious feeling. To sum up, Marris says that since it is impossible to return nature back to a pristine wilderness, people should live in harmony with nature. After all as she states, “plants and animals are all around us, in our backyards, along roadsides, in city parks (page 150).”

In Chapter 6 and 7 of the Rambunctious Gardens, Emma Marris discusses the concepts of exotic species and novel ecosystems. Exotic species are species that are not specific to an area but rather have been introduced by humans. There is a growing belief amongst ecologists that these species are invasive and detrimental to the new environments they are put in. Marris decides to use the concept of novel ecosystems to prove her view that exotic species are not detrimental to their new surroundings. Novel ecosystems are described as ecosystems that contain exotic species and can act better than native ecosystems. Along with that, they provide humans with services such as carbon sequestration and water filtration.

Marris argues that exotic species can be beneficial to habitats. They support rare native species, remove toxins from the soil, control for undesirable species along with regulating erosion. These exotic species may create even more diversity in the future by evolving and adapting to their new habitats. Marris likes to point out that many of the novel ecosystems that contain exotic species function better than none exotic ecosystems. Novel ecosystems have the most potential for evolution and increased diversity due to their need to survive by adapting to their new habitats.

Marris begins to question why we are inclined to dislike the introduction of new species. She believes that it is merely the fear and dislike of any change. People are quick to judge new species as invasive solely and solely welcoming native species into the ecosystems. Ecologist Mark Davis brings up the point that we should be dealing with each species as a separate case rather than categorizing each of these species as invasive.

Erle Ellis at the University of Maryland was the first to produce a map of the world anthropogenic biomes. This map revealed that 75% of the world’s ice-free land showed evidence of alteration as a result of human residence and land use. 20% of the world’s ice-free land is cropland; a third is rangeland and just under 22% showed no sign of human occupation or use (119). Later Ellis was able to discover that over 35% of the world’s ice-free land was covered by novel ecosystems. Another ecologist Mascaro, traveled to Hawaii’s Big Island and studied froty-six novel forests dominated by various species. He was able to discover that many measures of the novel ecosystem forests productivity such as nutrient cycling matched or out produced the native forests. Mascaro was later able to conclude that his novel ecosystems and native ecosystems were virtually indistinguishable.

I believe that novel ecosystems can be extremely successful. Firstly, they provide human services and secondly they are home to many diverse species. These new types of ecosystems will describe this age of species by helping diversify the ecosystems. These projects do not require large amounts of effort or money to complete making it a wise choice to continue doing what we already are doing.

Chapter 5 of Rambunctious Gardens by Emma Marris introduces a concept of assisted migration. This idea consists of moving species from one area to another in hopes that the species will adapt and grow in that new area. Assisted migration came to be because of the increasing climate changes due to the global warming situation. Animals, would strive to climb up the hills or mountains to find areas that were cooler but the problem arouse when the reached the apex of these mountains and were still suffering from the heat. There was nowhere else for them to go; so assisted migration came to be. The author gives an example of the American pika, which would climb the mountains to find cooler land. Eventually it reached the top and had nowhere else to go. After a few hours in 78F heat, the pika would die. Its best chance for survival was to find a new environment but it couldn’t do so without the humans assistance.

The concept of assisted migration sounds great and it really does work for species. The animals are willing to adapt to new environments when their only other option was to die. The problem with assisted migration is that most people would be inclined to help the resourceful species such as the pika, but who would be willing to help the millions of beetles that also need the help. Assisted migration for species such as the beetle would cost a lost of time, money and effort which may not be successful in the end. Scientists argue that putting different species that have never before interacted with each other could cause unprecedented circumstances that may cause an entire species to be wiped out.

Assisted migration has its positive and negative consequences. In my opinion, assisted migration has to be done because otherwise these species such as the pika have no chance of survival.  Sure, there is the possibility that by transferring the species to an new environment make cause ecological disruption, but that is only a possibility while by humans not taking action, the death and eventual extinction of these species is a guarantee. Another factor, which I thought supports the use of assisted migration, is increasing the variation of species. If one species was exactly the same without differing biological factors, then it would make the chances of one catastrophic event much more likely to kill off the entire species. Through assisted migration, species can interact with other species and evolve to differing species with many variations of dna, making it a lot less likely that one event could kill off the entire species.

In chapters three and four of Emma Marris’s Rambunctious Garden, Marris introduces us to the concept of pleistocene rewilding. This idea is drastically different from the traditional approach that conservationists follow, which is to return areas to their original baselines. During the Pleistocene era, big mammals such as the wolly mammoth and ground sloths would roam the earth. The number of these précises would dramatically diminish by the human race. Humans would drive these species to extinction such as the Maori bird that was easy to prey on for humans.  This huge bird that could grow to be over 15 feet tall and weight over 500 pounds would just stand there and be easy prey for humans. It took only 400 years for the Maori bird to be completely extinct after the introduction of the human.

This new concept of Pleistocene rewilding is the reintroduction of similar animals to areas where similar animals had gone extinct. Mostly, top of the pyramid predators were the animals chosen to be introduced into these environments. The reason behind this was to keep the ecosystem in check. Before predators, the only thing that would keep the ecosystem in check would be the battle for food. These environments were in need of another variable to keep the stability of the ecosystem, so that was the mentality behind introducing predators.

Initially, I felt that this new concept was too far fetched. I couldn’t understand why we would be introducing a similar species to environments where their supposed ancestors had gone extinct. It seemed cruel, unjust and in my opinion, done only for the reason of science, not to actually preserve life or environments. Human beings are playing the role of God in these events, which is something that gives them way too much power.

After Marris continues to dive into this concept some more, the results do seem to support that Pleistocene rewilding is working. It is a natural way of saving the environment, unlike conservationists trying to rebuild the environment themselves inorganically by burning forests down and replanting trees.  I believe that this concept can be positive if ecologists focus on how the new ecosystems are man made yet still nature rather than trying to preserve prehistoric baselines. By allowing nature to take its coarse and not fencing it off all the time, we can see how the rewilding approach truly impacts the environment.