THE (NECESSARY?) ILLUSION OF EQUILIBRIUM

Overwhelming evidence exists that single stable equilbria, or other balance-of-nature notions are not a normative state for Earth surface systems (ESS), and not more common or significant than nonequilbrium. Despite this evidence, management, policy, and even scientific models and theories are often grounded in notions of a single stable, normative state. Why? I suggest six interrelated explanations.

1. Steady-state is a useful simplifying assumption

Nature is vast and complex. Comprehension requires some simplifying framework(s). Equilibrium is means of simplification appealing to a basic human preference for order and predictability. Models based on equilibrium assumptions that are unproven or even known to be false can nevertheless produce useful results (as is also the case in social sciences). This modeling success can contribute to an illusion of equilibrium as an accurate characterization of nature.

Steady-state regolith or soil thickness, whereby weathering at the bedrock interface roughly balances surface removal, does not accurately describe actual weathering and pedogenesis. However, it is a useful and convenient fiction for many modeling purposes. (Madison County, Kentucky)

Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference 2017

DOPE 2017 Keynote Address: "A Philosophy of Science for the 21st Century: Feminist and Periphery Issues"



The prevailing philosophies of science were reconstituted after World War II in a global context very different from the economic, political and social context of scientific research today. Around the globe, scientists and observers of scientific research have been analyzing how that historical context distinctively shaped such philosophies.  And they have been developing ways to think about, design and manage research that work better for them and the social groups to whom they are accountable.  That is, they have been developing different kinds of philosophies of science. This presentation will trace the history of these processes. And it will identify some valuable tensions raised by the new philosophical projects. These tensions are valuable because they direct us to new and producive questions about how to relocate scientific research on economically, politically and socially progressive agendas. Sandra is the author of numerous books, including Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research published by University of Chicago Press.



 

Date:
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Location:
Kincaid Auditorium, Gatton College of Business, Rm 111

Record Number of Students on UK Dean's List

By Lori Minter

A record number of students made the University of Kentucky Dean's List for the fall 2016 semester. The 7,408 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance.  That's an increase of more than 200 over the previous record reached in fall 2015 when the number of students on the UK Dean's List surpassed 7,000 for the first time.  Last semester's Dean's List includes over 700 more students than the spring 2016 semester's list.

Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference 2017

DOPE 2017  Welcome Address: “A Language for Ecological Trauma and a Political Ecology of That Which Is Repressed”



Do we have a vocabulary – a language – to name what people are inhibited to name? For the repressed? The unspoken? What would it sound like if we did? What traumas would we name with that language? In an America born of settler colonial violence and ecological transformation, it seems clear that developing such a language is essential, since return of people, return of land, and return of violent memory are forever entwined in a landscape of ongoing trauma. To name this is an essential part of transcending injustice. This address provides a brief rereading of John Muir’s “Boyhood and Youth” to suggest a glimpse of what such a vocabulary might look like and the good it might do in the era of the North Dakota Pipeline, denial of climate change, a dismembered regulatory apparatus, and other struggles over the colonial present. Through the history of the tormented landscapes of America so named, I offer an invitation to expand the vocabulary with which we speak about fear and desire in nature.



Paul Robbins specializes in human interactions with nature and the politics of natural resource management. His research addresses questions spanning conservation conflicts, urban ecology, and environment and health interactions. He has done extensive fieldwork in rural India, where he has focused his work on the politics surrounding forestry and wildlife conservation in Rajasthan, India, as well as recent research examining the wealth of biodiversity (frogs, birds and mammals) in commercial coffee and rubber plantations throughout south India. Robbins has also led national studies of consumer chemical risk behaviors in America, including research on the abiding passion of Americans for their lawns and mosquito management policies in the Southwest. Dr. Robbins is author of the foundational textbook Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction and numerous research articles in publications that address conservation science, social science, and the humanities. His award-winning book Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are is widely recognized as one of the most accessible books on the environmental politics of daily life.

 

 



 

Date:
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Location:
Kincaid Auditorium, Gatton College of Business, Rm 111

Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference 2017

The University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group invites you to participate in the seventh annual Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference (DOPE) February 24-25, 2017. DOPE has become a key international forum for graduate students and faculty at all stages in their careers, fostering critical interdisciplinary discussion of urgent topics including: rural social movements; food systems; complexity in ecological and social systems; decolonization, knowledge, and difference; science and technology studies; neoliberal natures and climate justice;  and feminist political ecologies, among many more. Over 300 scholars, activists, and environmental professionals attended DOPE 2016, representing dozens of disciplines and more than 100 institutions spread over four continents. Plenary speakers will be present in Kincaid Auditorium in the Gatton College of Business and conference presentations are scheduled in newly renovated Patterson Hall (North Campus).

Date:
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Location:
University of Kentucky, Feb 23 - 25

KARSTIFICATION AT BOWMAN'S BEND

As the Kentucky River in central Kentucky continues to downcut through Ordovician limestones in the Kentucky River gorge area, entrenched meanders grow. On the outside of these bends tributary streams are truncated, their slopes accordingly steepen, and fluvial dissection becomes more dominant. On the inner part of the bends, slip-off slopes develop that are far less steep than valley walls on the outer bends, but steeper on average than the adjacent uplands. These inner bend areas are hotspots for karstification, and are pockmarked with numerous dolines (karst sinkholes). Streams are few and small; larger tributary streams are apparently diverted away from the inner bends; in any case no tributaries with a surface drainage area of more than a few km2 join the river on the inside of a meander (at least in the gorge area). This article includes a section on the "Badass Bends" and their diverging karst vs. fluvial dynamics. This previous post discusses the expansion of the Polly's Bend compound meander.

LESSONS FROM ICICLE BEND

Last year, my fluvial geomorphology class investigated the origin of an unusual overhanging bedrock stream bank on Shawnee Run, Kentucky. Because on our first field visit the cliff above was festooned with large (up to 2 m long) icicles, we named it Icicle Bend. In the course of our fieldwork, we discovered what we eventually determined to be higher level paleovalley of Shawnee Run nearby. Stream channel changes by cutoffs, avulsions, and capture happen all the time. But, invariably, the new, "winning" channel represents a more efficient (i.e., more direct and steeper) path. In this case, however, the opposite appeared to have happened--a shorter, steeper path represented by the paleovalley was abandoned during general downcutting of the stream for the modern path via Icicle Bend. PhD student Tasnuba Jerin and I decided to further investigate this anomaly.

OCCAM'S SELECTION

Generalized Darwinism holds, in essence, that the principles of variation, selection, and retention (preservation) and replication that are the cornerstone of Darwinian biological evolution are applicable to development and evolution of (to exaggerate only slightly) damn near anything. This perspective, most actively debated in evolutionary economics, is detectable (though sometimes without the specific label) in many science and social science fields.

Generalized Darwinism has many critics, but most critiques I've seen fall into two categories (to simplify and generalize wildly): (1) a lack of fidelity to biological evolution; or (2) an inability to solve every problem in evolutionary economics, system theory, etc.  Those criticisms are accurate, but not valid (in my estimation), as the "generalized" clearly implies a move beyond biological evolution, and no conceptual or analytical framework is ever the answer to everything, even in a relatively small subdiscipline.

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