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A requiem for the British flora? Emotional biogeographies and environmental change
Author(s) -
Trudgill Stephen
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2008.00790.x
Subject(s) - emotive , flora (microbiology) , environmental change , ecology , narrative , underpinning , epistemology , anthropocene , sociology , environmental ethics , geography , climate change , biology , philosophy , geology , paleontology , literature , art , bacteria , geotechnical engineering
A change of species distributions in response to environmental change challenges cherished notions of native flora and the appropriateness of a species for a particular location. Recent writings have called for a removal of emotive descriptors of species such as ‘alien’ and ‘invasive’. There are also calls for a separation of facts and values, but it is apparent that biogeographical facts and values both have a fundamental emotional underpinning. Since the evidence of shifts in biogeographical distributions is now challenging our values, it seems that a change in philosophy is appropriate, one which recognises both the scientific evidence and an emotional need for a narrative.