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Early‐successional forest ecosystems: far from “forgotten”
Author(s) -
King David I,
Nislow Keith H,
Brooks Robert T,
DeGraaf Richard M,
Yamasaki Mariko
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
frontiers in ecology and the environment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.918
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1540-9309
pISSN - 1540-9295
DOI - 10.1890/11.wb.016
Subject(s) - service (business) , experimental forest , forest ecology , geography , forestry , library science , ecology , ecosystem , biology , computer science , business , marketing
Figure 1. Annual increase in number of references (416 altogether) resulting from a Web of Science search, conducted on 16 Mar 2011, for “(early AND succession AND conservation) OR Topic = (early AND seral AND conservation) OR Topic = (early AND succession AND ecosystem)”. world. We suggested planning for “off world” colonization as a last resort and as a precautionary response to an unstoppable redesign of the Earth. Holl and Loik argue that the large monetary sums needed for such colonization could be better spent directly on solving environmental problems here on Earth. It’s hard to argue with that sentiment in the short term. A major increase in resources directed toward goals such as K–12 education and empowering women globally would be of great value, both environmentally and economically. Yet, when we proposed the drastic step of considering space colonization, we were musing about the long term – because we believe that the deployment and extent of novel technologies will happen so fast, and may arrive with such intensity, that people may not have time to respond adequately. The increase in technological “progress” in the 21st century has been estimated to be of the same order of magnitude as that of the last 20 000 years (at today’s rate of technological change; Kurzweil 2003). Under this scenario of technological transformation, our suggestion of a “couple of centuries” for deployment of humans to space might be too long. The bulk of our editorial focused on the world today and in the near future. That’s where we’d like the focus to remain, because no one has the remotest idea of what the continued emergence of the neoenvironment will mean for us, for societies, and for the rest of life on Earth. However, it’s time we also started thinking about the distant future, which really may not be so far away. Peter Haff and Rob Jackson Duke University, Durham, NC (jackson@duke.edu)