Using watersheds as our basic geographic unit has helped conservation of rivers and their drainage basins. Assigning values to different parts of watersheds will let us set priorities that will make our watershed stewardship even more effective.

The higher priority previously given to downstream sections of watersheds by flood control programs is not effective [...]]]> Watershed Values

Using watersheds as our basic geographic unit has helped conservation of rivers and their drainage basins. Assigning values to different parts of watersheds will let us set priorities that will make our watershed stewardship even more effective.

The higher priority previously given to downstream sections of watersheds by flood control programs is not effective in improving water management for a watershed. Emphasis on the downstream portion of the watershed leads mainly to simply engineered patching aimed at preventing flooding of human infrastructure.

In contrast, watershed stewardship programs aim for remediation and protection of the natural processes of the entire watershed that prevent or tame such floods. Such watershed stewardship is most effective if applied close to where the rain hits the ground, before it becomes a downstream flood crest.

For example, on June 4, 2005, 4 inches (101.6 mm) of rain fell on the rain gauges at Kennebec Lake. Assuming that the same amount of rain fell across all the drainage basin upstream of the lake (66,560 acres) and assuming that it all ran off quickly, that amount of rain would have raised the lake level by over 55 inches (139.7 cm or 4.58 feet). The lake level was carefully recorded; it rose only 14 inches. The Kennebec Lake subwatershed allowed only 6.7 % of the rain to form the flood crest.

The Kennebec Lake subwatershed is the top end of the Salmon River watershed; this moderation of the runoff provided ecosystem services to the entire Salmon River watershed all the way to Shannonville.

The upstream portion of any watershed is the most important in providing the natural processes that manage our river flows for us. The upstream portion is the most valuable portion in terms of watershed stewardship and conservation.

Moderation of runoff peaks, such as in this example, is not delivered equally by all rivers that flow down off the Canadian Shield. After the storm in the example above, the nearby Black and Skootamatta Rivers received higher flood crests, less moderated than the Salmon (see Merriam and Carmichael, Figs. 6.1 to 6.6, The Salmon River Watershed). Many rivers flowing off the Shield have very high runoff and very low amounts of rain soaking into the land. No wonder – there is a lot of bare rock and very little soil on the Shield. The expectation for ‘shield rivers’ is ‘whitewater’ in spring and wet rocks in late summer, not constancy. So how does the upper Salmon watershed (the Kennebec Lake subwatershed) moderate flow?

The answer lies in the Kennebec Wetland Complex, an area above Highway 7 extending from Highway 41 east to include Mink and Hungry Lakes and north to the Mississippi watershed just south of Big Gull Lake. In that huge area there is a wetland every 750 metres in all directions. (Hence “complex” rather than individually named wetlands.) There are so many wetlands that the Ministry of Natural Resources has been unable to describe each one in detail.

Some wetlands sit above bedrock faults and their water recharges the groundwater.  Others simply trap and hold rainfall, evaporate some, cleanse the rest by processing through aquatic plants, and release it downstream slowly, thus moderating the flood crest after such storms as the one on September 8-9, 2004. This is how the upstream area of the Salmon watershed moderated the runoff from the sudden September storm.

Water runs slowly into the Salmon River at many points in the upper part of the watershed. Just below Highway 7, Big Clear Lake adds water gathered from its smaller subwatershed, joining the Salmon through Arden Creek and Arden Lake. Further downstream, at the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, Gull Creek brings water from Gull, Puzzle, Loyst, Norway, Big McNeill and Bear Lakes and associated wetlands in Puzzle Lake Provincial Park. At Erinsville, on the north edge of the Napanee limestone plain, Beaver Lake adds a little, very much more limey, water from west of Road 41.

Topographic maps and satellite images make clear that the sources of water entering the Salmon and the degree of moderation of that flow is concentrated in the upper parts of the watershed. If a program were really aimed at “protecting the sources of water”, the upper watershed would be the high priority area.

Unfortunately, policy dictated by political pressure on the Conservation Authorities is focused downstream where fear of flood damage is severe but where long term moderation of floods by enhanced natural processes can not be engaged in water management.

Although the upper watershed should be given high value, the entire watershed should be planned and protected. Downstream is the Bay of Quinte, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. The lower watershed on the limestone plain has the highest agricultural potential, the most development and the highest density of humans. Natural processes here require exact planning and care as we fit our activities into the system. That planning requires the acknowledgement that natural forces often are too strong to oppose and should be enlisted not challenged.

Holistic planning for the entire watershed also is needed because we are planning not only for ourselves but also for all the other living beings and vital natural processes that we must protect if we want their ecological support into the future.

GOING FORWARD

Stewardship Not Management

If we consider long-term plans for the Salmon River, some fundamental points are clear. “Management” of the river is the mistaken (and arrogant) philosophy that has resulted in disused dams, destroyed cold-water habitats, species threatened by interrupted migrations, and placing of built structures where they depend on unsustainable engineering of water levels assumed to be constant. Instead we need to think about stewardship plans.

The Whole Watershed

         Stewardship thinking needs to be based on protected natural processes operating across the watershed, the naturally integrated unit of water flow. Protected natural processes are more easily sustained than managed or engineered processes. Natural processes are naturally solar-powered and consequently require no economic adjustments or questionable projections. For any planned processes that are not natural, we must accept the responsibilities – scientific, technical, economic, and managerial – for their sustenance. Historically, we have not done well at sustaining even fragments of processes of water flow on the land, let alone whole watershed “management”. Consider the reasons for the “drinking water protection program”, downgraded from “source water protection”.

Commitment to whole watershed stewardship planning requires coordination of planning for: forestry, agriculture, tourism and recreation, transportation, communication, municipal development, and regional economics. There are many benefits from this coordinated approach. Bureaucratic fragmentation will resist the required coordination but local understanding of the watershed and strong attachment of citizens to it can provide the necessary integration.

IPAT and Other Values

Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology (IPAT) has replaced Impact = Population X Consumption but the basics are unchanged. Successful stewardship will require attention to these fundamentals. Planning to fit humans into a watershed while protecting natural processes requires avoiding critical impacts. At the same time, increases in the human population of the watershed will increase that impact. The affluence of those people also can increase the impact if it causes increased consumption of natural resources and increased production of “waste”. Dynamically increasing technology also can add to the resource costs and to the environmental impacts.

Reducing the effect of the “P”, the “A” and the “T” must be an objective of watershed planning. None will be stopped but long-term plans must make them less damaging.

Politics, Resources and Grassroots

Who can initiate long-term watershed stewardship planning? Conservation Authorities are the only Ontario agencies with mandates defined by watersheds. Unfortunately, integrated plans of watershed stewardship are not evident in their recent activities, although that was their original objective in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. CA budgets do not permit the detailed discovery or monitoring work needed for holistic planning. No provincial ministries or programs have activities fitting the needs outlined here. Stewardship Councils could have applied appropriate programs. Lake associations are growing stronger but many focus mainly only on lakefront areas and do not reach out to their whole subwatersheds.

Without increased provincial funding specifically targeted on watershed stewardship, the work falls to volunteer groups. For the Salmon River watershed this means The Friends of the Salmon River and a few lake associations such as those for Kennebec, Big Clear, Horseshoe, Sheffield (if an association were formed), and Beaver.

State of the lake data for these lakes would be a good first step that could be taken by volunteers with existing support from the province, such as the Lake Partners Program. Some of these lakes already have such data in varying amounts.

Currently, provincial municipal planning rests with the townships, some of whom have voiced support for lake planning but none for watershed planning. They falsely assume that is looked after by the Conservation Authorities. This conduct of planning under the Planning Act is changing. Ultimate authority for planning is being given to some counties and predicted to move to other counties soon. Despite resistance by townships, planning capability is being developed by Frontenac County. See, for example, their excellent on-line accessible Geographic Information System. Coordination among the County, the struggling Stewardship Council, and the Conservation Authorities is underway. In May 2013, the County will support a two-day workshop where selected experts will wrestle with the question: what are the few elements that are vital to a stewardship plan for a small region?

Because planning under the Planning Act has historically been dominated by urban and suburban planning, most planners received their certification in those topics. No planning schools specialize in watershed planning or in lake planning although some group projects have appeared. With this planning history, volunteer groups must influence the thinking of the planners at County toward understanding of and priority for the different parts of a watershed. Planning objectives need to incorporate the natural processes critical to sustaining a fully functional watershed. New knowledge is needed about the interaction of natural processes with human population, built development, and tourist- and retirement-based rural economies. Our area, the Lakeland of Eastern Ontario needs creative, new planning models that recognize and incorporate the natural richness that is our future capital.

Stewardship, Not Engineered Management

         Objectives need to be in terms of a naturally functioning watershed with people fitted into it and supported by it without disrupting vital processes. Past approaches holding benefits to humans, largely economically evaluated, as the sole objective are generally recognized as no longer tenable. Natural processes vital to long-term functioning of the watershed need higher priority. Without conservation of those processes the system will not truly recover from an impact. Instead, it will be degraded. Without functioning natural processes, the human component of the system will lack support in the future. We humans will not be able to fund technically engineered substitutes for the all vital watershed processes required by the entire integrated system. We have passed the times when another technical innovation can be offered believably as the solution to any problem. Just consider global climate change and global human population.

Across Anglophone Canada, science has not been integrated into our culture. In Québec, science has been integral to the culture from the time of early settlement. Work by Frère Marie Victorin (1885-1944) is an outstanding example.

Today and for some decades, Québec Science has been a viable magazine for any Québecois interested in [...]]]> Science in Canadian Culture

Across Anglophone Canada, science has not been integrated into our culture. In Québec, science has been integral to the culture from the time of early settlement. Work by Frère Marie Victorin (1885-1944) is an outstanding example.

Today and for some decades, Québec Science has been a viable magazine for any Québecois interested in science. Repeated attempts to launch an English science magazine have all failed.

When l’Association Canadienne-Français pour l’Avancement des Sciences (ACFAS) held its meetings at Université de Quèbec à Montréal in 1989, le Devoir inserted a foldout containing the complete program of the meetings including all the papers to be presented and their authors and did so at no cost to ACFAS. A few years later when the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) held their North American meetings in Toronto, local news media paid little attention and certainly did not assist.

What do I mean by “science”? New pills and new gadgets are in our daily news. Does that not make “science” part of our culture? No, science is not focused on producing applications for our consumer culture. Science is not the same as technology, or even engineering, or clinical medicine. That is not how science becomes part of our culture.

When friends frequently say “ … I don’t get science and statistics…” when they see tables of information or any kind of numbers, it is clear that science has not been incorporated into their culture. Likewise when I hear media references such as “… science has proved something or other” it is clear that the fundamentals of science still are not generally understood.

“Science” is just a particular way of “knowing”, a specific way of producing new knowledge so that the truth and meaning can be checked. This can involve careful and exact recording of observations and measurements but that is just a beginning step. The critical step is using that information to create logical hypotheses that can be tested to try to disprove them, either logically or by experiment or both. Logically, absolute proof is not possible so the scientific method dictates that we try to disprove a working hypothesis. If repeated attempts to disprove it fail then we temporarily let the hypothesis stand.

Statistics are often used in science but every number is not a statistic. There are lots of other kinds of numbers! A statistic is a measure taken from a sample of a much larger universe or population of things – too many to measure them all – so a sample is taken. The methodology and theory of statistics are used to test how well the sample represents the entire population of things and also to state the degree of certainty of any decisions made from that sample. For many questions, the most accurate answer is a probability statement. Answers given without a statement of their certainty are often suspect.

Science is used to study many kinds of questions varying from completely theoretical to very practical and applied. The notion, now commonly expressed in our culture, that only studies that result in an immediate application have value seems to result from a few bad assumptions: One is the very basic notion that all knowledge already exists and no knowledge is produced anew. Another is that we humans are omniscient and can know the utility of new knowledge before it is ever produced. A third is that the only way to evaluate knowledge is by its economic value; no value is attached to knowledge for its own cultural and intellectual worths.

Science has strongly affected the nature of our culture but, oddly, has not been incorporated into that culture.

A few decades ago millponds and millstreams were subjects for painters of bucolic landscapes. They also were power sources vital to local economies. Over time they have lost their economic role and their beauty is stained by their destruction of valuable habitats.

Most of the small dams holding back ponds in our [...]]]> Millponds: Nostalgic or Obsolete?

A few decades ago millponds and millstreams were subjects for painters of bucolic landscapes. They also were power sources vital to local economies. Over time they have lost their economic role and their beauty is stained by their destruction of valuable habitats.

Most of the small dams holding back ponds in our watersheds allow water to escape over the top of the dam. That water was the top water of the pond – the water that was warmed by the sun. The heated water flows downstream warming everything in its path. This destroys all the coldwater habitats of the stream. Fish, such as brook trout, and especially their eggs and young no longer can survive without those coldwater habitats. Warmwater species from elsewhere, such as brown trout, take over, often with our help. As the original environment is further distorted, it may become preferred habitat for ecologically less appropriate species such as smallmouth bass and crappie.

For several streams flowing into Lake Ontario, species integral to the original ecosystem have been pushed out by the many little mill dams favoured by the human view of progress held a few decades ago. The Atlantic salmon population that was “landlocked” in Lake Ontario survived by migrating upstream to spawn and start their young*. Both the destruction of coldwater habitats by surface overflow from millponds and the barriers presented by the dams themselves barred the salmon from streams that had supported their population for glacial time.

Although less discussed by European settlers, American eels were even more important than salmon to first nations in the watersheds draining into Lake Ontario. These fish, not to be confused with lampreys, gather in the Sargasso Sea off Bermuda for mating. Their transparent young (elvers) migrate to the streams of the continents and up those streams to mature over a few years, before migrating back in the Sargasso to mate. Mature eels, trapped by dammed rivers, have been caught in lakes in the Salmon River watershed in the current decade.

Surface overflow dams affect not only sports fishes and eels. All invertebrates at the base of the food chain, that require cold water habitats, also are pushed out.

In addition to the barrier effects and the warm water effects, surface overflow dams also change the sediment flow downstream. As the water flow slows above the dam, silt, sand, gravel and all heavier particles carried by the water settle out and become sediment in the bottom of the pond. Not only does the pond fill up, but those settled particles don’t go downstream to make up the sediments required by everything from fish eggs to mayflies.

Unless one life-stage can fly, the invertebrates as well as the fishes have their gene pool along the stream broken into isolated segments. The basic processes of evolution are impacted by this fragmentation of the streams, and the fragmentation of gene pools, by dams.

In many cases, these old dams are relicts of the past that have lost their reason for being. Their ecological effects are still causing impacts and prevent restoration of habitats critical to the survival of species. These old dams restrain the possibilities of rebuilding the faunal structure of our Lake Ontario streams and the Great Lakes.

* Dymond, J.R. 1965. The Lake Ontario Salmon (Salmo salar) , Ed. H.H. Mackay. Ontario Ministry of Lands and Forests,141 pp.

In today’s green discussions by politicians and the media, more and more, the sole focus seems to be on global climate change and thus on use of energy.

It has been a battle to get climate change recognized and it is an important focal point but it is not the only issue. Global change [...]]]> Green Steps

In today’s green discussions by politicians and the media, more and more, the sole focus seems to be on global climate change and thus on use of energy.

It has been a battle to get climate change recognized and it is an important focal point but it is not the only issue. Global change does not encompass all the ecological impacts caused by humans or all the management challenges that we must face.

The other challenges are unable to compete for attention with global change but they are all part of a united hierarchy. Global change is the largest in geographic scale and ranging down the size scale of effects and challenges we see continental effects such as forest clearing, reduction of species’ ranges and populations, light pollution and many other examples. At smaller geographic scales in the same hierarchy we see local issues such as unplanned toxic effects of pesticides, roadkill of endangered species, over-fertilization (eutrophication) of lakes and streams, and all the other “NIMBY” and “IMBY” topics.

As in all hierarchies, processes operating at larger spatial scales are slower, both to come into effect and to be remediated. So, changing the global climate requires many decades to take effect and will take equally long to correct. But clear-cutting a local forest patch can happen overnight and can be regrown (to a different mix) in a human lifetime.

The take-home lesson is that programs or political platforms that address only climate change as their total green or environmental package are missing all the rest of the hierarchy that they need to address.

The local effects, such as the reduction or degradation of local habitats, must be addressed, along with the continental-scale impacts and management programs. In most cases, problems start locally and metamorphose into larger-scale issues; attending to local issues is primary in preventing the big, slow and difficult global issues.

British Columbia taxpayers have paid about $250,000 to fight the invasion of bullfrogs in the Osoyoos region of southern B.C. Estimates for control programs for the entire province run into the tens of millions.

Why get rid of bullfrogs? They are not native to B.C. and they are eating the young of all the native [...]]]> Expensive Frogs

British Columbia taxpayers have paid about $250,000 to fight the invasion of bullfrogs in the Osoyoos region of southern B.C. Estimates for control programs for the entire province run into the tens of millions.

Why get rid of bullfrogs? They are not native to B.C. and they are eating the young of all the native frogs, threatening some with extinction. In addition, bullfrogs carry a chytrid skin fungus that is deadly to many other frogs. Many species are declining globally.

How did bullfrogs get into B.C.? Non-thinking speculators in frog-leg farming bought some in. Others were brought in by gardeners just for the aesthetics of their lily ponds.

Green frogs also have been introduced but are less menacing. In eastern Ontario we have many green frogs and some bullfrogs. Why don’t we have the problems seen in B.C.? Our other frogs have lived with bullfrogs over evolutionary time and have developed adaptations to prevent population decline due to bullfrog predation on their young. Possibly we also have predators that hold back the bullfrog population. Otters eat both bullfrogs and green frogs that the otters catch in winter on the muddy bottom and bring up to eat on the edge of the ice. The amphibian species and the ecosystems native to B.C. have not had the benefit of adapting over a long time to the bullfrogs.

These costly frogs are just one example of many costly invasions caused by humans moving species into ecological systems not adapted to the imported species. Consider purple loosestrife, arrived here from gardens in New England. We got Zebra mussels compliments of sea-going transportation with follow-up help from local boaters. Carp are not native to Ontario and we now are threatened by additional exotic carp species whose spread is supported by our engineering projects. European Phragmites or giant reed is expanding from an initial seeding by following the ditches along our highways. Phragmites and purple loosestrife take their choices from the habitat opportunities presented by road maintenance contracts that are insensitive to environmental effects.

Take home message? Stop moving exotics around. Some of them can become costly invasives that will threaten our native species. Learn to identify and eliminate invasives before they spread.

Simply adding or identifying “corridors” does not necessarily achieve connectivity. Connectivity is a measure of how well organisms can move through the landscape. The spatially mappable connections in the landscape are better referred to as connectedness and do not necessarily indicate connectivity.

The objective of conserving or repairing connectivity is to ensure [...]]]> Ecological Connectivity — Some Basics.

Simply adding or identifying “corridors” does not necessarily achieve connectivity. Connectivity is a measure of how well organisms can move through the landscape. The spatially mappable connections in the landscape are better referred to as connectedness and do not necessarily indicate connectivity.

The objective of conserving or repairing connectivity is to ensure population survival. Populations in most environments are composed of a mosaic of subpopulations. The subpopulations each may become locally extinct, i.e. decrease to zero, but with adequate connectivity the population of the entire mosaic of subpopulations, can survive with certainty.

This is so because for every subpopulation patch that goes extinct, an empty patch is recolonized. The rate of local extinction of subpopulations is matched by a rate of recolonization of local extinctions. This recolonization is possible only if the landscape allows the animals or plants to move freely among the habitat patches that support the subpopulations.

In many environments, particularly those heavily used by humans, the habitat is very fragmented. In the extreme, the native habitat between subpopulations is replaced by unnatural, often threatening or dangerous habitat. For example, squirrels may be confined to isolated patches of woods because lack of trees in intervening habitats prevents movements by the squirrels. Movement can be even more difficult for some plants. For example, trout lilies move mainly by extension of underground rhizomes. Unless there are small populations surviving in farm fencerows, trout lilies in farm woodlots are usually completely isolated in each woodlot. In such cases, connections between patch populations will need to be breeding habitat, not just spatial corridors.

With intense fragmentation, humans also commonly may insert barriers, such as highways, gravel pits or strip malls, between the subpopulation patches thus increasing the isolation.

If the organisms can’t move among the patches and patches emptied by local extinction are not recolonized, the number of empty patches will continue to increase until the species is extirpated over the entire region.

Programs attempting to conserve connectivity need to consider how quality, extent and spatial distribution of habitat affect movement behaviour in particular species. White-footed mice will use farm fields, even plowed corn fields, as breeding habitat and will move across them between patches of their usual wooded habitat. But chipmunks in that same farmland will not use farm fields and can be isolated in farm woodlots simply by lack of woody fencerows. Because they can fly, it often is assumed that birds and damselflies are unaffected by spatial distribution of habitats on the ground. But, during breeding season, some birds are unwilling to fly across open areas without any treed way-stations. Some damselflies use watery habitats for breeding but adults must be able to fly to mature woodland for foraging.

Relationships between life history patterns and movement behaviour can be critical to population survival and must be considered in landscape planning and stewardship. Trained ecologists, biologists and natural historians must oversee and evaluate computer programs and engineered landscape changes so that conservation of connectivity is understood as movement of organisms that increases the probability of population survival.

If the connections among patches are inadequate in extent or in quality of habitat, the inter-patch movement will fail to ensure population survival.

Conservationists have struggled for decades to put their recommendations and management practices onto a sound and transparent scientific basis. The thought was that both government bodies and the public were more likely to apply the results of conservation research if results had the blessing of science.

That [...]]]>

                  Science and Aesthetics in Conservation

Conservationists have struggled for decades to put their recommendations and management practices onto a sound and transparent scientific basis. The thought was that both government bodies and the public were more likely to apply the results of conservation research if results had the blessing of science.

That struggle may have been too successful; or perhaps, just too narrow. A purely scientific basis for conservation, or applied ecology, has omitted a critical variable – aesthetics. Critical because the publics that must support conservation practices, if they are to succeed, are very sensitive to aesthetic values. Application of the strength of that public sensitivity of aesthetics to science-based management could advance the goals of conservation. An example arose from work in the American Midwest. Landscape planners tried to get farmers to allow natural revegetation of fencerow corners and other bits of unused land to make them attractive to wild plants and wildlife. Farmers resisted until the planners added little fences around the revegetated bits. Purely aesthetic.

Why was aesthetics left out? Conservation scientists are not insensitive to aesthetics. But scientists have believed that their scientific methods don’t apply to elements of planning such as aesthetics. That is the realm of philosophers and science can’t approach such questions. Rigid partitioning of academic disciplines, journals and rewards also have worked against synthesis. Is it true that science can’t address aesthetics? What is the evidence? Why can’t we apply the scientific method of: accurate observation, creation of and testing of an hypothesis, in attempts to disprove it?

I witnessed one interesting attempt to bridge this gap. In Sweden, a management plan for a large rural landscape was being developed. Integral to the process, a public meeting was held to obtain input from the people on that land. The development of the plan had been largely done by computer modeling. Three alternative futures for the landscape had been developed. For the public meeting, a watercolour artist had been engaged to produce paintings of the appearance of the landscape under each of the three alternative futures. These were displayed for the public.

But the alternative futures had been developed as computer models and in those models were all the assumptions and information about those three alternative landscapes. So scientists also were present, making those computer models available for examination. Those attending the meeting could do their thinking at the level of the watercolours, or they could raise questions from that view and ask those questions of the landscape modelers who would fire up their computers and investigate any questions at any level of detail, until the questioner was satisfied. Of course, the questioner could return to the aesthetics of the watercolours and raise more questions, return to the scientist and repeat the process. That public meeting was a good approach to melding the science and the aesthetics of landscape management.

Other ‘thinking outside the box’ has used evidence such as photographs of various ‘natural’ landscapes to present to urban dwellers to learn how they valued each landscape. Values stated by the viewers can be subjected to psychological and philosophical analyses and to statistical tests to state the confidence in results.

Surely scientists have the abilities to apply their ‘way of knowing’ to produce new knowledge that incorporates both classical scientific variables and solid evidence on aesthetic variables into a realistic synthesis that we could use to guide and facilitate ‘best management practices’ to address today’s conservation issues.

It has been a battle to get climate change recognized and it is an important focal point but it is only the top layer of an integrated chain of issues. Global [...]]]> In today’s green discussions by politicians, the main focus seems to be, more and more, on global climate change and thus on use of energy.

It has been a battle to get climate change recognized and it is an important focal point but it is only the top layer of an integrated chain of issues. Global change alone does not encompass all the ecological impacts caused by humans or all the management challenges that we must face.

The other challenges along with global climate change together form an integrated hierarchy of ecological processes and effects that must be considered together. Global change is the largest in geographic scale and if we range down the size scale of effects and challenges we see mid-size continental effects such as forest clearing, reduction of species’ ranges and populations, regional spread of pests, and many other examples. At smaller geographic scales in the same hierarchy we see local issues such as unplanned toxic effects of pesticide, roadkill of endangered species, over-fertilization (eutrophication) of lakes and streams, destruction of habitat patches, and many other “NIMBY” and “IMBY” topics.

As in all hierarchies, processes operating at larger spatial scales are slower, to come into effect and slower to be remediated. Changing the global climate takes many decades to take effect and will take equally long to correct, if that is possible. But clear-cutting a local forest patch can happen overnight and can be regrown (but not duplicated and not without impacts) in a human lifetime.

Smaller scale effects influence the mid-scale processes and those, in turn, influence the largest scale effects. Looked at in reverse, the large-scale processes have effects at the continental scale and those mid-scale processes have effects at the smallest, local scale. Processes and effects at all scales are linked into an integrated hierarchy that must be considered all together; selecting only one scale, such as global change, cannot effectively manage our environmental issues.

The take-home lesson is that programs or political platforms that address only climate change as their total green or environmental package are missing all the rest of the hierarchy that they need to address. To be complete, a ‘green’ package must address the entire chain of effects from removal of a local habitat patch to the regulation of carbon emissions.

The local effects, such as the reduction or degrading of local habitats, must be addressed, along with the continental-scale impacts and management programs. In most cases, problems start locally and metamorphose into larger-scale issues; attending to local issues is critical in preventing the big, slow and difficult global issues.