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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Direct scientific support for permaculture

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  • From: Jerome Rigot <rigot.3@osu.edu>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Direct scientific support for permaculture
  • Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:55:24 -0400

Hello all,

I have access to Nature, and I could send the article as a pdf attachment to whomever is interested.

Jerome

At 11:13 AM 6/8/2006, you wrote:
Here is some recently published research that lends direct scientific
support to the principles of permaculture:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=107018&org=olpa&from=news

The link above is to an NSF summary of an article from the June 1
issue of "Nature", one of the most prestigious and widely-read
journals in the natural sciences. You can download the article
from the www.nature.com website, but unfortunately the per-article
charge is rather steep at $30. The link is:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7093/edsumm/e060601-11.html

The first paragraph of the article itself reads:

"Human-driven ecosystem simplification has highlighted questions
about how the number of species in an ecosystem influences its
functioning. Although biodiversity is now known to affect
ecosystem productivity, its effects on stability are
debated. Here we present a long-term experimental field test
of the diversity-stability hypothesis. During a decade of data
collection in an experiment that directly controlled the
number of perennial prairie species, growing-season climate
varied considerably, causing year-to-year variation in
abundances of plant species and in ecosystem productivity. We
found that greater numbers of plant species led to greater
temporal stability of ecosystem annual aboveground plant
production. In particular, the decadal temporal stability of
the ecosystem, whether measured with intervals of two, five or
ten years, was significantly greater at higher plant diversity
and tended to increase as plots matured. Ecosystem stability
was also positively dependent on root mass, which is a measure
of perenniating biomass. Temporal stability of the ecosystem
increased with diversity, despite a lower temporal stability
of individual species, because of both portfolio (statistical
averaging) and overyielding effects. However, we found no
evidence of a covariance effect. Our results indicate that the
reliable, efficient and sustainable supply of some foods (for
example, livestock fodder), biofuels and ecosystem services
can be enhanced by the use of biodiversity."

This is actually a really big deal, because obvious as this finding
may seem to those of us who are permaculture "converts", in science
it is very important to have strong empirical support for your most
basic assumptions... and that diversity enhances stability and
productivity certainly goes to the heart of one of permaculture's
most basic assumptions. Having these controlled experimental results
published in "Nature" is powerful ammunition in any argument with
permaculture skeptics.

:j

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