permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

John Abdon wrote:

>Do you think the "USGS-NPS Vegetation
>Mapping Program"  concept of 'alliances' are similar in any useful way to
>permaculture's notion of 'guilds'?

I think you could draw a continuum, based on level of interconnectedness,
that goes "alliance-community-guild." Guilds* (sensu Pc, not sensu ecology)
are human-designed plant/animal communities. Communities are a
controversial concept, as some ecologists believe they are merely a
collection of organisms that cluster around the same point on a gradient of
living conditions (soil pH, moisture, temp, light, etc.) whereas others
argue that they are a patterned, self-organized structure that creates most
of its own environment (that's my bet). Alliance, according to a field
ecologist I worked with last summer, is a cop-out term designed to avoid
the associations of the word "community" that simply means a group of
plants who, we don't ask why, all live together. You'll notice that in the
USGS-NPS site in John's post, though the bold-face headings call the plant
groupings "alliances" in the text they are called "communities." So the
revanchism hasn't been total.

I use local communities (or alliances, associations, or whatever) as the
starting point to design guilds. By beginning with species I know are
adapted to local conditions and to each other, I can tweak the groupings,
substituting related or structurally similar species that are more suited
to my needs and those of the landscape, and then observe if the resulting
guild functions well. That's one of about 5 ways to design guilds I know
of. So the answer to your question is yes, alliances and communities are a
very useful tool, and very similar to guilds.

*The use of the term "guild" in permaculture is unfortunate, as ecologists
long ago defined "guild" in a related but different way, to mean a group of
species that occupy the same niche, as the guild of seed-eating bird
species, or of plantkton-eating whales. I think ecology's use better
captures the original sense of guild, as in the guild of weavers or
goldsmiths-a group of similar organisms all performing the same task. Pc's
use is catchy-it's a snappy term, but confusing to ecologists, whom I'd
like to see as our allies. I believe permies Eric Toensmeier and Dave
Jacke, in their upcoming book on Forest Gardens, avoid the use of guild
altogether. How heretical!

Toby