permaculture

[Dawn Shepard <dawnjs@mail.wsu.edu>]

I apologize if this is repetitive..

We're looking at a difference in the definition of the system as
Marsha pointed out. If you look at a small enough system over a short
enough time you can certainly see continuous input feeding the system,
without observing collapse of the system. I don' think that has got
anything to do with sustainability. 

The growth in the tree system comes at the expense of the soil and
atmospheric reserves (I don't mean that in a negative way), and the tree
will not grow forever. At some point in time, it returns back exactly what
it took and not one atom more. It can't give back more than it has, 
anymore than we can continuously put into a system more than we take out 
unless we look at a small system over a short time and that's why I
brought up the question of appropriate time and scale.


 On Sat, 27 May 2000, Marsha Hanzi wrote:

> It is the tendency of all natural systems to grow. 

Since natural systems are composed of living things, they will of course
grow in some time frame. That doesn't mean they will or can grow forever
in a continuous way. I hope that we'll attempt to look at sustainability
in terms of large scales and very long time periods so limits to net
growth are a necessity. We do live in a finite world as evidenced by
competition and scarcity and natural selection.

>     Ernst Gotsch, our "forest guru" talks of the "Law of otimization of
> life", that Natural systems will always increase in their life-support
> systems. There just may be no real climax, after all...

I have heard of a rule that basically says that stability is related to
the complexity of the system. basically "The more different ways to cycle
the same thing, the better". This is a way of increasing life support
systems. It does not refer to overall net growth so I guess it is not the 
same rule. I would be very interested in hearing more about the Law that
Ernst Gotsch has talked about.

Is he available by email or is there a web page? I didn't find anything
through an online search. Thanks in advance for the info.

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