permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>]

Yes Please !

genest@pivot.net


Best Regards,

Claude William Genest

 - Founder  Green Mountain Permaculture Institute of Vermont
Solutions, Sustenance, Sustainability
www.greenmountainpermaculture.com

- Creator  "Regeneration - The Art of Sustainable Living"
From "Something-Must-be-Done" to Something we can do !
www.regenerationshow.com

- Ecological Coordinator
Club St.Paul Ecological Golf Course

- Vice-President  Green Party of Quebec "pour nous et nos enfants"
www.pvq.qc.ca

- National Spokesperson Green Party of Canada
"The Future is Now ! "
www.greenparty.ca




On Jun 8, 2006, at 2:55 PM, Jerome Rigot wrote:

> 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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