permaculture

[Robyn Francis <erda@nor.com.au>]

Edge effect is not a permaculture invention or new age superstition, it's a
recognised phenomena in the science of ecology--the technical term is an
ecotone. Whereas ecologists simply observe and record the diversity and
productivity of naturally occurring edges, permaculture takes it a step
further and consciously builds it beneficially into design. Many of the
common production-system edges employed in permaculture can be found in
traditional and indigenous systems.

And everything is relative, oceans and landmass are big systems with big
edges, smaller systems will have smaller ecotones. This starts to get into
the arena of fractals and patterning, the understanding of which is
intrinsic to good design.

Ciao
Robyn


On 3/2/07 7:01 AM, "Rich Morris" <webmaster@pfaf.org> wrote:

> The discussion on permaculture and science got me thinking about some of
> the hypothesis of permaculture and whether they are testable, and this
> was brought to mind in a recent comment on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Permaculture
> 
> "Sure, coastal areas are more full of life, there's rainfall,
> temperatures are moderate, but to jump to the conclusion that "edges"
> are valuable from that seems a stretch. Please provide more evidence, at
> least in the form of links or delete! Even if there is an advantage to
> the seashore, the coastal edge is tens of miles wide, while I've seen
> permaculture designs where there were edges every hundred feet or so, it
> might not scale down. Permaculture is an essential idea, so it becomes
> even more important that it doesn't get watered down by New Age
> superstitions."
> 
> Theres quite a few places in the permaculture literature where there are
> claims that edges are the most productive/most diverse. Is their any
> evidence to support these claims?
> 
> Rich