Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

With all we know, we still know too little to reliably re-engineer ecosystems

Posted 06 Sep 2013 / 0

NPR Morning Edition “Saving One Species At The Expense Of Another” There are a number of really important points made by this nice short. The first is that scientists — even when acting carefully on the best available evidence and theory — can still fail to produce desired outcomes. The second is that modifying ecological communities Read More

A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Habitat Destruction, Radio & Podcasts, Rivers & Streams

US EPA’s EnviroAtlas project promises to give researchers, students new insights into the geography of ecosystem services

Posted 13 Aug 2013 / 0

At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, I first learned about a really interesting initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project –now dubbed EnviroAtlas — is dedicated to creating a free, interactive online tool for exploring the geography of ecosystem services. I had the opportunity to check out a beta version Read More

A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Climate Change, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Deserts, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Freshwater Ecosystems, Geography, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Information Design, Invasive Species, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Rivers & Streams, Sociology, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Water Supply, Web

Want a good gauge of how much humans pollute waterways? Just measure for caffeine!

Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0

Marine Pollution Bulletin “Occurrence and concentration of caffeine in Oregon coastal waters” Coffee addicts worldwide can be proud of this result: you are leaving a “pissprint” on local waters.

A Minor Post, Articles, Freshwater Ecosystems, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes

ESA 2012 Symposium #23, Commodifying Nature: The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Service Valuation in Environmental Decision Making

Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0

Friday morning is a tough spot at an ESA meeting. It is the last day of a six-day conference, and there are only morning events, so many people evacuate before this final session. And for those who do drag themselves out of bed for sessions beginning at 8 am (perhaps, like me, for the sixth Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Climate Change, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Interdisciplinarity, Invasive Species, Pollution, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Rainforest, Traditional Ecological Knowledge

ESA 2012 Thursday afternoon talks

Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0

I spent Thursday afternoon once again hustling from one talk to another, with Organized Oral Session #47 (Universal Senescence? New Theories and Experimental Approaches Across the Tree of Life) being my primary focus. The writings of George C. Williams and his ingenious antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis explaining aging have always fascinated me. Like a lot of Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecosystem Services, Freshwater Ecosystems, Individual-based Models, Parasitism, Phenotypic Plasticity, Ponds & Lakes, Predation, Senescence, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Sustainable Agriculture, Talks & Seminars, Tropical Forest

The ecological impacts of the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill quantified

Posted 27 Jun 2012 / 0

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP–Deepwater Horizon oil spill” Kudos to PNAS for making this important paper open access. There is some depressing data here, as oil-slicked marshes with complete die-off of grasses were quickly eroded. But for those that were not eroded, the Read More

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Bogs & Wetlands, Conservation Biology, Habitat Destruction

HOME, a documentary about the impacted Biosphere

Posted 18 Sep 2011 / 0

I just watched the video Home, a production of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his Good Planet Foundation. Composed solely of high-quality panoramic images intensified by a soaring new-age soundtrack, the film provides viewers with a fairly comprehensive overview of the earth’s ecosystems and the challenges to the future health of these ecosystems posed by human industry. Read More

Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Carrying Capacity, Climate Change, Ecology, Ecology Education, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Extinction, Film, Television, & Video, Food, Freshwater Ecosystems, Hunger, Mangrove Forests, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, System Stability, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Temperate Forest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Tundra, Vegetarianism, Water Supply

Asian Carp on NPR

Posted 07 Oct 2010 / 0

Today National Public Radio‘s All Things Considered featured a good piece on the Asian Carp problem entitled “White House ‘Asian Carp Czar’ Outlines His Strategy For Eradicating Species“. The story explains how two human actions — the importation of carp for aquaculture and the reversal of the Chicago River by a massive engineering project — Read More

Coevolution, Freshwater Ecosystems, Invasive Species, Predation, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Urban Ecology

National Geographic “Fatal Attraction”

Posted 05 Mar 2010 / 0

This month’s National Geographic features a really beautiful article on carnivorous plants written by Carl Zimmer. The article presents the numerous independently-evolved adaptations possessed by a diversity of plants which live in nitrogen-poor soil. These adaptations are a great example of coarse-scal evolutionary convergence, as a variety of plants have all come up with the Read More

A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Bogs & Wetlands, Convergence, Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Predation

ESA 2009 Day #1 (Sunday)

Posted 03 Aug 2009 / 0

Today I arrive in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am here to attend the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting and give a talk entitled “Virtual Prairie Dogs Weigh in on the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis”. I have never been to Albuquerque and when I mapped the various locations where I will be during the conference I Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Ecological Society of America, Freshwater Ecosystems, Talks & Seminars, Water Supply