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Ecosystems on the Move

Q. When is an ecosystem not an ecosystem?

A. Whenever we, their champions and custodians, say so.

No, its not a new age version of Alice in Wonderland, but it could be. Definitions are potent things. If you can change them, you might become eligible for a benefit from which, under public policy, you were previously excluded. If you can invest a familiar word with a slightly different meaning, you might be able to take public policy in a new direction without anyone noticing that the rules of a program have been changed. This could mean spending government money in new and rewarding ways. It could also be a subtle contribution to public debate about environmental policy that has the effect of aiding one side of the argument over the other.

What is an "ecosystem", anyway, and what does it matter?

The Commonwealth government released the "State of the Environment" report last year to considerable fanfare. The report describes itself as "an independent report presented to the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment by the State of the Environment Advisory Council". By any yardstick, the report is a major statement about the nature and condition of the Australian environment.

The report devotes a whole chapter to Biodiversity, and the concept of "ecosystem" features prominently in that chapter. A glossary in the report defines an ecosystem as:

"a dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit."

That sounds like a pretty good definition. It captures the notion of species interdependence that has made the concept of ecosystem such a powerful one in efforts to capture the public imagination about environmental issues. The concept embodies the idea that while the actions of man may only be directed at one species or group of species (e.g. trees) other species are affected, because they are part of the same interdependent community. The Concise Oxford Dictionary definition is similar:

"system of interacting organisms in a particular habitat."

So is the Macquarie Concise Dictionary definition:

"community of organisms, interacting with one another, plus the environment in which they and with which they also interact, as a pond, a forest."

The notions of interdependence and interaction seem quite central to these definitions. If, by means of some kind of verbal surgery, it was possible to remove the notion of interdependence and interaction, what would be left? Possibly just the idea of a "community" or a "area" or a "of plants." A garden is a collection of plants, but probably not an ecosystem, because the only influence that brought the constituent species together was the act of the gardener in planting them. There is no basis for attributing interdependence or interaction. Once the notion of interaction and interdependence is taken out, the most closely related scientific concept in current usage seems to be "region", which the "of the Environment" report also defines: "extensive region distinguished from adjacent regions by its broad physical and biological characteristics." The report identifies 80 terrestrial biogeographic regions and 17 marine regions in Australia and surrounding waters.

Other systems for classifying vegetation types have been developed for use when higher levels of detail or discrimination have been needed. In the East Gippsland RFA, for example, the Australian Heritage Commission identified 44 "vegetation classes" in an area that, in the State of the Environment Report, is shown as biogeographic region No.63 - "East Corner".

Developing classification systems (or taxonomy) is an important and challenging scientific endeavour. It is the science by which we give names to plants, identify new species, and bring discipline to scientific research.

"vegetation classes", and "regions" are perfectly legitimate taxonomic frameworks for imposing conceptual order on the diversity of nature. The only problem is, they don't have much sex appeal. They are dry clinical terms (as they should be) and they convey not one scintilla of romance or excitement. In any appeal to the emotions, only one of the following cuts any ice:

"the ecosystem"

"the ecological vegetation class"

"the biogeographic region"

Perhaps the reason the second and third don't quite capture the imagination is that they don't convey the same sense of fragility and vulnerability that is implicit in the notion of species interdependence and interaction of "ecosystem".

"Ecosystem" is not without problems of its own though. Firstly, despite the intuitive understanding it is certainly possible to have of species interdependence and interaction, achieving a scientific understanding in order to demonstrate a supposed interaction or interdependence is something else again. Biological and ecological research hasn't advanced that far. Very few, if any such interactive systems have been identified. If the term ecosystem could only be used in respect of those few, it would have a very limited use.

Perhaps this is the difficulty that lies behind the complaint in the "State of the Environment" report that:

"In contrast to species, ecosystems have no nationally agreed classification system and more importantly for this report, no agreed listing of the extent to which they are threatened. It is also difficult to specify when an ecosystem is extinct. How many components have to be lost and what degree of alteration of processes is necessary to make such a proclamation."

The situation described here may go some of the way to explaining why, for example, not a single endangered ecological community has been able to be listed under the Commonwealth's Endangered Species Act.

According to officials, there have been some nominations, but the main reason, they maintain, is that the regulations were incomplete, and could not be applied.

Because of the scientific difficulty of using "ecosystem" as a tool of taxonomy, the word has largely been relegated to general discussion about the environment, where it seems to be interchangeable with "ecological community". It occurs in general propositions about the direction in which public policy should be developed, but never in any discussion of a particular, distinct, and precisely located community of interdependent species. At the general descriptive level, the term is used in relation to a "forest", "coastal wetlands", "temperate woodlands" etc., but the use of the term "ecosystem" at this level does not depend on any precise or comprehensive understanding of the interactions that are presumed to occur between the members of those biological communities.

How could "ecosystem" be made more useful? Could any way be found to preserve its emotional power while improving its taxonomic efficiency?

Two recent initiatives by the Commonwealth Environment Portfolio appear to be attempts to do just that. The first was revealed on 9 July, when the Minister for the Environment announced that the regulations under the Endangered Species Act were being changed. The changes concerned the procedures for listing "endangered ecological communities". In future, an "ecological community" (or "ecosystem") will simply be:

"an assemblage of native species that inhabits a particular area in nature"

(not an "EM>integrated assemblage" as it was in the previous regulations.) On any dictionary definition, an "assemblage" is simply a collection of things.

As well, the new regulations provide that the proponents of a listing of an "endangered ecological community" will no longer be required, as they were under the old regulations, to give a description "of the processes by which [the] components interact". In future, they will only have to give a description of the ecological community that is sufficient to distinguish it from any other ecological community, by reference to the processes by which its components interact, if those processes are known. If the processes are not known, it seems they can be assumed to exist anyway.

The changes remove any obligation to demonstrate the species interdependence that is believed to characterise the ecological community (or "ecosystem"), and thereby renders the term capable of much easier and wider use. Ecological communities will be able to spring up on all sides, generously fertilized by the change to the definition, which allows them to keep their secrets. "Ecosystem" has moved closer to "ecological vegetation class", and lost none of its emotional fizz.

The second initiative was the release of revised guidelines for the National Reserve System, on 17 June. These guidelines were approved by ministers of the Australia New Zealand Environment Conservation Council in June. One of the agreed principles for the National Reserve System, according to the guidelines, is:

"Ecosystems are the primary component of biodiversity addressed by the National Reserve System program in determining the comprehensiveness of the National Reserve System."

The glossary included in the guidelines defines an ecosystem as:

"a mapped unit comprising a description of floristic composition in combination with substrate (lithology/surficial layers) and position within the landscape, and including other components of the biota where available."

This would appear to represent a complete liberation of "ecosystem" from the constraints of science. Its an "ecosystem" if you can locate it on a map, specifically a map with a scale from 1:100,000 to 1:250,000.

This definition not only escapes the rigours of scientific understanding, it incorporates the same convenience of never having to leave your desk that is built into the processes used by the Australian Heritage Commission for identifying the national estate in forested areas. By this definition, "ecosystems" cover the landscape coast to coast, but species interdependence is nowhere to be seen. At the level of resolution likely to be achieved using a 1:100,000 map, these "ecosystems" seem likely to be similar in scale to the 44 "ecological vegetation classes" discerned in East Gippsland by the Heritage Commission. But these "ecosystems" retain the sex appeal that ecosystems are supposed to have, and "ecological vegetation classes" never will.

The changes may not seem important, but they matter in four ways:

participants in the policy debate who wish to make use of the emotive power of "ecosystem" without the burden of scientific discipline will now find it easier to do so. This could have the effect of making public debate about environmental issues more intense, and less illuminating.

any reluctance by the Commonwealth to spend funds acquiring land for the National Reserve System will be easier to represent publicly as an act of unforgivable niggardliness. What decent person (or government) could possibly want to economise in the purchase of "ecosystems" for the purpose of protecting them, (especially if someone is kind enough to identify them as "fragile ecosystems".) If, on the other hand, it was simply a matter of not spending a million dollars to purchase a few hundred thousand hectares of several "plant communities" or even "ecological vegetation classes", that would be more easily understood, and less easily criticised.

The Endangered Species Act will now be able to be used to seek and grant bureaucratic protection for plant "assemblages" that are rare or unusual, even if those collections are comprised of individual species that are themselves not unusual, not rare and not endangered. Such collections might be most likely to be found at the limit of the ranges of the particular species that comprise the collection. What useful purpose will be served by this is not clear, except that it will enable the Commonwealth Department of the Environment to extend its influence in the area of land and resource management, which are principally the responsibility of state governments.

the research that would have been needed to identify the processes by which the components of an "ecosystem" interact can now be forgotten. That will save money, and perhaps nobody really wanted to know anyway. If we all believe that what we call "ecosystems" have that intrinsic interdependence, it doesn't matter that we don't know. Under the new definitions, it doesn't even matter if it isn't true.


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