Shifting Baselines: The Past and the Future of Ocean Fisheries

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-438
Author(s):  
V. Schwach
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
Shifting Baselines ◽  
The Future

Anticipatory practices: Shifting baselines and environmental imaginaries of ecological restoration in the Columbia River Basin

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shana L. Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Restoration Ecology ◽  
Habitat Restoration ◽  
Columbia River ◽  
Columbia River Basin ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Shifting Baselines ◽  
The Future ◽  
High Level

Ecological restorationists working to restore species and habitats must make decisions about how to monitor the effectiveness of their actions. In order to do this, they must determine historical baselines for populations by measuring and monitoring reference habitat sites: analog ecological systems that act as controls for comparison. Yet as climate change alters what is possible in terms of habitat restoration, drawing baselines for recovery has become fraught with difficulty. This article examines the epistemic and legal practices of baseline-setting in the case of the Columbia River Basin as well as the ways that ecological restorationists are dealing with the shifting baselines of a climate-changed river. Restorationists do this by altering their epistemic practices, using trained judgment and establishing alternative, anticipatory baselines. While the field of restoration was born out of the idea that environmental repair was about looking to the past, the discipline has transformed to look forward and even to anticipate the future. One way that this is occurring is through re-thinking baselines to reflect emerging environmental and sociotechnical imaginaries, which are enacted through epistemic practice. Anticipatory practices such as baseline-setting help sensitize the field of restoration ecology to the future, while at the same time facilitating the emergence of ideas that will enable scientifically based decision-making to continue to occur within a high level of uncertainty.

Integrative Action: The Past for Physiology, the Future for Psychology

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-231
Author(s):  
MARCEL KINSBOURNE
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
The Future
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