Resilient Nature: Discordant Harmony and the New Ecology

From the City of Austin Development Services Department/ Nature In The City – 

This year Dr. Kevin Anderson will take us on an exploration of “Nature and the American Mind”, examining the complex story that threads throughout our history and shapes our beliefs, policies, science, and management practices today. This 12-part (and free) lecture series continues in April with the talk, “Resilient Nature: Discordant Harmony and the New Ecology.”

We now live in an age of global ecological change, in which, it is argued, humans dominate the Earth so completely as to warrant declaring a new geological age, the Anthropocene. The understanding of nature in this new age is built on ideas of “new ecology” where disequilibrium, change, and discordant harmony are more fundamental than integrity, stability, and balance, and, as the German ecologist Ingo Kowarik says, “the reference point is not an original condition of a natural landscape, but rather a condition defined based on the current site potential and the greatest possible degree of self-regulation. From this perspective, therefore, the natural capacity for process is the central point, not a particular, retrospectively determined and often idealized, picture of nature.”

Join us as we explore the emergence of the concept of resilient nature and the new ecology of the Anthropocene.

Can’t make it to the talk in person? Check out podcasts of Dr. Kevin Anderson’s presentations here.