Book notes

Development of an Ecological Ethic

Geography of river mouths.

Water Quality in river mouths.

National Estuary Protection Act.

Colonial founding until 1972.

Atlantic and Pacific coastal zone ecology.

What do we mean by the productivity of wetlands?

Legal, cultural, scientific and ethical ideals applied to wetlands.

Introduction

Ecclesiastes

"All the rivers run into the sea,

Yet the sea is not full.

From whence the rivers come

Thither they return again."

"A natural reciprocal nurturing of ocean and earth creates abundant wildlife in coastal wetlands. Here, salt and fresh water flow together in tidal marshes, creating rare shorelines of unsurpassed natural fertility by converting solar energy into food. Swelling tidal fluctuations recycle vital nutrients that encourage rapid vegetation growth followed by quick decay..... Both native and migratory wildlife thrive on the tide-mulched marsh grass fields."

Fisheries that are nourished directly and indirectly by estuaries are:

• oysters
• clams
• crabs
• shrimp
• mussels
• lobsters
• salmon
• striped bass
• shad

"Coastal bodies of water where streams or rivers flow into the ocean are called estuaries."

Estuaries, or mouths of rivers as they enter the sea, are a geographical unit of enormous, historical importance because of their ecology, cultural transformation and numerous economic values.

 "Throughout the nation today a series of state and federal estuarine refuges exist as quiet testimony to the ideals, efforts and commitment of local conservation groups, planners, engineers, and scientists. These advocates possess a resolute maturity in asserting that some places must be set aside for future generations because, as Rachel Carson once remarked, 'man's way is not always the best.' "

A Frontier of Estuaries

"The river valleys of the Atlantic shore cut through the coastal plain, creating large numbers of estuaries, many of which are bordered by extensive tidal marshes. These coastal wetlands have been held in public trust since the original colonial grants. Unlike rights in other portions of the public domain, the public rights to fishing, hunting, and navigation on tidal lands could not be extinguished by sale to private concerns."

Review of Chapter Two's main points:

What is reclamation?

River Valleys

This river shown here in Virginia drains the Blue Ridge Mountains down river from the natural bridge.

Seawater has a greater density than river water,

fishing and hunting

Concentration of the densest native American populations.

Coastal areas and food

Native American ritual for use of resources
 
 

Florida, April, 1513

1524, Verrazano & Atlantic sites are "commodious and delightful

Arthur Barlowe's paintings

1609 Henry Hudson expedition to New York Bay

Captain John Smith

Two opposing views of the Chesapeake Bay marshes.

Ship worm infestation made the use of estuaries essential to ship maintenance

Robert Beverly's history of Virginia

Extent of Southern coastal swamps thwarted attempts to drain and reclaim coastal wetlands.

Export or cash crop agriculture developed based on slaves.

11/29/1641 Wharf needs for shipping in Boston; by 1645 mills and wharfs at Faneuil Hall Square.

Boston 1663 - 1710 and the creation of Long Wharf

Water bailiffs as examples of communal control with access of citizens to bays for fishing and fowling.

"filling of tidal wetlands furthered maritime success." Navigability of waterways as a common interest.

Filling of Eastern Manhattan

Pre industrial Urban Landscapes

European attitude & Martin Hale marshes show a lack of ambition.

1645 first ladle dredger used in Holland for reclamation -- or converting water logged and submerged land into dry land.

Using technology to overcome natural hazards, obstacles and nuisances.

Opposition, fishers and fowlers; the Lord of the Fens, Oliver Cromwell. "lay dry the land."
 
 

Thomas Gilpin -- Quaker merchant, as an example of canal financier.

The sheer size of Atlantic seacoast swamps inhibited American's from altering them to any great extent before the use of steam engines.

Atlantic coastal wetlands were of a greater extent and contained larger masses of water than Europe's coastal marshes, except for the Netherlands and the mouth of the Rhine in Belgium.

Canals were limited by both expertise and capital investment.

• Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
• Middlesex Canal in Boston.

Dominant activity of 18th Century was canal building.
 
 

Benjamin Rush and the Philadelphia, Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1790s

Carl von Linne and the idea of a balance of natural harmonies

American Philosophical Society's meetings on the drainage and healthy transformation of swamps.

Dr. Adam Seybert, contrarian view that bad air and bad places like marshes are needed to balance out good places.

Marshes as repositories of a balancing element, though unknown, to Seybert.

Urban commercial development

Cottages on Martha's Vineyard as examples of an urban retreat from seaside commercial development. (JVS, 2002)

Urban commercial development and agricultural expansion ran counter to Seybert and were typical of early American attitudes.

The necessity of marshes was eclipsed by dredging and reclamation to turn wetlands into agricultural dry land.

 

"The creation of a seaside agrarian environment..."

p. 33

"Even prior to the nineteenth century the necessity of marshes was disregarded in favor of a continued reliance on estuarine dredging and coastal reclamation.

As The image of the garden symbolized the eighteenth century intellectual recognition of humanity's role in taming and cultivating wild landscapes, the creation of a seaside agrarian environment encouraged the replacement of swamps and marshes with diked meadows or farmlands.

Urban growth, too, fostered dumping, drainage canals, wharves and commercial shoreline development. As diseases repeatedly swept the crammed and dingy tidewater cities, the pastoral image of the garden became a paramount influence on scientists and writers, relegating noxious and obstructing coastal wetlands to a role as inefficient backwaters."

The Legacy of The Seashore Naturalists.

"Tidelands, however, represented a complex problem of public administration depending on The coastal territory in question. The proprietary responsibility for these wetlands that had existed in The colonies was derived from The crown, to be held in perpetual trust for The promotion of navigation and The public privileges of fishing and hunting."

 
 

Swamplands Acts made reclamation a national priority by grants to states.

Reclamation meant recovery of submerged land into dry land for farming or habitation.

In the arid west reclamation meant brining water to desert lands.

Free land in the west due to the Homestead Act.

As national policy, the lands of the public domain were sold at auction until the 1840s when growing popular support for free land in the west led to a twenty year political struggle to allow settlers to live on public lands and eventually claim them as their own property. During the Civil War this movement culminated with the passage of the "Homestead Act" granting free land to any settlers on the public domain in western territories. Like the photograph above of the southern Great Plains, lands were surveyed in a grid pattern and citizens were allowed to settle, work and claim 640 acres, or a section (1/36th of a square mile).

With the prevalence of free land in the west, why then, was land reclaimed in coastal areas?

Marshes were seen as areas of bad or impure air and hence the disease of malaria (mal + aria; bad or unhealthy + air) was blamed on un drained and low lying swamps

Review of Chapter Three's main points:

"drainage and dredging costs" reduced by steam engines, became widespread.

Agrarianism was the ideology based on French physiocrat thought and became the ethos of Jeffersonian democracy in America based on small farms.

In early America artists, writers and naturalists began to agitate for coastal sanctuaries.

Decline in the yields of oyster, shad and salmon fisheries.

E. I. Dupont commented on the utility of causeways over extensive marshes to advance land transportation.

Oliver Evans, steam engine as a means of draining land.

Land Ordinance of 1785 legitimated surveys and the township and range system for surveying all lands in the Public Domain.

"the Public Domain represented all the lands ceded by Atlantic Coastal states to the federal government in 1785 by Act o of the Confederation Congress. The land was originally claimed by "tidewater states" along the seaboard and was carved out of these claims to vast areas west of the Appalachian mountains.

 

By law, the land was to be surveyed in a uniform pattern called a "grid"--or checkerboard square design-- based on the land patterns shown in the above photo and graphic to the right.

Dry land and relatively flat topographical surfaces, or rolling hills as found along the tidewater, lent itself to such a repetitive survey system. But riparian lands along a river, or wetlands along bays and river shores were quite another challenge for the "Township and Range system," shown here, and adopted throughout the United States, as a consequence of the land ordinance of 1785.

For examples of the impact of this system see 1: southern Great Plains and 2: .

"Tidelands,.. represented a complex problem of public administration...."

as a coastal commons, in that everyone can gave access to the tidelands

Jefferson's influence denying fishery subsidies

US Coast Survey established 2/10/1807

Albert Gallatin's report

Commercial advantages from navigation and canal building
 
 

Boston, the Charles River and Back Bay for commercial reclamation and milling
 
 

Boston's Back Bay was a wetland, filled by 1830, in a repeated series of reclamation efforts.

The Jersey shore became a focus for recreation in the Jacksonian era

Descriptions of recreation by "the seashore" appeared in William Cullen Bryant's publication of "Picturesque America"

William Bartram's travels

Florida and the Carolinas in 1765

Art depicted a need to vanquish the terror filled seas Washington Allston and Winslow Homer

Thomas Cole, Mt. Desert Is. Maine

Rugged seashores such as this were scenic magnets drawing artists and visitors alike to the seashore where coastal wetlands were considered noxious impediments and scenically less striking until later in the century when Childe Hassam and Martin Johnson Heade found artistic merit in depicting marshes.

Byron's poetry

Astor and the filling of Manhattan

Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell, early conservationist

John James Audubon and painting birds; he made the national bird life a symbol of cultural identity and a recognizable image of national pride.

Edmund Ruffin and vegetation changes of forests on the North Carolina outer banks discovered vegetational succession of plants that held the dunes and led to an eventual pine forest becoming established in the stabilized sands.

Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod as a geological, ethnographic and biological study: landscape was to be understood as a unit from the 1) geological, to the 2) climate and precipitation, to the 3) vegetational and 4) to the animals, birds and fishery life attracted to the areas by the water and ample nesting, feeding and breeding or spawning grounds.

Nature had a pattern that was determining as far as wildlife, fisheries and settlements were concerned.

He suggested every town keep a forest of 500 acres for the support of its needs since trees were a source of medicines, fuel, charcoal, and building materials.

Sydney Lanier

"marshes candid, simple and free" (fertility)

Martin Johnson Heade

painted how the light plays across the marshes of a seascape.

Approaching Thunder Storm, 1859

Note on Heade:

Painted mainly during the 1860s, Heade’s views of the salt marshes near Newburyport, Massachusetts are regarded among the finest works of the artist’s oeuvre. In canvas after canvas, Heade took the same basic elements—haystacks, flat marshland, a glassy river and open sky—and arranged them in different ways to arrive at various harmoniously-balanced horizontal compositions. Heade’s careful planning resulted in pleasing, geometrically rigorous paintings whose sense of order is not only aesthetically satisfying, but imbued with pertinent meaning as well. For a nation torn by civil war, Heade’s salt marsh landscapes offered on one hand the simple balm of serenity and on the other, a vision of nature inhabited by an orderly and benevolent Deity in which only the passing rain cloud alludes to the nation’s troubles.

4

Commerce and The Public Trust

National sympathy for protecting nature dramatically appeared among elite professionals before The Civil War. These preservation advocates conceived The intellectual and tactical foundations of future federal resource protection policies -- especially for fisheries, wildlife, land and water.

Landscape renewal of Marsh; together with Ruffin, Olmsted, and Ellet.

New England, the Carolinas, The nation's cities, and the Mississippi River as places that triggered a need for "renewal."

Agencies of renewal and regeneration

• US Fish Commission
• National Academy of the Sciences
• Bureau of Ethnography of the Smithsonian Institution
• US Geological Survey

Geographical regeneration, or the "restoration of disturbed harmonies," were Marshes' ideas concerning what needed to be done to protect natural values inherent in land, air and water.

Review of Chapter Four's main points:
 
 

Two early and two additional characteristics of national preservation movement 1850-1870; fish propagation and urban parks, then scenic monumentalism and restoration of the natural environment all formed the "intellectual basis of the 20th century conservation movement."

Overview of important theme:

the emergence of an organic, systemic and biocentric vision of protection.

1864 George P. Marsh, Man and Nature

Origins of fish and bird preservation,

artificial fish propagation

Lake Merritt estuary protection in California, 1870.

John Wesley Powell, 1878, Plan for the Arid Regions

Key reiteration of the protectionist philosophies in the development of a conservationist impulse

Biocentric, or life-centered approach to protecting fish and bird habitats

* Utilitarian is the greatest good for the greatest number; in conservation it means the wisest use for the largest number of users over the longest period of time.

Federal surveys began before the war but burgeoned after the war, rivers, fish, birds, geology.

Addison Verrill described fresh, brackish, and salt water fish.

Environmental ideal of fish and (bird) wildlife protection.

John Marshall's Gibbons vs. Ogden decision, 1826

Colonial wildlife preservation

Hydrodynamics of scour for channel maintenance

legal opinions of the public trust doctrine and inalienability of submerged lands

Common benefits of navigable waterways.

Public domain defined

upland and upriver swamp reclamation aggravated flooding down river.

Decline in fisheries.

Charles Ellet and the 1852 Mississippi River Survey.

technological remedy to correct the impacts of settlement, policy and bad laws.

California rivers had similar problems of flooding and greater silt and sediment deposition.

Levees were essential to prevent flooding on the Sacramento River.
 

Levees required coordinated efforts which were often lacking.

Cholera epidemics swept through in 1832, 1849, & 1866, pointed up bad water quality in wells contaminated by animal and human excrement

Flood control planning and public health protection required a comprehensive view.

Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. (landscape engineer) and George Waring (sanitary engineer) had such a vision for improving the health of cities.

Urban parks and sanitation reform both advocated a communal vision.

Technology of sewers, parkways and parks was the instrument of civic rejuvenation

George Waring and sanitary engineering as a civic duty

State police power to protect and promote public health

George Perkins Marsh, local and international sense of place

Marsh, Man and Nature, 1864, was a pioneering work on how humans alter the geography often to their own demise.

Marsh, Ruffin, Ellet and Olmsted form a powerful organic approach to understanding human impact on natural features and the limitations these impose on societies.

"Marsh's appeal for geographical regeneration significantly altered the attitudes of specialists toward land legislation, river policies, and wildlife conservation laws.

"Their ideas reflected a systemic understanding of land as a series of biotic communities, and these ideas appeared before such attitudes were commonplace among scientific specialists."

"After The War between The States, The doleful predictions of George Perkins Marsh concerning fisheries and estuarine habitats churned in The mind of his confidant and supporter, Spencer Fullerton Baird. As a naturalist and assistant director of The Smithsonian Institution, Baird knew that sport and commercial fisheries were dependent on anadromous fish. These fishes lived most of their existence in The sea but required The freshwater river sources to spawn The next generation of salmon, herring, or shad. Often The juveniles of these species lingered in The estuaries, where a rich supply of food, nourished The young."

John Quincy Adams , President and later Member of The House of Representatives when it created The Smithsonian Institution.

George Perkins Marsh, scholar and diplomat

Alexander Agassiz, Oceanography

Spencer Fullerton Baird, US Fish Commission

M. F. Maury, oceanography and climate

C. Hart Merriam, "life zones"

Nathaniel Shaler

Fishing and hunting interests before the war influenced Post Civil War Preservation impulses.

Oyster fisherman's plight pointed up the need for federal intervention.

Baird's Fish Commission (1871) drew heavily on the naturalists and the natural history tradition.

Lack of Congressional support for government science.

John Quincy Adam's Internal Improvements drew opposition despite the obvious needs.

Coastal fortifications and mapping

Jacksonian creation of the US Coast Survey, 1832.

Navy Depot of Charts and Instrument 1842, and Naval Observatory.

Lt. Mathew Fontaine Maury and the US Exploring Expedition.

Maury, 1851, new global map of Winds and Currents.

Physical Geography of the Sea, by Maury, based on Humboldt and Goethe's influences.

Military (Maury) & civilian (Bache) rivalry, notwithstanding yielded valuable natural history of the nations' and world's seashores.

Biological and geographical information about seashores, currents, tides and fisheries grew.

Specialists began to replace the naturalists (generalist) in government science.

National Academy of the Sciences, NAS, (1863) marked the ascendancy of specialists.

Specialists in federal sciences.

Niche was defined by naturalists as routine place of residence and occupation of means of extracting a living, securing a living in the economy of nature.

Alexander Agassiz popularized the works of Dana, Forbes and Gosse to a wider audience.

Forbes described zones of depth and Gosse described Devonshire coastal marine life.

Louis Agassiz of Harvard was an important marine and fresh water scientist of invertebrates.

His influence was felt through his students, his Museum of Comparative Anatomy & his summer school to study seaside biology.

Louis Agassiz was a curious mix of modern (Ice Age) and antiquated (anti-Darwinian) ideas.

Louis Agassiz described the coral reefs along the Southeastern Florida coasts (1850s).

A. Agassiz described the organic realms of seaside creatures in zones, after Alexander Von Humboldt's Torrid, Temperate and Frigid zone classifications.

Agassiz oceanic zones were remarkably accurate.

Substrate (shore materials, rock, sand, mud) were described as restricting certain life forms.

A. Agassiz recognized the favorable conditions of tropical Florida reefs to rich and varied fauna.

Line vs. trap fisherman argued over the causes for New England's coastal fishery decline 1870.

US Fish Commission created to resolve such disputes by looking into the science.

Fishery conservation was the first institution to promote science based protection policies at the federal level.

Dams were destroying river fisheries laws well as coastal.

Lumber and mill interests opposed fishery conservation.

Fish hatcheries were promoted along with fishery science.

B.The US Fish Commission brought national attention to European Science.

Karl Möbius's discussion of an Oyster Reef as a single entity or biocoenosis (biotically functioning assemblage) or biocenose

"the entire . . . community would be transformed." by changes in external conditions and by changes that organisms together create -- such as changing the flow of water (currents) in a bay by oyster reefs' obstructing the ebb and flood channels, or the river mouth.
 
 

Ernst Haeckel's contributions to nomenclature and evolution.

C. Hart Merriam's concept of Life Zones applied to San Francisco Mts., in the Sonoran desert.

As you move up a mountain it is similar, with respect to vegetation, to moving towards the poles, from: tropical, to temperate, to frigid zones.

Each zone is characterized by distinctive types of plants, fungus and animals.

Bird protection emerged in Federal science bureas.

Bird conservation due to fashion and the millinery trades. State Audubon societies.

1891, Forest Reserve Act, protected watershed values of western timber lands.

Afognak Island, Alaska set aside as a fish, wildlife and bird refuge in 1892.

First introduced in 1897, the Lacey Act of 1900 used Interstate Commerce to stop bird hunting, halting the shipment of avian skins killed in violation state laws.
 
 

• he was a "land realist"
• based his plan on Spanish and Mormon precedents
• land grants needed to have water sources, forests, and grazing lands
• reclamation districts composed of local groups with a stake in the outcome.
• climate, geology and geography limit what human institutions can do.

• rivers emerge from springs.
• springs develop from groundwater.
• groundwater is fed by forested watersheds that allow water to percolate into the ground.
• forests hold the soil and moderate streamflow by limiting runoff.
• streamflow is needed for healthy fisheries, irrigation, recreation and drinking water.
• multiple uses are served from the protection of forest trees.

Eugenius Warming, plants classified in terms of water tolerance, halophyte vs. xeriphyte

Shaler's recognition of marsh's as a place of "abundant development of animal life." 107

Shaler nonetheless recommended reclamation.

Charles Van Hise and economics of land and land ownership, believed in individual home ownership as a means of improving the well-being of the community.

"waste places" of marshes required drainage.

Full agricultural potential demanded reclamation --to bring or remove water-- of "wasted" land.

Pelican Island, 1903, reserved in Florida (Sebastian Inlet).

Mcgee and Pinchot crafted Comprehensive Riverine Management.
 
 

River conservation was multipurpose: flood, wildlife, navigation and reclamation.

"...remarkable rebuttal of laissez faire political economy.

6

The New Ecology and The New Ecological Ethic

"At the turn of the century ecology and economics agreed on the classification of tidal marshes as obstructing wastelands. Resource economics determined the 'best' use of land solely from human and utilitarian perspectives. The initial findings of terrestrial and marine biologists supported policies to make human 'improvements' over nature's perceived inefficiency. However, in The 1930s and 1940s a number of scientists, including wildlife biologist, Aldo Leopold, would begin to demonstrate that The political and economic values assigned to coastal wetlands and other wild areas conflicted with their biological integrity."

Aldo Leopold -- Marshland Elegy, Round River, beauty, health and biological integrity.

WJ McGee -- Comprehensive planning of rivers and their watersheds

Raymond Lindeman -- Trophic or feeding levels in a Cedar Bog

Gunter Gordon -- Plankton and food chains of Gulf Coast fisheries

Steven Forbes -- the Lake as Microcosm

biocoenose

Review of Chapter Six's main points:

Aldo Leopold and the new ecology

A challenge to the Progressive consensus as wild seashores became expendable

Progressive triumph of suburbia as the "middle landscape"

Ability of science to understand and control the natural world

Tidelands Oil Controversy

state authority in tidal seas shared with federal

Comprehensive Riverine Management sustained by the courts in 1936,

TVA decision Federal stimulus to growth in coastal areas.

Ecologically estuaries were shown to be the most productive biological communities.

energy transfer and waste recycling of the New Ecology replaced older succession model

A. G. Tansley's ecosystem model, 1930s.

page, 117.

Ecology, diversity and food web are all defined

Laws of Thermodynamics

Three fold shift in emphasis:

• from descriptive to functional explanations
• from individuals in communities to levels of organization in an ecological systems
• food webs to energy flow

Ecological revolt and the idea of place as small slice: Lake as Microcosm, Forbes

Forbes worked for the Illinois State Natural History Survey

Lindeman's cedar bog lake study of energetics

Decomposition was a key retriever of material or biomass made by nature

Ecological functions

Energy dissipation and its challenge to ecology to overcome eventual decay and loss

Sverdrup's story of the oceans as retrievers of heat and regulators of climate.

Gulf Coast plankton fishery studies

Aldo Leopold had come to view energy, land and water forming an exploitable milieu but an asset that had to be nourished if it's natural wealth was not to be diminished.

He had two stories with regard to marshes: "Marshland Elegy" & Fable of Round River .

Seeing in a smaller piece, such as a lake, bog, or estuary, the larger (macro) functions.

Hence, the smaller unit or microcosm, is a model that informs us about the whole, larger macrocosm.

Land, when viewed as a circuit of transferred power is really a milieu of water, energy air and land forming landscape with vegetation for wildlife.

Pyramid, land

Coevolution of plant and animal life means that certain dependent relationships occur where predators and prey evolve together with their surrounding conditions.

The whole landscape is important as more than the sum of its constituent parts.
 
Progressive utilitarianism was challenged.

eliminating whole elements of the biocoenose that lack value, or economic payoff

Narrow calculations of economic utility

Irony of farm reclamation during the agricultural recession and Great Depression.

page, 123.

Three hydrological consequences of removing wetlands

• reduced groundwater percolation or recharge of underground aquifers.
• subsidence of drained land from soil compaction and interstitial water loss.
• increased downstream flooding.

page, 124.

Loss of biological diversity due to economic conversion of marshes loss of native vegetation and solitude appreciated only by ornithologists and cranes.

Marshes have a paleontologic patent of nobility because Cranes have evolved together with these valuable habitats and they need one another to prosper in the future.

But --in contrast-- the language of progressive conservation was adversarial, man vs. nature.

"waters like soil are part of the energy circuit."

"sensitivity to the mood of the land."

There is a need to be sustaining the "bioenergetic integrity of ecosystems."

page, 126.

Fable of Round River

pipeline of energy leaks in the circuit of energy that is the land.

plants as producers of food and nutrition for consumers

Land as "a maze of services and competitions, of piracies and cooperations."

coevolution

landscape possesses biological integrity

Round river was a story from Paul Bunyan about a fabled river that flowed into itself in a never ending, revolving fund of decay and renewal.

page, 126.

We are all just a separate cog in an ecological mechanism

TVA , saw rivers as valuable for what they transport, falling water.

Flood Control was the preeminent reason for federal interest in Comprehensive Riverine Management.

Conservation as a means of relegating costly actions to government will fail

Leopold's ecological credo required protection of all parts of the ecosystem.

discovery of the complexity of the land mechanism, is the great achievement of this century.

marginal value of land runs counter to ecological values.

Local government dependence on property taxes works to destroy marshes.

"Land-use ethics is still dominated by economic self-interest."

Ezekiel & Isaiah

"I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in."

page, 133.

"islands of diversity amidst a sea of sameness ... meant a dedication to landscape renewal."

7

Estuaries and The New Ecology

"The expansion of wisdom is a difficult task for an individual, let alone a society. In democratic cultures wisdom often may be overlooked at The voting boot in The formulation of policy. For citizens and civil servants alike, confronting popular notions of efficacy and justice takes courage. Rachel Louise Carson was an advocate of unpopular causes, including fish and bird protection, preservation of wild seashores, and opposition to heedless use of 'miracle' technologies. Her final, best known attack on The indiscriminate uses of DDT as an insecticide was only one part of her larger and more positive view of The world and humanity's place in The eco-energetic scheme.... More than any other scientist she popularized The oceans and The shores, with a profoundly religious respect for nature and a practical appreciation for human ignorance. A contemporary of her fellow preservation ecologist, Aldo Leopold, Carson focused more explicitly than he on oceans and shores."

Land Ethic

Water

Energy

Wildlife Conservation

city or urban

regional

Rachel Carson

Eugene Odum

Joel Hedgpeth

Lewis Mumford

Henry Wright

Review of Chapter Seven's main points:

Rachel Carson's tradition 1937-1668.

Popularization of the Sea before and especially after the war

May 27, 1927, Rachel Carson was born in Springdale ,Pa.

1936 article in the Baltimore Sun on the Chesapeake Bay

Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934 to remedy single factor planning perspectives.

Federal Conservation Policy reformulation from Hoover to Ickes and river protection

Carsons books

Carson in the US Fish and Wildlife Service

"takes away a land suitable for wildlife" she argued as cities and highways were built and marshes were destroyed in the process.

Osborn, Brown and Commoner all stake out ecological problems due to population, resources and technology as causal factors.

National Book Award

Edge of the Sea (1955)

tideland habitats and their creatures

Place of our ancestral beginnings

A sense of wonder for seashore life

"essential unity that binds life to the earth"

Basis of the marine food chain: dynoflagellates, diatoms and copepods: the plankton.

Oysters and filter feeders

"awareness of its beauty, and its deeper meanings, sensing the intricate fabric of life where one creature is linked to another and each with its surroundings."

page, 142.

Eugene Odum's work (1954) in the Georgia Sea Islands.

"arteries of a remarkable energy absorbing natural system whose heart was the pumping action of the tides"

Joel Hedgpeth

Between Pacific Tides, Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck and the Monterey Bay fisheries

Shipworms and San Francisco Bay water quality changes

Water content of the hydrological system

water quality decline threatened estuaries nationally

Spartina grass, mud algae, diatoms and the productive base of tidal marshes

What accounts for productivity of wetlands?

The fertility of tidal seas is unsurpassed due to animals and plants found nowhere else. These bacterial life forms called "protoctista" are able to live in either oxygen abundant (Oxic) or oxygen scarce (Anoxic) situations and some thrive under both conditions. This area shown in the animation on above is an important edge where one significant component of seaside production is apparent. This productive zone, deeper in the muds and sand flats, is a source of the prolific life that thrives in coastal marshes.

The ocean's temperate conditions, a coastal edge effect, and abundant nutrients are a triad of conditions contributing to the productive potential of this seaside nursery.

page, 146.

 

The economic returns from and thus the marginal utility of a corn field is greater than an estuary -- but an estuarine marsh is biologically greater in productivity where the yield in terms of fish caught along the shore, or offshore, or out at sea is reaped, not by the land owner, but by the fisher, the fisher's family or the canneries that process the fish. The fisheries, such as salmon, shrimp or blue crab, clams, sardines or oysters, all depend on the healthy functioning of clean and relatively undisturbed estuaries where coastal marshes help to nourish young fish, shrimps, crabs and mollusks.

Problems of the merely agronomic approach to marshes is similar to one dimensional planning.

Need for coastal restoration districts based on the Soil Conservation District concept.

regional planning strengths and weaknesses

Planning movement, cities and transportation

Philadelphia transportation plan: PenJerDel

Suburban growth --as pictured here in the San Fernando Valley, just 20 miles from the coastline-- was enabled by the diversion of fresh water from estuaries and the progressive belief that home ownership was a strengthening element in post World War One America.

As the expansion of automobile roads and railway lines spurred the rapid development f land into suburbs, several cities began to become interested and promote regional planning.

Henry Wright -- NY State Commissioner of Housing define planning's goal

so that "economic gain may not involve inevitable social loss." (Pinchot),

balance country and urban influences by retaining the best of both.

As "any geographic area that possesses a certain unity of climate, soil, vegetation, industry, and culture."

Defined in order that planners may see "that population is distributed" he said "to utilize, rather than to nullify or destroy its [the regions'] natural advantages."

Regional Planning Association of America

New York City Metropolitan Plan Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, & the New Deal Programs of PWA & WPA

National Planning Board's short lived history

1938 Monterey County Zoning Board's scenic preservation zoning upheld in court.
 
 

 

Human psychic need to identify with its surrounding land and water

sense of geological history to human endeavors

Carson's Silent Spring (1961 -1962)

Dying of cancer she visited Mount Desert Island

April 14, 1964, Rachel Carson died (Silver Spring, Md.) -- the end "that intangible cycle"

Popularization of the marsh / tidelands message
 
 

"the articulation of an Estuarine preservation ideal" because the estuary is a "keystone for marine life"

Economic values:

Value of marshes for sanitation alone (1960s) was over $50,000 per acre in cultural replacement of the natural function.

8

Politics and The Preservation of Estuaries

"The pejorative implications of The words morass, slough, muck and miasma still associated with wetlands need no comment, These terms are common synonyms for obstruction, nuisance and disease. Yet as part of The national 'battle to preserve The common estate,' coastal marshes and tidal flats became The focus of a major drive for The protection of natural resources during The late 1950s."

Legislative History

Legal and political Analysis

Cultural significance of coastal preservation

Meaning of conservation and ecological protection
 
 

Key Players

Gifford Pinchot

Justice William O. Douglas

Senator Warren Magnuson

Review of Chapter Eight's main points:
 
 

National Battle to preserve the common estate

"The first principle of conservation is development," G. Pinchot (Chief forester of US)

denying the individual the right to harm the public or damage public good

preservation of wildlife habitat and scenic beauty

ecocentric approach to protection, LBJ called, the "new conservation," in 2-8-1965, speech

Average density of the US versus coastal areas where density increased sharply

Anne Simon, 53% of the nation lived near the lakes or seashores

Southern California and Chesapeake Bay density comparisons from 3980 to 940 persons/ sq. mile

per capita demands for water and resources by industrial consumption

recreational demand

fixed tax base

increase in uses of cement

electricity and power plant siting near water

water quality decline

Stewart Udall's The Quiet Crisis, Secretary of the Interior, from Arizona 1961-68.

Three waves of conservation reform, were distinguished:

• Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot & W. J. McGee: "conservation" as to stop wasting scarce resources and apply wise use for the benefit of all.
• Franklin Roosevelt, Harold Ickes: Soil, water, flood control, fishery & wildlife protection based on comprehensive planning among agencies.
• John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson the ecological perspective used to balance the clash between preservation (19th Century) and conservation (20th Century).

Congressional support in Senate and House

Supreme Court decisions

Justice William O. Douglas on planning and zoning, support for

Douglas call for "A Wilderness Bill of Rights"

The vague notion of an estuarine preservation ideal was being translated into policies and needed laws to protect and balance competing interests in the coastal zones all across the nation's more densely settled coastal cities.

Regional needs from West, East and Gulf coasts were similar

California and especially along the Bay Area of San Francisco transportation planning triggered regional concerns when local preservationists realized the Army Corps of Engineers had plans to fill in 75% to 80% of the remaining bay bottom and adjacent wetlands.

ABAG, Association of Bay Area Governments

Army Corps of Engineers and filling in of San Francisco Bay

Bodega Bay and the nuclear plant proposal on the San Andreas fault zone

Save San Francisco Bay Association

Corps violated the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934

The map (at left) shows the extensive areas remaining today along the bay where tidelands were retained as marshes, mud flats, or oyster bars, for fisheries and birding areas. These extensive bay bottom and marsh lands were once slated to become marinas, developed lots and commercial real estate, as had been the custom in San Francisco since 1848.

State legislators were pressured to create a regional planning body: The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, (BCDC) for all of San Francisco bay's surrounding counties in June 1965.

The counties were included in this agreement as follows:

1. San Francisco, oldest settlement, 1800s.
2. San Mateo (Palo Alto), Stanford
3. Santa Clara (San Jose), silicon valley
4. Alameda (Oakland), largest container port
5. Contra Costa (Concord - exurbs),
6. Solano, vast marshes for bird migration & elk relocation
7. Napa, river and riparian marshlands (Naval shipyard)
8. Sonoma, (exurbs)
9. Marin (suburbs) Muir Woods.

In 1970, Proposition 20, called for amending the State Constitution to allow for Coastal Protection of all the areas along the California shoreline to balance commercial, scenic and ecological values in an effort to afford access to the coast by citizens and continuing productive use of marine resources by commercial, sport and subsistence users.

Boston and Chesapeake Bay parallel development

New York State's experiences

1952 Conservation Department of the State of NY

Crisis of Long Island wetlands and coastal dredge and fill operations

Oyster Bay, Town of Hempstead. 29% of LI wetlands were lost in 10 years (1954-64)

New York City flight to suburbs, Nassau county tripled in population in 30 years

Affects of toxic DDT in Long Island Marshes, George Woodwell

Carson's Silent Spring

Storm King Electrical Facility & Indian Point nuclear plant both were on the Hudson River and the reactor was near the river's spawning grounds of striped bass
 
 

and the fight against filling of Great South Bay, 1963-1965.

1966 a bill was introduced in Congress to expand comprehensive planning in coastal areas

Massachusetts interests entered the array of supporters as the 1966 bill was defeated

In 1965, Governor John Volpe of Mass. expanded DNR permitting to protect 45,000 acres of coastal marshes in that state.
 
 

Takings issue explained. the use of private land for public purposes and reasonable compensation based on the the fifth amendment.
 

Northern California citizen pressure

Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934

amended in 1946

Congressional action for water quality

1948 and 1956 precedents in assisting local governments in making water purity a national matter

Water Quality Act of 1965, water pollution was accepted as a federal problem to be dealt with nationally

By 1960 NY State provided grants to Long Island to purchase wetlands.

Federal support for regional and comprehensive planning in 1962

NOAA, 1970 and the Intergovernmental Coordination Act of 1968
 
 

Land and Water Conservation Fund, 1964, was a novel means of funding recreation purchases

Federal desire to balance development and coordinate the bureaucracy

Congressional intent appeared to be moving in the direction of coastal conservation

1965 Rep. Tenzer introduced Long Island Wetland Protection bill

1966 version of the bill favored by the Administration and Chairman Dingell would have given the Secretary of the Interior control over Dredge and Fill Permits, instead of Army Corps of Engineers.
 
 

Dingell-Kennedy Bill was defeated in the House by three votes on 10-3-1966.

Alabama, Mississippi, & Virginia Congressional delegations were opposed.

Absenteeism was a factor as was Republican opposition which spearheaded the defeat.

1967 the bill was re-introduced in the House.

1968 A Senate version of the bill was accepted by the House.

Opposition was from The Army Corps of Engineers over the dual permitting system envisioned by the legislation

Great Lakes were included to build support for the bill.

Summer 1967 Stewart Udall and ACE signed an MOU on the permit issuance controversy.

New version of the Bill in 1968 had support of House and Warren Magnuson in the Senate.

August 3, 1968 a weaker bill emerged as law, mandating a national estuarine sanctuary program

"every bit as much a part of our natural heritage as are mountains and great rivers." Edward Kennedy

The Bill defined:

Need for cooperation among local, state and federal authorities to protect entire coastal wetland ecosystems.

Legally defined estuarine marshes eligible for protection

Tri-level planning to protect coastal resources was a forerunner of NEPA and CZM Act

1970 ruling on Boca Ciega Bay filling in Pinellas County, Fla. reflected the new status.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Bay, Harold Gilliam

Critics of marshland preservation as a waste of waste lands

Criticism of the Acts weakness, thus more an intent and a sentiment than a mandate.

ad valorem taxation problem for strapped municipalities

equity in cost sharing of protecting common resources

wildlife protection required land and water acquisition

recreation access often was counter to protection

Tragedy of the Commons problem of common property resources with private profiteering at a cost to the public

Several commons intersect in the estuary -- an edge effect for biotic integrity clashed with layered common property resources such as fish, birds, recreation and water quality.
 
 

Coercion and mutually agreed upon controls involve watching of agencies to protect coastal zones.

Section §404 of the Clean Water Act, narrowly read by ACE to allow upland fill at the owners discretion would undermine estuarine integrity.

Tidelands require water and land protection together, not merely one to the detriment of the other.

Polluted water undermines the land's integrity, health and functionality.

9

Americans and The Tidal Seas

"As The American nation has grown older, its attitudes toward its natural resources have changed and matured. Its legal underpinnings for environmental policies have been reinterpreted and reformulated to accommodate The changing understandings and values. The estuarine preservation ideal that emerged in The mid- to late 1960s is one of The most recent developments in American ideas concerning resource stewardship."

Conclusion

  Bolsa Chica Bay, Orange County, California.

Review of Chapter Nine's main points:

resource stewardship, an example in the National Estuary Protection Act

"estuaries are an integral part of the earth's ecology" 188

coevolution and biotic integrity means that natural capital accumulates over time like money in a bank, and thus Leopold saw in a crane marsh a paleontological place where birds had found refuge and thus marshes that remained today were a phylogenetic savings account of unsurpassed value.

mature view of humans and estuaries as an unfinished process

critics of preservation argue we place wilderness ahead of human needs

economic and libertarian arguments persist to challenge the coast protection consensus

landscape alone is not sufficient for protection since water and nutrients that feed the system are equally important to protect. Water quality then flowing over land or through landscape is equally important to protect.

crib of the future, evolutionary reminder of our past and dim beginnings, 190

Charles Lindbergh and the "qualities of our planet's life."

democratic values and conservation ideals are inherent in restoration choices we are making

essence of the ancient public trust. 191

untamed beauty and wide expanse
 
 

"In these coastal regions e here American civilization has tread most heavily, wild marshes hold a special appeal.

"..a haunting refrain in the never ending yet urgent search for humans to find their identity in relation to natural landscapes."

"we are the current caretakers of a delicately co evolved maritime garden whose produce must always we thoughtfully harvested."

Themes || Thesis | Dates || Terms

Vocabulary for terms used in this text

Algae - single celled organisms that account for productivity in certain ecological systems because they can photosynthesize water, carbon dioxide and light from the sun. They form the base of many aquatic and marine food chains. I.e. Diatoms, psilotim.

Bathymetric - denotes the contours of submerged land or submarine patterns of sand, rock, trenches, reefs, shoals or banks under and along any shoreline. Organisms living on these bottoms are called benthic communities, such as oyster reefs, corals or worm and clam beds.

Bay - a relatively shallow extension of an ocean into o land lying adjacent to a continental shelf. A seascape and landscape feature created by the invasion of water.

Beach - a deposition of sand along a shore line, often the quartz (silica), coral (calcium carbonate) or volcanic (basalt) material of small grain size beside the sea, or other water body such as a river or lake.

Barrier Island - areas along usually sinking coastlines with very high wave energy that piles up sand or pebbles along the shore in such a way that an island forms a dam between any dry land of a continent or larger island and its adjacent or surrounding ocean.

Coastal - from the Latin word "costa" meaning an edge. In this case a border land where any sea, ocean or some other large body of water meets exposed rocks, sand, mud, river or other topographical features along a very extensive shore.

Detritus - technical term for decayed or decaying vegetation or, plant and fungal material derived from land or sea creatures that is carried by currents generated by tides or falling water or blown across distances by prevailing winds.

Ecosystem - ecological system: habitat and biocoenose.

Edge effect - The idea in ecology that a transition area between two different ecological associations, such as a forest and a grassland, is often more productive because of a greater number of species from each of the adjacent areas utilize this boundary between those areas to acquire sustenance.

Estuary - a coastal body of water where a river meets the ocean and thus a brackish mixing area of fresh water drainage with higher salinity marine water.

Filter feeder - an organism, generally aquatic, marine, or estuarine, that exists by filtering out the medium in which it lives and extracting detritus which is rich in nutrients, vitamins and minerals for nutrition. A major contributor to the food chain in areas, such as oyster beds, mussels on rocky shores, or clams and cockles along mud flats, or scallops in the sea.

Food Chain another popular term referring to the food web or nutritional pyramid based on plants and bacteria that reflects specific relationships based on an organism's diet and indicative of the productive capacity of "producers" in an ecosystem.

Homogecene- the name given to the current geological era, after the pleistocene, because the time we live in is characterized by a worldwide spread of species that are more like one another than the more diverse species collected from the geological past. 

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Lagoon - usually a coastal body of water that has a higher salt concentration than The adjacent ocean or rivers.

Littoral - refers to The shoreline, derived from the Latin word for the shore, bank, or edge of a water body.

Miami Beach, looking from the Atlantic Ocean west to Biscayne Bay, Florida.

Mangrove - a type of tropical marine shore vegetation that often dominates estuaries and is characterized by evergreen trees of very distinct species that can under optimal climatic conditions form a dense canopy forest that is a main contributor to the nutritional productivity for shrimp, crabs and lobsters; and thus forms one basis of shoreline food chains in coastal tropical areas.

Marsh - a type of temperate marine, estuarine and lake or river shoreline vegetation characterized by water tolerant grasses, reeds, algae and blue-green bacterium. Usually a nursery, or breeding, or feeding area for fish, birds and other wildlife.

Mud flat - deposited fine grained material, usually found where sluggish current or no current at all allows silt (fine grained sediment) to settle to The bottom of a waterbed along a river, lake or particularly beside tidal streams.

Productivity - the amount of biological material actually created by plants and bacteria based on available nutrients, sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. An index of the capacity of an area to sustain animal and fungal life, to hold the soil, transpire water and remodel conditions over time.

Public Trust Doctrine - derived from Roman and English Common Law, a legal body of decisions holding that in certain designated natural areas, such as The bottom of rivers, lakes, streams and estuaries, land --that is or can be covered seasonally by water-- is of such great importance that its ownership is held by no one person and thus its use is restricted by law.

  Sea grass - a type of flowering plant that grows in shallow marine or estuarine water where sunlight may penetrate to The bottom --or substrate-- of the basin.

Spartina grass - a type of flowering plant that occupies the estuarine, or river marshes along shores with a temperate climate.

Sound - an unusually constricted, or closed in body of marine water that floods into coastal areas.

Sovereign lands - By application of English custom derived from Roman law, those areas of submerged land that belong to The King, Queen, Emperor, Empress, or some other plenary authority exercising absolute power over subjects in a designated territory. In The US practice these are property of the states and refer to property beneath any water body of significant size.

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Succession - The idea in ecology that vegetation and climate can over a very long period of time, several generations of plants and animals, alter any underlying conditions of soil (substrate), nutrients, and available sunlight enough to change a recognizable association of dominant plants and fungus. With these vegetational changes over time comes an alteration of the animals dependent on plants and soil nutrients for their sustenance.

For instance sand deposited by wind is colonized by sea oats, or maram grass, railroad vine and verbena, only to be replaced, once the dune is stabilized by the grasses, by shrubs such as wax myrtle, willow or mallow and eventually pine trees take root in the sand that once was a bare dune.

Sub littoral zone - that area below the water level at all times of the year. Basically submerged areas along a shore.

Tide - Generally: daily changes in the surface elevation of the sea with respect to land lying along the shore. Actually a wave with a six hour period that encircles oceans around the world causing, as it moves, the sea to advance and retreat daily along a shore. Specifically: because the water moves, Odum referred to this diurnal action as the "pump" for tidal marshes that is one factor in many that account for the highly productive conditions in estuaries when compared to other wet or dry habitats.

Tidelands - Generally refers to the area along a river affected by the daily fluctuation of ocean tides; specifically a name given to oil leases in state waters extending from below the tide line out over the continental shelf to the three or ten mile limit depending on the state in question. A controversy that arose after world war two over the federal and state control of oil drilling leases under the ocean. decided in favor of the several coastal states.

Tidewater - that extensive land area of The Eastern United States form roughly Boston, Massachusetts to Brownsville, Texas, where affects of the sea with respect to the land lying along the shore of estuaries, bays, rivers and streams is so pronounced that small sailing vessels may ride the fluctuating flow of a tide in both an upstream or a downstream direction depending upon the flood or ebb of ocean waters.

Wetland - officially designated vegetation or areas that have soil characterized by seasonal or periodic flooding, and that tolerate permanent or fluctuating water conditions over time (called a hydroperiod). Otherwise a kind of oxymoron that suggests nature is more complicated than our language is capable of cleverly expressing in sufficient detail.
 

Zonation - The name given in ecology and natural history to a recognizable pattern of vegetation or associations according to specific features of a habitat or area with respect to elevation, substrate (soils), water, slope, or sun angle.
 
 

Equivalent zones	marshes	shores
always under water	benthic zone, (brittle stars, clams)	sublittoral
between median low and high tides	tidal marsh, (spartina alterniflora)	littoral
above regular high tides	upper marsh, (spartina patens)	supralittoral
occasionally flooded	shrub and tree vegetation, wax myrtle	flood plain

A table, or handy guide to one zone along the shore as opposed to an adjacent zone determined by frequency of flooding.

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| Index for Complete book |

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Each age or period defines natural features, economic value and laws differently depending on their technological capacity and knowledge of their surroundings.

There is a legacy in American, English and Roman legal theory, or jurisprudence that articulated a perpetual public interest in certain landscape features based on their character, geography, topography and functional processes.

Geographical information grew slowly in America, but was seen from the time of colonial settlement and later by John Quincy Adams as an overriding responsibility of a central government to provide society with adequate surveys, maps, topographical and bathymetric information and the location of useful resources.

Technology is a two-edged sword allowing for the accumulation of knowledge and expanding the capacity to alter our surroundings to better suit human demands, both material and spiritual.

Science, or the knowledge of physical, chemical, geological and biological information about The universe, has The capacity to alter our sensitivities to The world around us.

Population growth, transportation demands, increasing wealth and the demand for a greater variety of leisure activities all converged after world war two placing unusually sharp and conflicting demands on limited coastal, river and natural resources.

Despite what some historians have suggested concerning, the origins of conservation emerging from a concern for parks, forests and agriculture, there is evidence to show that fisheries, wildlife and river pollution as these affected human health and urban development were equally old sources of the impulse to protect natural areas from damaging intrusions.

Preservation of cultural and natural resources predated the rise of conservation in North America. Conservation arose late in The 19th century and referred to both a keeping from harm and the wise use of natural resources for the long-term and most beneficial uses by a majority of the population. Preservation of valued naturally significant or culturally memorable places can be dated to before The Civil War.
 

In both the redesign of urban landscapes and the necessity of controlling rivers along an entire watershed, the emergence before the civil war of a practice restoring natural harmonies arose and was later characterized as "geographical regeneration," by G. P. Marsh.

Viewed since the Renaissance in Europe and the colonial period in the Americas as obstacles to be overcome, coastal wetlands were altered, filled and drained as beneficial and progressive examples of human achievement until the mid twentieth century. By the 1960s ecologists determined these, once considered noxious, natural areas were a source of biological wealth of an unsurpassed magnitude compared to other ecosystems such as forests, grasslands or allegedly productive corn fields.
 
 

Legislative History Dates

1948, precedents in making water purity a national matter
1952, Conservation Department of the State of NY
1955, USDA had declared the "year of wetlands" raised awareness about need to buy fish and bird habitat, pursuant to federal treaties (Migratory Bird Treaty) and laws (the Act)

1956, precedents in assisting local governments in making water purity a national

1964, Land and Water Conservation Fund established
1965, Rep. Tenzer introduced Long Island Wetland Protection bill

1966, a bill was introduced in Congress to expand comprehensive planning in coastal areas

1966, version of the bill favored by the Administration and Chairman Dingell would have given the Secretary of the Interior control over Dredge and Fill Permits, instead of Army Corps of Engineers.
1967, the bill was reintroduced in the House.
1968, A Senate version of the bill was accepted by the House.

1968, August 3, passage of the National Estuary Protection Act.
 

1970, ruling on Boca Ciega Bay filling in Pinellas County, Fla. reflected the new status.
1970, Proposition 20, called for amending the State Constitution to allow for Coastal Protection