Scientific concepts in play internationally with respect to the Great Laurentian Basin and similar ecosystems during 1993: An overview

Field: Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)

Mohiuddin Munawar and colleagues created the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society and publications in 1989 with headquarters in our Great Laurentian Basin in Canada. Mohi and friends had participated in numerous international programs organized by European and North Americans during the preceding three decades that contributed to an emergent scientific and conceptual process that I have called the Great Laurentian Spring, GLS, of 1968 to 1993 (Regier, 2011, 2013). Mohi has expanded the developing ecosystem science in our Basin from predominantly ‘Western’ beginnings to become fully international in scope at a global scale–a stellar achievement, in my view.My sketches below are at a conceptual scope that M. Maruyama called a ‘mindscape’. The scope is broader than what T. Kuhn called a ‘paradigm’ or even what was once proudly called a ‘discipline’. A mindscape acknowledges and welcomes ‘openness’ as well as appropriately-justified pragmatic ‘closure’. Participants, such as Jack Vallentyne, have traced mental constructs and processes that they helped to assimilate into our Great Lakes ecosystemic mindscape to eastern or western parts of the Eurasian continent two or three millennia ago. I make no claim that these notes reflect well the thinking and acting of Mohi Munawar himself over past decades. As editor he has accepted a number of ‘searching’ papers for which I was an author, so I presume that some of these conjectural notes may be relevant.A concept of ecosystem health emerged from understanding how ecosystems adapt to numerous stresses imposed by humans. Forensic stress-response analyses had to cope with an inference that some systemic responses were not diagnostically unique, and that non-diagnostic adaptive syndromes did occur. Such was the case not only with biological ecosystems but also with other ecogenic systems. A complex inference about health and unhealth is invoked for practicle purposes within many variations of the implied ecogenic theme—in ecologies, economics, ekistics, eciatrics, ecosophics, etc.A variety of scientific themes and concepts came to be reflected in our GLS of 1968–1993 partly through its transfer from one or another international scientific program. Numerous American and Canadian limnologists have been involved with the International Society of Limnology (SIL) during the past century, notably A. Hasler and J. Vallentyne. This society didn't undertake explicit programs; instead it convened international conferences at four-year intervals at which scientists presented their research. Exchange visits to other laboratories followed from these conferences.The International Hydrological Program (IBP), linked to the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, had a project called IFYGL (International Field Year for Great Lakes) on Lake Ontario in the 1970s. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, an outgrowth of the US Marshall Plan after World War II, became involved with environmental policies and environmental economics in particular as related to the difference between ‘natural resource capital’ and ‘human inventive capital’. R. Vollenweider's magnum opus on the eutrophication of lakes was made available by OECD in 1968.The International Biological Program (IBP), under the International Council of Scientific Unions, started in 1964, with a focus on “the biological basis of productivity and human welfare.” IBP started with numerous technical workshops to produce handbooks on appropriate quantitative methodology for measuring ‘productivity’. R. Vollenweider was the editor of the text book on primary productivity and I co-authored a chapter in the text book on the productivity of fish. Some leaders emphasized that the dynamics of energy flow could be used as a common measure with respect to all the kinds of ‘biological productivity’. Most groups that participated in the IBP, including ours at the University of Toronto, proceeded with measures of biomass and its constituents such as fats, proteins, etc. Numerous junior researchers who participated in IBP projects at the University of Wisconsin/Madison and the University of Toronto became leaders in aspects of ecosystemic science of the 1968–93 GLS, e.g. P. Dillon, J. Kitchill, J. Koonce, C. Minns and B. Shuter.UNESCO began organizing its Man and the Biosphere Program, MAB, in 1968 and started it formally in 1972. It was intended to be a sequel to IBP with a goal of helping to improve the relationships between people and their environment globally. MAB has been particularly active with a theme on nature reserves that it took over from IBP, and has developed a world-wide network of Biosphere Reserves. G. Francis has led in these endeavors in our Basin and beyond. Other global international programs that contributed to our mindscape in the GLS of 1968–93 include those related to: ‘sustainable development’ of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis; and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The scientists who participated in these international programs also participated in the intergovernmental programs in our Basin under the auspices of the International Joint Commission, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the Great Lakes Commission, etc. The annual conferences in our Basin of the International Association of Great Lakes Research provided opportunity for exchange of information related to all these international initiatives, as well as numerous binational and national initiatives of the North-American mid-continent region, i.e., an ecogenic systems approach. Some version of an ecosystem approach central to our 1968–93 GLS was shared by leading colleagues in all these undertakings.I infer that Mohi's Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society (AEHMS) and publications via the journal and the Ecovision World Monograph Series build on the conceptual dynamics with varied provenances as sketched above with respect to our 1968–1993 Great Laurentian Spring. Mohi has now expanded from this base to relate to aquatic ecosystems the world over. Accolades and gratitude are Mohi's due.