The agenda of ecoforestry can be presented through a number of principles. Principles are fundamental rules or laws, based on the characteristics of the forest systems, that we can use to create images or models to meet stated objectives, that is, the goals towards which our action is directed, e.g., a healthy forest or strong beautiful lumber. Principles unify our images. The principles are introduced briefly to show the depth and breadth of forestry.
The principles presented are derived from the typical characteristics of forests. Characteristics are qualities that distinguish unique individuals, systems, or patterns; Gregory Bateson refers to characteristics as differences that make a difference. From these principles, standards for our activities in forests can be established. Standards are models or examples of quality or value, established by authority or mutual consent, that can be repeated as procedures. (Standards will be presented in future issues.)
For example, one characteristic of a mature forest is its wildness. The corresponding principle is that a forest is self-making and self-ordering, without human control and management. Our objective for any forest is to allow the foresting process to continue, whether we take resources from the forest or not (forests can be influenced by human effects such as acid rain, pollution, and other industrial effluences). We can set standards that are likely to keep mature forests wild: Limit biomass removal to 2 percent of the total forest; use appropriate techniques, e.g., single tree selection or horse skidding; retain mature forest structure, e.g., leaving a good number of snags and downed trees; and preserve surrounding landscape patterns.
The principles of ecoforestry are based on a number of fundamental philosophical, historical, scientific, and cosmological principles that were first presented in other contexts by thinkers such as Whitehead and Einstein. Very few of these principles are absolute or universal; in fact the further one gets from physical or chemical principles, the more likely there are significant variations or exceptions. Nevertheless, they are essential to the understanding of forests and quite useful in applications in forests. Principles, combined with common sense and good judgment, are necessary as guides in the absence of definite knowledge. They give us a broad predictive ability. For each principle, we have to ask, how will it affect our objectives for that forest? Will the standards vary? Should forest operations be modified as a result of understanding?
Principles at the most general level apply to the universe and to various facets of the universe. We will call them global principles.
I.A. Being. This is an ontological principle that states that everything has its source in existence. Simply, forests are. When they disappear, they are not. Many archaic peoples living in forests accepted their existence; in fact the forest was often considered another being, as a god or mother.
I.B. Change. Although botanists recognized that change was inescapable as a principle of the new science, Frederic Clements insisted that change was not an aimless wandering, but a steady flow (he thought it was towards a stable final state, however). Continuous change has been identified recently by ecologists and evolutionary biologists as the context for ecosystems and species; in fact, biodiversity is an expression of continuous change. Individuals changes; patterns change, forests change. Neither tree plantations or old growth forests can remain unchanging.
Of course, thousands of years earlier, Heraklitus noted that everything changes. And Alfred North Whitehead made change the basis of his metaphysics. In his process view, organisms are dynamic structures immanent and simultaneous with process, rather than a simple consequence of the natural selection of random mutations.
Process is a fundamental feature of reality. Processes that generate form and variation at every level occur before natural selection is said to act; evolution can be understood in terms of this process, more than in terms of maximum fitness (as exemplified in protobiotic evolution and molecular genetics). Form and variation are not arbitrary or random.
A forest is a process.It grows; it is not made like a model or a plastic tree. It smells, it cools, it involves. It is not a form or a web of human words that we can manipulate into endless imaginary variations (as the deconstructionists are intent on doing in their nihilistic ecology).
I.C. Organism Forests are composed of living organisms; the forest itself changes, lives and dies in ways similar to a living entity or organism.
Whitehead regards organism as a universal principle, applicable in every field of reality from metaphysics to ethics. Everything that exists has its place in the order of nature. This does not mean that reality is an organism or that everything is reduced to biological terms. It does mean that every thing resembles a living organism since its essence depends on the pattern in which they occur, and not on its components. The organism is what it does. The organism expresses an order particular to its place and time, within limits. In Whitehead's metaphysics of experience, the world is an ecosystem, an intertwining of all things.
An organism is characterized by wholeness. Wholeness is the organizing principle in nature, according to J. C. Smuts (1912). Wholes are self-making systems composed of subwholes (or holons) in a hierarchical system. All well-unified wholes are organic; all wholes are involved in organic wholes. The notion of part and whole is derived from extensiveness, which is the pervading generic form to which the morphological structures of the world conform, according to Whitehead. In discussing the reciprocity of part and whole, Whitehead uses the terms organism and environment. There is internal relatedness between organisms and environments. Life refers to complexes in which parts are modified according to principles derived from the whole. Organism can refer to molecules and ecosystems, or to any general sense of organic unity. Each individual organism is only a partial, however. They are like Arthur Koestler's concept of the holon (1968); from above each is a whole; from below each is a part.
The forest as a whole remains the same, according to W.S. Cooper (1913), "the changes in various parts balancing each other." Partly this is because the whole is a nested system that turns over at a rate much more slowly than the parts.
I.D. Field. The forest acts as a field, containing organisms. David Perry notes that any removal, even a single tree, sends ripples through the forest system; this ripple effect may be good or bad for the health of the system, depending on the chain of consequences. Thinning produces a larger ripple effect; because more light reaches the ground level, it stimulates herbs and shrubs, which may compete for moisture and slow tree growth or increase the rate of nutrient cycling and enhance tree growth.
The ideas of field and particle were indispensable to physical inquiry by the end of the 19th century (Faraday developed the concept in the 1860s). Although Whitehead noted that though the two concepts were considered antithetical, they are not logically contradictory. Ordinary matter was considered atomic, whereas electromagnetism was conceived as arising from a continuous field. A general space/time/energy/matter (STEM) field has many characteristics: discretion, participation, connection, consistency, limitation, wholeness, and self-development. No component of this field is ontologically subordinate to another; energy, matter, and pattern all have equal status‹or, put another way, process is not more basic than structure or function.
By the time Alexander Gurwitsch (1922) used the term field in biology, gravity was also regarded as a field (then, nuclear interactions were described in terms of fields). The field concept was useful in his investigation of mushrooms where nondifferentiated structural units resulted in highly regular and specific shapes. The source and extent of a field was not confined to an organism, but was the result of geometric properties.
Paul Weiss objected to this concept of field, since it was based on ideal geometric constructions and not on the structural complexity of the organism. His own conception of the field was as a system of organizing factors that proceeded from already organized parts to developing regions, resulting in "typical patterns." Weiss described amphibian tail bud transplantations to the limb area: If the tail bud were transplanted early in the development, it gave rise to a limb in the new area, but if it were transplanted late, it produced a tail. The forces pushing cells into specific forms were a function of development. The system of forces of organizing action was named a field. Fields divided into smaller fields during development until the organism was a system of coordinated patterns. Growth and pattern are emergent field effects.
Weiss saw the field as a symbolic term for the unitary dynamics underlying the ordered behavior of the collective. It denotes properties lost in the process of analysis. In living organisms, the patterned structure of the dynamics of the system as a whole coordinated the activities of the parts. The parts of the organism are not assembled, but integrated. In the operation of a field, every part knows the activities of every other and responds to a collective equilibrium.
Although recent experiments support the existence of some kinds of biological fields, scientific descriptions are still unsatisfactory. Waddington regarded his own concepts of chreods and morphogenetic fields as descriptive "conveniences." The topological, qualitative models of Rene Thom (1975) depend on fields, but Thom admits that the use of local models implies nothing about the ultimate nature of reality.
Locality. Fields exist on many scales. Every field is limited by what can happen within a unit of time‹its locality; thus, fields are independent, although not unaffected, of other fields. The principle of locality is biological also, that is, each tree or owl interacts primarily with other organisms in its local neighborhood‹not with all organisms under all conditions. One thing this means to forestry is that global approaches may not always work.
I.E. Patterning. Patterns are the key to understanding the nature of a forest. Nature, for Whitehead, consists of patterns whose movement is essential to their being. These patterns are analyzed into events. Everything that exists has its place in the order of nature. This does not mean that reality is an organism or that everything is reduced to biological terms. It does mean that every thing resembles a living organism since its essence depends on the pattern in which it occurs, and not on its components. In some ways, patterns are prior to things, in helixes, light, fields, and ecology. Ecology attends the overall pattern of relationships. Paul Shepard and others have written that relationships are as real as the objects that result from them.
The genotype determines the physical and chronological pattern of an organism within the limits of an environment and interactions‹that is, an organism unfolds as an embedded part of an overfolding environment. The being of a species is the reality of the pattern of its members, that is self-sustaining, self-organizing, reproducing units (compare to the idea of other holons at other levels). Selection operates as a survival filter that passes any structure with the integrity to persist.
The patterns and process have the same ontological status as the individuals, but not by making them into individuals, just by changing the epistemology to emphasize patterns as well as the ultrahuman pieces that make them up. Organisms put together (enfold) structures based on historical patterns, and move (unfold) through a filter of limits like minnows through a fish net.
Richard Hart suggests that the actual substance of which the forest environment is made consists of patterns rather than things or individual species. The forest environment is generated by a patterning of the ecological ebb and flow of energy, substances, individuals and species across a suitable landscape. Successful adaptation to this complex system requires an enormous amount of minute local adaptations by a large number of individual organisms from a large number of species. The distinction between growing and declining patterns is not arbitrary, and can be arrived at objectively, through monitoring.
Based on a broader metaphysical foundation, with more comprehensive values, measuring and monitoring need to address patterns of being in a forest and not just a few commodities dictated by a economics. One challenge to ecoforestry is to set up long-term programs to identify and study patterns and relate them to a healthy sustainable human use of forest ecosystems. But, the tools have to be used in new ways in a new framework, perhaps with topology and holograms as metaphors (topology provides the mathematical model for processes; a hologram provides a model for wholeness).
Monitoring is crucial to understanding forests. Until we understand how forests change and move around the landscapes, we will not know which changes are important and inevitable and which are the unhealthy result of human interference. Until we understand the changes, we will not be able to adjust our needs to the limits of forests.
The principle of patterning has several subalterns that refine its definition.
Limits. All patterns are defined by their limits. Limit gives form to the limitless (Pythagoras). Every motion, energy, or force is subject to some limit. This property is also called discretion. Entities, activities, patterns, and events are uniquely discrete, not averages, means, or samenesses.
Polycentricity. The universe has more than one center; it has multiple frames of reference. Having multiple frames of reference means that things can only be fully described through an idea of complementarity (after Bohr). Any event can be described by different frames of reference that may be mutually exclusive but also may complement one another. Things that in nature may seem contradictory are functions of perspective or the tools we use for examination. Every human culture puts itself at the center of its universe. Every culture has an image of the universe, that is usually anchored in place, in a landmark or a forest, for instance.
I.F. Continuity. Forests proceed through distinct continuous steps in relation to past environments and disturbances; that is, a tree plantation cannot become an old growth forest without developing through intermediate stages of community.
Connectivity. Everything is connected, however weakly, to everything else. In a local system the connections are often strong. In a global system, connections between local systems may be weak or invisible. Reactions often propagate like ripples through the systems, or like a tug on a spider web.
Participation. The human species participates in its environments. Interactions and interrelationships are undeniable. Cobb and Griffin state "The whole of nature participates in us and we in it." Like quantum physics, in biology and ecology, the observer is within the theory in a very fundamental way. By the act of observing the observer influences the outcome of a phenomenon, as Wheeler says, taking part in the construction of reality. And, of course, every individual observes, from fungi to trees and humans.
Complexity. As it continues, the universe becomes more complex; things change, patterns build. In the generation of organic forms, physical and chemical processes provide organizational principles that coordinate detailed biological mechanisms, including viscoelastic changes of a cytoskeleton and the expression of different genes. Evolution increases the levels of complexity through the operation of natural events.Nature may be more complex than we can understand, as G. P. Marsh, Barry Commoner, and Jerry Franklin have all said.
I.G. Historicity. History creates unique patterns, especially in forests. Each forest is unique in its parts and structure, in its matter, energy, forms, information, and in its dynamics and history. An individual entity, according to Whitehead, whose own life history is part within the life history of some, larger, deeper, more complete pattern, is liable to have some aspects of that larger pattern dominating its own being, and to experience modifications of the larger pattern reflected in itself as modifications of its own being.
Irreversibility. Forests pass through stages that are never repeated, despite superficial similarities; that is, tree-planting cannot reverse clearcutting (although another old-growth forest may develop in time). The history of land limits or determines its future. Fundamental particles and chemical compounds, as well as magnetic fields and living forms, exhibit this.
Indeterminacy (after Heisenberg). Some part of nature is always fuzzy. Heisenberg¹s uncertainty principle states that predictions about location and velocity are just statements of probability. The effect of this principle on epistemology is that our exact interpretation of forests has to be abandoned. There are uncertainties at higher levels of organization as well; without knowledge of initial conditions and all past events, it is not possible to predict present or future behavior. Furthermore, the higher up in levels of organization, the more kinds of uncertainty there are: Genetic,environmental and social, at least.
I.H. Novelty. As an ordering/disordering process, a forest continually creates new forms and new patterns. Every forest is unique. Forests decay, as well as become more complex.
Boltzmann, Hirth, Brillouin, and Whyte are among those who first recognized that there are two great universal tendencies: One towards dynamical disorder, and the other towards spatial order. The first process has been called entropy; the second ektropy (or negentropy, anti-entropy, morphic order, or syntropy, in Wittbecker 1976).
Entropy, from Clausius, means generating a transformation in an abstract phase space. Ektropy, from Georg Hirth means generating order or form in ordinary space. All visible things have been formed by a combination of processes. Entropy equals shuffling; ektropy equals sorting. Entropy is a measure of infinite individual order. Ektropy is a measure of complex order and of limited individual order. The entropy of order, of energy, of information, is derivative of the entropy of turning. The two tendencies are directly related. When one increases, the other increases, although there is no rate of change. The universe is one turning composed of at least two polar processes, entropy (inward turning) and ektropy (outward turning). These processes occur roughly equally for the creation of order and disorder in dynamic tension. No theory can consider only entropy or ektropy. No metaphysics can be based on only one of the processes.
Creativity. The process of nature is not merely rhythmic change, it is a creative advance, producing new forms everywhere. "There is an all-embracing fact which is the advancing history of the one universe," Whitehead states. For Whitehead, the creative advance is from disjunction to conjunction.
Creativity as a fundamental metaphor‹the dance of creation; in expressing itself it moves around the floor but has no single direction. Creativity, an ultimate principle in Whitehead, relates the many and the one in a manner productive of the pulsations of process which are the actual entities. Ecoforestry embraces creative complexity, as opposed to the simplification on which industrial forestry is based.
Surprise. The interactions of billions of small actions cause a change in quality, that is, quality emerges from quantitative action. Thus, rare events may shape the entire course and texture of the universe and its systems. Where does rarity go in our understanding? Unusual and exceptional events, such as the origin of life on earth, must be factored into scientific understanding.
Intrinsic Value. Value is mentioned sometimes as if it is just one thing, the economic market value of forest commodities indicated by price, but there are different kinds of value. John B. Cobb, Jr. contends that everything can have instrumental value (in the sense of having consequences for other things or beings) and living beings have an intrinsic value. Every species has some value (Deep Ecology Platform 1): Being unique, creative, historical patterns, all beings have value. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. Whitehead has stated that existence is the upholding of value intensity; for a being itself and shared with the universe, from which it cannot be separate. The value (intrinsic worth) each being has for itself is shared by others. Each exists for itself and for others; is a value in itself and for others. Value is achieved through an ongoing process in nature, not a static one.
Energy. Energy can be transformed but not created or destroyed; energy is not created in the sun, just changed from its state in matter, mostly hydrogen and helium. ³You cannot win,² one of my professors used to say. A forest, which grows only from solar energy, is just a stage in the transformation of energy into production of "flesh." This principle is why old growth forests have no extra energy in the form of net primary productivity.
Entropy. Energy transformation cannot occur unless some of it is degraded into a dispersed form where it cannot be used again in the same system. ³You must lose,² the professor would add.The biosphere, and forests, obey the law of entropy only as a general limit. The entire process is exentropic since energy flows from sun to earth and long wave radiation flows from earth to the sink of space. Entropy does appear to force a historical direction to forests and the biosphere.Possibly this is one reason for the maximum of 6-8 trophic levels in a food chain in a forest; each level loses some energy that it cannot use.
Waste. That quantity of energy and material no longer of use to the system is wasted (for that system). Often it goes through another system, where a percentage of it is used (energy is not considered to recycle, although it can be used several times within a system and by several systems), but eventually it is lost to the interplanetary space surrounding the earth.
Cycles.Chemical elements, especially those used by life, circulate in the biosphere in characteristic paths known as biogeochemical cycles. Very little is actually lost to space, but often the elements concentrate in sinks, where they may be unavilable for ecological or geological periods of time. Forests, for instance, act as sinks for carbon; the ocean bottom acts as a sink for phosphorus. The rapid release of sinks can affect other atmospheric or terrestrial cycles.
Limits. Biological order is built on physical and chemical orders. That is why life is limited to such a narrow range of conditions. And that is why the most complex orders are vulnerable to changes in their substrates; energetic radiation can alter and destroy an individual, a small change in climate can destroy forests and civilizations. The earth is suitable for life because of three kinds of limits: (1) solar radiation has stayed within certain limits for 4 billion years; (2) the biogeochemical cycles of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, water have stayed within certain limits; (3) the environment has been constant enough for organic evolution, but variable enough for natural selection to be challenged. Life is limited by elements and physical factors (light, water, gas, salt); too little of an element limits life(Liebig's law); too much of an element limits life (Shelford's law of tolerance). Regardless of how plentiful nutrients are, for instance, without water a forest cannot exist.
Productivity.Energy is bound into organic material, and is measurable as productivity. This energy can be partially used by living beings or released by disturbances, such as fires. The gross primary productivity is the capital of a forest ecosystem; the net ecosystem productivity is the interest. The kinds and numbers of organisms in a forest are limited in varying degrees by the productivity of the system.
Energy relation. Within a range, biological activities increase with increases in temperature. Metabolism and respiration increase in animals; reproduction and growth increase in plants. Rapid, introduced changes in temperature, however, shortenlife cycles and increase micro-organisms. Sudden modification of a forest, such as from clearcutting, can cause changes in temperature and unexpected effects.
Food Chains. The transfer of energy and materials through organisms is referred to as the food chain. It is of various lengths, depending on the system but is rarely more than 7 or 8 layers deep. Mature forests have longer food chains.
Trophic Structure. The interaction of individuals in a food chain in a local physical environment results in the trophic structure of communities (ecological pyramids), which interacts with material cycles. Mature forests generally have more steps on the trophic pyramid.
Maturity. The energy required to maintain an ecosystem is inversely related to complexity; succession decreases the flow of energy per unit biomass until the system reaches maturity (Margalef's concept of maturity). In a mature forest almost 100% of the energy is required to maintain the state of the forest. Any system formed by reproducing and interacting organisms must develop an assemblage in which production of entropy per unit of information is minimized. It is a general property of some systems that acquired information is used to limit further inflow. A mature system needs less information, since it works toward preservation. The limit of maturity allows variability between systems with slight external differences, such as temperature. Ecosystems consist of different prefabricated pieces, species, and since the supply of species is limited, succession becomes asymtotic at a mature state.
Synergy (Fuller's concept). Reactions at the chemical, organism, or ecosystem level, when combined, produce unexpected positive results from the sum of single reactions. The forest ecosystem has emergent properties that are different from the sum of community interactions. They also affect biogeochemical cycles. Health is a dynamic quality of the whole, the result of a harmoniuos interaction of all the analyzable parts that comprise the whole forest with the surrounding larger environment.
Summary
This outline of principles does not include emergent principles. Part II will present Ecological, Evolutionary, and Forest Principles; Sociological, Political, Economic, Educational, Forestry, Valuation, Planning, Design, and Management Principles will be addressed in Part III, in future issues.
Most of the principles stated so far have been global principles; some principles may apply to a particular region; others may exist at a very local scale. This is even more true for standards. The global provides the framework for the regional, which provides the framework for the local‹the level of detail and participation. Standards are very important for forest practices or certification, to provide consistency of judgment regardless of the owner or certifier; they also form the basis for any appeal of judgments. They should be clear, unbiased, and applicable.
These principles, whether we accept or deny their applicability, influence our interactions with forests, from clearcutting to preservation. They influence our objectives, our standards, and our operations. The interplay of these principles with examples and exceptionswill refine our approach to and understanding of forests. This is part of the process of living with and understanding forests.
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