What are the reasons to protect an altered place?

Two views of wilderness: Nash on Alaska & Pollan, on the Garden;

a dialectic

Nash. pp. 272-315, Pollan, pp. 104-127.

The Alaskan oil pipeline crossing a valley in the Brooks Range, [JVS, 1990].

Our Common Threat: ecological consequences of global warming.

Siry, Global warming handout and

Marshes, pp. 3-11, (Corals & Mangroves).

Air and water pollution are affecting natural areas, remote places, and wildlife in disturbing, degrading, and even damaging ways:

Atmosphere

Biological diversity

Climate change or global warming and cooling (drying and flooding)

Demographic pressure, deforestation and desertification

Endocrine disruption of endangered species

Fire suppression

Ground subsidence

Habitat loss, fragmentation, and acidification of the watershed

Intrusions (roadless area rule of the USFS: United States Forest Service)

Consumption and population have an impact (ecological footprint) on natural systems out of all proportion to what we can perceive or even measure at any given time.

Wilderness is like a box:

conserve use

subsistence preserve

Net primary productivity

The scientific need for less disturbed ecological systems makes wilderness important as a place to compare natural areas to one another in terms of primary productivity. That is to compare and contrast the efficiency of turning sunlight into living matter; what biologists call, biomass:

Energy	comparative measures of solar productivity
Kilocalories *	≤ 800	≤ 2400	3000	≥ 8800
Biome	Desert	Grassland	Corn field	Coastal marsh

Kilocalories per meter squared per annum = kcal/m²/yr

"Fateful power to change or destroy nature."

                                             Rachel Carson