Enhancing the credibility of ecology: Interacting along and across hierarchical scales

Abstract

A wide range of space and time scales characterize the processes and phenomena which interact to shape environmental condition and trends. Important perspectives of environmental space and time include the role of terrestrial and astronomical factors in shaping climatic change, insights to be gained from the pre-historical record, relations between disturbance and biotic responses, episodic extreme events and large-scale phenomena, cumulative impacts, fast — slow processes and memory reservoirs. Scales in physical, chemical and biological phenomena have parallels in human driving forces, societal relations and decision — making processes, and environmental scales of space and time thus have perceptual as well as physical (“objective”) dimensions. Scale is clearly more than just size and dimension, and there is a growing body of examples on how zooming along and across hierarchical scales can help in seeking explanation (“how”) and significance (“why”), and in revealing emergent properties. Scaling can also act as a motor for new approaches to scientific cooperation. Such evolving scales in scientific cooperation are examined in relation to three international research programmes (IBP, MAB, IGBP), to various sub-disciplines of ecology and biogeography, and to the restructuring of a largish research institute in Montpellier (France). An overall conclusion is that scaling issues may provide a stimulus to increased coherence within the science of ecology itself, and may facilitate mutually supportive links with other scientific domains and society at large.