David Morimoto - A Walk in the Urban Woods
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David Morimoto, Biologist, Lesley University The extraordinary wild spaces that still remain in our cities benefit our spiritual and mental health, not to mention the quality of the air and water. David Morimoto shares slides of the nature walk that some conference participants attended the previous day at the Alewife Reservation, Cambridge’s largest local urban wild area, home to crucially important wetland and biodiversity resources. Presented at the Urban and Suburban Carbon Farming to Reverse Global Warming conference at Harvard University on May 3, 2015, organized by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate. www.bio4climate.org
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David Morimoto - A Walk in the Urban Woods
- 1. Indigenous Urban Ecological Knowledge: Cultivating Carbon as both an Inward and Outward Journey David Morimoto, PhD 3 May 2015
- 2. The Great Carbon Disconnect Like the loss of the family farm, Urban sprawl has disconnected us from our Nature …at the same time it has given us emergent understanding
- 6. Greater Alewife Ecosystem: A Land of Contrasts Unpaved parking lot Building removal Ecosystem Restoration and Management Forest Destruction for ‘development’ Great Swamp memories
- 12. Cultivating Carbon by Connecting to Place: Natural History Immersion
- 13. Science 345, 1558 (2014); Georgina M. Mace Whose conservation? It’s time for some enlightened action!
- 15. Carbon Re-Connection: Cultivating the Carbon that is Us by ‘Farming Carbon’ in Diverse Urban Wilds around us
- 16. Indigenous Urban Ecological Knowledge Nature makes us normal (in addition to storing Carbon and providing a host of beneficial ecosystem services)
- 17. Like Alewives overcoming the barriers of human development in order to complete age old migrations, we must overcome the separation from nature caused urban life to reclaim natural history as our oldest continuous human activity….cultivating carbon as both an inward and outward journey…
Editor's Notes
- -We are carbon too. As carbon based beings living in densely populated urban areas we have become disconnected from biodiverse carbon rich habitats through habitat destruction, large scale transport of food and goods, motorized transport, and reduced immersion in what habitats still exist. -Loss of ecosystem services – flood control, water quality, air quality, temperature mediation, carbon storage, biodiversity enhancement, psycho-social wellness effects on humans -At the same time, urban areas are linked nodes of innovation and creativity, and much of what we know of nature, ourselves, and the universe comes from our urban tinkering. -We are coming to understand that we are not normal without immersion in natural, biodiverse, carbon rich habitats, and that such immersion may well be the ultimate source of creativity and innovation. Fast paced living in an environment dominated by concrete, steel, glass, plastic, and asphalt alone won’t do to inspire us or infuse us with vitality, or keep us healthy.
- It’s easy to see how disconnected we are from biodiverse (across scales) carbon rich habitats in cities, by virtue of habitat loss alone…..are we normal anymore? Homogenized paved landscapes dominate, with motorized transport
- Cambridge- 6.2 square miles of densely populated heavily paved earth.
- Now: a new way to see that we are one with nature and abnormal without it, an enlightened view that will allow the resurrection of biodiverse, carbon rich urban wilds and thus the positive psycho-socio-ecological values that sustain us.
- Like Alewives, we humans must ‘be who we are’ and cultivate the carbon that is US by immersing ourselves in the biodiverse carbon rich ‘farms’ that wild habitats are…. Stitching and weaving our carbon into habitats as we walk in them For that we need biodiverse, carbon rich habitats in cities…akin to sacred village forests. We can’t just create carbon farms without being farmers and cultivating our inner carbon too.