Christine Biermann

Biodiversity, Purity, and Death: Conservation Biology as Biopolitics

This paper draws on the Foucauldian notion of biopower to renarrate the development of conservation science in the US as a form of liberal biopolitical rule. With its emphasis on making nature live, conservation marks a shift away from a sovereign form of rule that emphasized subduing and controlling nature; today, nature is ruled not by the sword but by science. Through a discussion of key concepts in conservation biology—populations in crisis; evolution and its future orientation; extinction as death that is necessary for life; and diversity as purity—we illustrate the truth discourses, underlying logics, and calculative technologies by which distinctions within nonhuman life are made and made meaningful. We argue that conservation is biopolitical not just in that it moves from controlling individuals to statistically managing populations and species, but also in that it extends the racialized logic of abnormality in its core notions of biological diversity and purity. In the logics of conservation and race, life produces diversity, conceived as variety of biological kinds; within that diversity exist kinds that foster ongoing life, which should be maximized, and kinds that are threats, which should be let die in the name of life in general.

Environmental Politics After Nature: Conflicting Socioecological Futures

This article is about the logic and dynamics of environmental politics when the environment at stake is profoundly socioecological. We investigate the socioecological forests of the coalfields of Appalachian Ohio, where once decimated forests are again widespread. Conceptualizing forests as power-laden relationships among various people, trees, and other nonhumans, we identify multiple distinct forest types that currently exist as both material reality and future vision. Each forest is characterized by antagonistic ideas about ideal species composition, structure, and function and about specific actions and actors deemed necessary and threatening for the forests persistence. Each forest represents a very different vision for how socioecological relationships should be fostered. We argue, first, that broad acceptance that the environment is fundamentally socioecological does not mark the end of environmentalism. Rather, urges to environmentalism proliferate as people aim to foster the social natures they envision—and do so through interventions that are internal to what the forest is and does. Second, the proliferation of environmentalisms generates new forms of environmental conflict, which manifests over what sorts of social natures can and should exist (i.e., what they should do and for whom) and which interventions are beneficial or harmful to the survival and proliferation of the forest in the future. Ultimately, we demonstrate that socioecological futures are being shaped today through political struggle not over naturalness but over what should be done, by whom, to bring about which social natures, and to the benefit of whom (human and nonhuman).

Study on selecting sensitive environmental variables in modelling species spatial distribution

ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of different environmental variables on the accuracy of species distribution models. Forest inventory and analysis data sets were used to generate absence and pseudo-absence points of chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) in the central and southern Appalachian mountain region of the US. We simulate chestnut oak distribution using different criteria for selecting environmental variables: (1) the selection of sensitive variables using factor analysis and the calculation of a sensitivity index, (2) principal components analysis. Factor analysis to environmental variables at both occurrence and pseudo-absence points was conducted to calculate the sensitivity index for each environmental variable. The identification of sensitive variables may use the factor loadings of first one or two factors of environmental variables. Modelling with sensitive variables (mean Kappa > 0.60; mean true skill statistic (TSS) > 0.60) can enhance model accuracy more than using PCA variables or all available environmental variables (mean Kappa ranges from 0.45 to 0.65; mean TSS ranges from 0.40 to 0.70). Modelling with leading principal components (larger than 90% variations) can achieve similar or higher accuracy than modelling with all variables. The influence of redundant information on species modelling varies with the model used. Our results suggest that selecting environmental variables using a sensitivity index defined by factor analysis may improve model accuracy and reduce redundant information in species modelling. The proposed method for selecting sensitive variables is easy to implement and has strong ecological interpretability.

Introducing Critical Physical Geography

In this chapter, the Handbook editors introduce the emerging field of Critical Physical Geography. We explain its core tenets and its primary methodological principles and epistemological assumptions. We address intellectual and practical barriers to the kind of careful integrative eco-social research that typifies Critical Physical Geography and also the reasons why it is worth overcoming those barriers. After an overview of the structure of the Handbook, we close with a discussion of why the field of Geography is home to this effort to integrate attention to power relations and their material impacts with deep knowledge of particular biophysical systems.

Towards a Genealogy of Critical Physical Geography

This chapter links the history of the discipline of Geography and the core tenets of Critical Physical Geography (CPG) so as to tease out its genealogy. After review of the pitfalls of historical attempts at integration in Geography which CPG seeks to avoid, we consider the philosophical imperative invoked by some physical geographers and wider concerns about the social construction of science. We show how CPG goes beyond historical calls for ‘crossing the divide’ to address what should be integrated, how integration is done, and by whom. We conclude with three genealogical threads that run through CPG: the value of philosophical introspection; the need to develop much richer forms of integration within the discipline; and the value and nature of ‘critique’ in relation to how the researcher should be separated from the researched.

Critical Reflections on a Field in the Making

This chapter examines Critical Physical Geography’s (CPG) pursuit of integrative and transformative research in a spirit of self-criticism and reflexivity. We question the distinctiveness of CPG, the values and politics embedded within it, and the risks and benefits of endeavoring to produce transformative research. Three overarching questions guide our discussion: (1) What, if anything, does CPG offer that is distinct? (2) Can engagement with the politics of knowledge production strengthen rather than undermine scientific inquiry? and (3) Can science be normative, and what are critical physical geographers trying to change?

Shifting Climate Sensitivities, Shifting Paradigms: Tree-Ring Science in a Dynamic World

In the field of tree-ring science, findings of unstable growth responses by trees to climate have spurred self-reflection and generated debate, with significant implications for climate change politics, science, and discourse. To interrogate this issue, we bring together quantitative data on climate-growth relationships in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, and qualitative survey data on the practices and perspectives of tree-ring scientists. Our tree-ring data compel us to consider often-overlooked socioecological factors that may influence trees’ sensitivities to climate, including atmospheric pollution and historical changes in land use and ecosystem structure and function. Survey data contextualize our analyses within broader changes in the field, demonstrating that climate-growth relationships are increasingly understood as fluid, non-linear, and contingent rather than stable and fixed.