Environmental Monitoring: Values, Applications and Consequences
Years ago I came across a marvelous book that reinforced my enthusiasm/predilection for science-based field work: “Agassiz’s Legacy—Scientists Reflections on the value of field experience” written by Elizabeth Higgins Gladfelter (Oxford University Press, 2002). Check it out, learn about the great man Louis Agassiz, and reflect on a quote by Robert Hooke in 1665:
“The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the brain and the fancy. It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of observations on material and obvious things”.
This statement bears witness to the many nature-based studies conducted over centuries on this planet. One way science-based field work has contributed is through sustained, systematic monitoring of certain environmental attributes. Such research has offered policy-makers substance to their decision-making.
My own participation in environmental monitoring commenced in 1960. I was fortunate to obtain a summer position as “historical ecologist” with the Alpine Ecology Unit of CSIRO. This job required a title as the Division of Plant Industry did not recognise geographer or geomorphologist. Alec Costin, the ecologist who was head of the Unit engaged recent graduates to do a range of studies, one of which was to measure plant species along transects and assess associated soil erosion. Grazing on snow leases in the “high country” around Mt. Kosciusko had controversially been stopped. There was a requirement to measure post-grazing impact. I never forgot one plant that was said to be extinct which we found, the gloriously named Aciphylla glacialis. But Costin faced another problem. Sir William Hudson, in charge of the Snowy Scheme and supported by the Menzies Government, was determined to spread the scheme via aquifers and dams into this glaciated terrain with its unique flora. With the support of CSIRO and the Academy of Science he forcefully argued for protection, and won. Here is a classic example of scientific research directly impacting on policy at the “highest” level.
While overseas at several universities in the 1960s I encountered three monitoring programs which convinced me to initiate a study with a monitoring component if opportunity arose. A fellow graduate student at Coastal Studies Institute, LSU, Bob Dolan, was involved in beach measurements at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. This became part of one of the world’s most intensively studied beach systems and highlighted the need one day to do something similar. For three years when at McGill University, I measured permafrost temperatures in the sub-arctic as part of the Canadian program which now has climate change implications. It was also relevant to iron ore mining as patches of ice within an ore body raised mining costs by a factor of 10. As a temporary lecturer in Hawaii in 1967 I visited the Mauna Loa field station that was measuring atmospheric carbon concentrations. This was 10 years after David Keeling from Scripps Institute established the station in 1958. I will never forget the comment made to me during the visit that the data showed a steady increase in CO2—the “Keeling curve” was already underway on its very scary trajectory. What incredible foresight to set this up.
Back in Australia in 1971 the urge to undertake beach monitoring had to be satisfied. With initial help from Ian Eliot, and the long-standing commitment from Roger McLean (and now Tom Oliver), we have established one of the world’s longest sustained beach/foredune surveys (see McLean et al., 2023, “50 years of beach change on the southeastern coast of Australia: Bengello Beach, Moruya,, NSW, 1972-2002”, Geomorphology, 2023, 108850). Many lessons have come from this field work, reinforced by similar studies initiated by Andy Short at Narrabeen and now carried on and expanded by Mitch Harley, Ian Turner and others. It has evolved into “CoastSnap” now a very important global citizen science project (see Harley, M. and Kinsela, M, 2022, Continental Shelf Research, 245, 104796). Information from all these studies becomes critical in testing and calibrating beach process-response models used in hazard risk assessment.
I was very privileged as a coastal scientist to be invited to the first Prime Minister’s Science Council meeting on 6 October 1989. Bob Hawke chaired the meeting with several other Ministers present. The topic was “Global Climatic Change—Issues for Australia”. Graeme Pearman led our team. He was then at the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and had already established a reputation in the study of atmospheric carbon dioxide. CSIRO had established its own gas measuring station in 1976 at Cape Grim, Tasmania. Its observations were mirroring those from Mauna Loa. In the publication from the meeting Graeme argued for continuing commitment to observational programs in Australia and Antarctic. He saw this fundamental research into “greenhouse warming” being linked to societal policy in responding both to “adapt to and avoid future climate change”. He concluded: “Mankind will need to slow down the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and arrest the trend towards further and further planetary warming”. The Prime Minister in his foreword to the report of the meeting warns Australians that “if global warming occurs, it is likely to affect many aspects of our lives in the years ahead and to require considerable changes in accepted patterns of behaviour”. And this was 1989—then came the “climate wars”.
Sadly, Pearman became one of the casualties of the wars, he lost his job. What was being learnt about climate change from monitoring and other scientific endeavours provided him with ammunition to brief successive governments; what he was saying required policy change and action on emissions control. Unlike Costin, he did not get the necessary protection and support from CSIRO. By now science and policy did not mix! A recent article in the online journal “Pearls and Irritations” (9 August), stimulated a debate on this specific case highlighting whether or not it is incumbent for a science expert to take part in advocating for a cause for solutions to a societal problem as serious as climate change.
While I have had my own troubles in “speaking truth to power”, partly as a member of the Wentworth Group and partly due to coastal policy “activism”, nothing compares with the tribulations of David Lindenmayer of ANU. David has just published “The Forest Wars” (Allen & Unwin,2014) with subtitle “The ugly truth about what’s happening in our forests”. I have had the pleasure of knowing David since he was in high school. His research in forest ecology is incredible. The book is a story of personal and professional battles with public authorities and industry seeking to maintain if not grow native forest logging. Key to his myth-busting approach has been long-term monitoring of changes at different forest locations over four decades. Data collected by him and his team provided the substance to his ongoing advocacy for better forest management. He has been highly honoured for his work and continues on staff at ANU.
While there is much pleasure doing observational field work, there are lessons in the use of the data. Done with “soundness” as stated by Hooke, it offers substance to policy deliberations, although not without criticism from those who have other agendas. There is also the importance of such data in calibrating and testing numerical models. As warned by Naomi Oreskes and colleagues (Science,1994,263,p.644) in matters of public policy and public safety the burden is on the modeler to demonstrate correspondence between the model and the material world it seeks to represent. That is why we must value and undertake sustained environmental monitoring.
Bruce Thom
Words by Prof Bruce Thom. Please respect the author’s thoughts and reference appropriately: (c) ACS, 2024. For correspondence about this blog post please email admin@australiancoastalsociety.org.au
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