the 'todays job' thread

[doobin]

14 hours ago, Stere said:

How one modest shrub entrapped humans in its service | Aeon Essays

AEON.CO

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As Neolithic people transformed prehistoric forests, they stumbled into an ecological trap. Domestication goes both...

 

Thought this  article was an interesting  viewpoint on heather....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Absoloutely fascinating (in a geeky kind of way!) Thank you.

[AHPP]

I thought that article was dreadfully written and never really got round to the point the title suggested it would make. Can anyone summarise it please.

[Stere]

Humans shape a landscape  to suit the heather & heather predominance shapes human history

 

The thesis is of heather being a keystone ecological species abit  like the wolves in yellowstone intertwined with humans history  and  the heath as a cultural landscape.

 

Heather burning has affected evolution

PARTNER.SCIENCENORWAY.NO

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Heather seeds germinate faster after a fire.Though only in cultural landscapes.

 

 

 

 

My  personal  take & going abit off tangent  is:

 

Alot of consevation effort now taken to preserve this plagioclimatic vegetation on degraded soil.

 

Its an ecological niche for certain rare species but overall its a greatly less productive habitat in total wildlife biomass as the soil is very nutrient poor.

 

Other such cultural degraded lanscapes are often seen as  a negative - desertification soil erosion  caused by overgrazing etc.

 

overgrazing

ESDAC.JRC.EC.EUROPA.EU

 

 

 

From above link:

 

Quote

As a result of these views, the "Ruined Landscape" theory about Mediterranean Europe has been developed (Grove and Rackham, 2001).

 

 

Heathland could also be regarded as ruined lanscape.

 

Heatland conservation  to me seems abit like  fighting against the tide due to the ongoing efforts required to maintain it in statis,  as the historical  agricultural practices that were used creating the lanscape in the first place no longer occur.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AHPP]

But what about the domestication cutting both ways? How have humans become slaves to heathland? I understand the stuff about young growth being more nutritious for domesticated grazing animals but we're all accounts executives with digital watches these days. Food comes from the shop and whether it's self-maintaining heathland, or aspiring or final woodland, you can't easily put a Starbucks on it so it doesn't really matter.

[Stere]

Yeah I didn't really buy that part.

 

Its trying to say its  a version off  this idea i think?

 

Human-Plant Coevolution: A modelling framework for theory-building on the origins of agriculture

WWW.REPOSITORY.CAM.AC.UK

 

Human-Plant Coevolution (HPC) model

 

The Human-Plant Coevolution (HPC) model
Human-plant interaction is a specific case of animal-plant interaction, which spans predator-
prey, mutualistic and symbiotic relationships. All ecological relationships consistent in time
are driven by coevolution, where each party exerts selective pressures on the other, eventually
redefining their genetic (and cultural) construct [53, 56–58]. Under mutualistic coevolution,
the interaction between two populations increases the total potential return or carrying capac-
ity of the environment for each species. At the same time, it also modifies the selective pres-
sures acting over the populations involved. In this light, plant domestication is similar to other
mutualistic relationships, where coevolution made possible the emergence of certain traits,
manifested at physiological, morphological and behavioural levels; e.g., insects and fungi [59]
and ants and acacias

 

 

Did humans domesticate plants, or did they domesticate us? | Salon.com

WWW.SALON.COM

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Scientists are trying to better understand the origins of agriculture, and how we coevolved with our favored crops

 

Quote

In his 2014 book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that "the Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud," and that plants like wheat, rice and potatoes "domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa." 

"Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world," Harari writes. Today, "wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth" and it wasn't through human intuition, but plant intelligence.

 

Quote

Harari's book has been widely dismissed as "infotainment" that doesn't rely much on scientific evidence, but it appears that either way of framing domestication is oversimplified. Humans didn't just domesticate plants and plants didn't just domesticate humans. We domesticated each other, through coevolution and mutualism, a symbiosis that is beneficial to both organisms involved.

 

 

Specific to heather:

 

Heather burning has affected evolution

PARTNER.SCIENCENORWAY.NO

---

Heather seeds germinate faster after a fire.Though only in cultural landscapes.

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by Stere

[AHPP]

8 hours ago, Stere said:

Yeah I didn't really buy that part.

 

Its trying to say its  a version off  this idea i think?

 

Human-Plant Coevolution: A modelling framework for theory-building on the origins of agriculture

WWW.REPOSITORY.CAM.AC.UK

 

Human-Plant Coevolution (HPC) model

 

The Human-Plant Coevolution (HPC) model
Human-plant interaction is a specific case of animal-plant interaction, which spans predator-
prey, mutualistic and symbiotic relationships. All ecological relationships consistent in time
are driven by coevolution, where each party exerts selective pressures on the other, eventually
redefining their genetic (and cultural) construct [53, 56–58]. Under mutualistic coevolution,
the interaction between two populations increases the total potential return or carrying capac-
ity of the environment for each species. At the same time, it also modifies the selective pres-
sures acting over the populations involved. In this light, plant domestication is similar to other
mutualistic relationships, where coevolution made possible the emergence of certain traits,
manifested at physiological, morphological and behavioural levels; e.g., insects and fungi [59]
and ants and acacias

 

 

Did humans domesticate plants, or did they domesticate us? | Salon.com

WWW.SALON.COM

---

Scientists are trying to better understand the origins of agriculture, and how we coevolved with our favored crops

 

 

 

 

Specific to heather:

 

Heather burning has affected evolution

PARTNER.SCIENCENORWAY.NO

---

Heather seeds germinate faster after a fire.Though only in cultural landscapes.

 

No. It's still 4500 pretty empty words that explain not a lot.

[Jwoodgardenmaintenance]

Before and after customer supplied grass and it looks 💩 in all honesty 

 

Jack 

[Jwoodgardenmaintenance]

Job finished today grass supplied by customer from cheap carpet place so absolute tat really don’t like the cheap stuff the grass has been left on a roll since July with all sorts stacked on it so left flat spots they’ll drop out once the nicer weather gets to it 🤦‍♂️ stretched the life out of it that’s the best it would go 

 

Jack 

[Peasgood]

A good scarifying should sort it.

[Jwoodgardenmaintenance]

2 minutes ago, Peasgood said:

A good scarifying should sort it.

It’s Artificial Grass? 😳

 

Jack