Word: ecosystems
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Then, 10,000 or more years ago, man joined forces with nature to maintain the prairie ecosystem. "A spark from an Indian campfire or a bolt of lightning, and the prairie was ablaze," says Northeastern Illinois University Biologist Robert Betz. The fires, Betz explains, were a natural part of the system, favoring the growth of deep-rooted species that could easily survive the repeated conflagrations. A startling variety of plants and flowers flourished under these conditions, their roots creating a dense, interlocking mass that reached as far as twelve feet underground. Between blazes, the prairies teemed with quarry...
While Berger sings the praises of "resource restorers," his account of environmental problems is neither glib nor blindly optimistic. His desciption of the clean-up of the devastated site of a Hooker Chemical Company plant in Michgan tempers hope for restoring a savaged ecosystem with a realistic sense of what can't be done--of political inertia and of the irreparable harm that has already been done...
...Schulenberg has spent years recreating the communities of natural prairie vegetation that once covered the Midwest. He has gathered seed by hand, replanting, and weeding acre by acre to save these species and their ecosystem from extinction. The prairie grasses--which can rejuvenate over-cultivated land, fight erosion, and provide inexpensive grazing fodder and ground cover--were all but wiped out by intensive agriculture and the introduction of non-native species...
...this bounty and the bay itself are now threatened. Watermen have been saying for years that the Chesapeake is dying. Now others are confirming their complaint. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after making a $28 million six-year study, concluded in 1983 that the Chesapeake is clearly an ecosystem in decline. Says Maryland Governor Harry Hughes: "Time is running out for the Chesapeake. If we do not take action to save the bay, there may be no point in taking it tomorrow; it may be too late...
...clear that the ecosystem effects alone resulting from a large scale thermonuclear war could be enough to destroy the current civilization in at least the Northern Hemisphere. Coupled with the direct casualties the combined intermediate and long term effects on nuclear war suggest that there might be no survivors in the Northern Hemisphere the possibility of the extinction of Human suspense cannot be excluded...