Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ecological Science and Natural Resource Management in the United States

自20世纪下半叶以来，研究生物及其环境的生态学一直是全球政治危机的核心，这些危机涉及是否以及如何管理物种、材料浪费、碳排放和自然资源的获取。像生态学这样的野外科学已经并将继续塑造我们对其他物种、人性和物理世界的理解。这项关于美国生态科学发展的历史研究将探讨最初因美学和文化原因而被搁置的荒野地区如何被重新协商为生态系统保护区，以及对生态系统是什么及其功能的理解如何影响濒危和入侵物种的管理。科学史和科学技术研究最有用的功能之一，就是使那些在理解自然世界的框架构建过程中不可避免地伴随而来的隐性假设变得更加清晰。该项目将提供这种实用程序。研究结果将在康奈尔大学的eCommons上公布，并通过《科学美国人》博客与公众分享。

Since the second half of the 20th century, ecology, the study of organisms and their environments, has been central to global political crises over whether and how to manage species, material waste, carbon emissions, and access to natural resources. Field sciences like ecology have shaped and continue to shape our understandings of other species, human nature, and the physical world. This historicalstudy of the development of ecological science in the US will address how wilderness areas, originally set aside for aesthetic and cultural reasons, were re-negotiated into ecosystem protection areas and how understandings of what an ecosystem is and how it functions effect the management of endangered and invasive species.One of the most useful functions of the history of science, and science and technologystudies, is to make clearer the hidden assumptions that inevitably accompany the construction of frameworks for understanding the natural world. This project is will provide that kind of utility. Results will be published and made available on Cornells eCommons, and shared with the public via a Scientific American blog.