Shifting baselines

Taking a cue from the other bloggers, I thought I'd mention the most interesting science I've been reading lately. Or rather, the science I've been reading about, since the media coverage seems to have preceded the article's publication (thanks to Newswise's science coverage).

Essentially, it appears our baselines for evaluating species - in this case, fish - can be severely off-target depending on where we set the baseline. Karin Limburg and John Waldman compared shad populations from the late 1800s, where baselines usually begin, and the early 1800s. The baseline levels derived from catches in the late 1800s represented a population that had crashed from previous levels. There's a nice graph of this in Newswise's coverage. (The article appears in the December issue of BioScience.)

In other words, many of our restoration goals could be based on already diminished populations. Fascinating, if depressing.