Preserving the natural environment while sustaining a way of life

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) last month in Boston, Blackfeet Community College faculty member Terry Tatsey quoted the North-Central Montana tribe’s view of their peaceful coexistence with nature:

Tatsey’s message that his people ‘take care of [both] themselves and their surroundings’ resounded through symposia on energy, environment, and climate science at the AAAS meeting.

Sustainability and new New England wind farms

Taking ‘care of.... surroundings’ is a primary goal for Block Island Wind Farm . Run by Deepwater Wind, the project is on track to be the nation’s first offshore wind farm. Conversion of wind energy into electrical power requires careful planning to promote compatibility with other users of ocean resources and to minimize impact on the environment.

Although strong winds off the coast of New England are a valuable resource to nearby population centers, wind turbines may threaten both coastal marine ecosystems and long-standing fishing activity. Sally McGee of the Nature Conservancy is working to reconcile existing uses of the offshore region with emerging uses.

Data from the New England coast allow McGee and colleagues to determine which habitats are most important for coastal, benthic, and migratory species. And while some areas will be closed to turbine development because of potential loss of critical habitat, other areas have been excluded as potential wind farm sites due to concerns of local fishermen.

Block Island Wind Farm is a 30-MW wind energy project that includes five turbines, an inter-array cable, and an export cable to Block Island off the shore of Rhode Island. The impact of this project on fishing is expected to be significant only during the construction phase but will include loss of access to fishing grounds, new navigational hazards, potential changes in fish abundance and distribution, disturbance from noise, and effects on where fish aggregate.

‘We’ve never built an offshore wind farm before,’ says Andy Lipsky, the director of science and policy at SeaPlan, an ocean resource consulting firm. Through surveys of indicator species, like demersal finfish and lobsters, SeaPlan hopes ‘to characterize fishery resources before and after construction and operation.’ Along with the fish surveys, a meteorological model describing wind flow patterns and energy will help to quantify tradeoffs associated with the Block Island Wind Farm.

‘It’s important to know where the best places are for energy potential, cost, value, and use conflicts,’ says Robert Griffin of the Natural Capital Project , a collaboration which creates tools for incorporating natural resources into policy decisions. The Project’s open source software InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs) uses observations of wind speed, turbine design, and other key parameters to provide detailed descriptions of power density and energy potential.

The pilot project complies with President Obama’s newly signed National Ocean Policy Perspective Framework of Analysis, which promotes compatibility among uses and aims to reduce conflicts between users and impacts on the environment. The framework encourages the use of sound science and the ‘best available information,’ including relevant local and traditional knowledge.

Traditional knowledge and western science

The AAAS meeting also acknowledged traditional knowledge and conservation by hosting Native American tribal colleges, all of which are on or near Reservations. Their many science courses, which bring together traditional and western ways of knowledge, '[offer] an opportunity to maintain the cultural integrity of the.... tribes [and] succeed in an American technological society.’

‘Our people have been observing things forever.... to make sure they were able to survive,’ says Dan Kinsey, of the natural resources department at Fort Belknap College, Montana. Eric Jolly, president of the Science Museum of Minnesota and an elder of the Cherokee tribe, cites a study of macrobiotic invertebrates that provided the same water quality information as did chemical assays.

One of Kinsey’s students conducted a project ‘cooking soup with hot rocks in a bison stomach.’ The goal of this study was to investigate heat transfer and the specific heat of rocks from the Snake Butte area, and to do so within the framework of a traditional (albeit defunct) method of cooking. Traditional cooking and foods are also being studied at the Mayo Clinic; there researchers are working to identify the active compound of a traditional Native American plant that not only appears to fight type 2 diabetes, but also contains the anticoagulant properties that help combat heart disease. ‘If there is a way to learn better how to live in [our] environment, it’s important to look to people who have been doing this for decades,’ Jolly says.

Traditional values and contemporary sustainable architecture merge in the math and science building at Blackfeet Community College. Oriented so as to maximize energy efficiency by blocking the prevailing winds during the winter and capturing as much sun as possible, this building is able to achieve a nearly 50% improvement over a standard energy baseline and a 50% reduction in water demand.

Indigenous people, says Tatsey, have a deep understanding of seasonal patterns, vegetation types, weather patterns, and the topography caused by glacial moraines. ‘We grew up with this knowledge before [the] college started,’ he adds.

It appears that modern science is trending toward the Native American view that it is not in our interest to dominate or exploit nature. Rather, for a sustainable future to be possible, we must minimize our impact on the environment. Collaborations between indigenous and western sciences benefit all parties and serve as a reminder of the core values that are inherent to environmental sciences.