Designing Autonomy: Opportunities for New Wildness in the Anthropocene

Bradley Cantrell; Laura J Martin; Erle C Ellis

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2016.12.004

Designing Autonomy: Opportunities for New Wildness in the Anthropocene

Trends Ecol Evol. 2017 Mar;32(3):156-166. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.12.004. Epub 2017 Jan 18.

Authors

Bradley Cantrell¹, Laura J Martin², Erle C Ellis³

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
² Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: lauramartin@fas.harvard.edu.
³ Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA.

PMID: 28108135
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.12.004

Abstract

Maintaining wild places increasingly involves intensive human interventions. Several recent projects use semi-automated mediating technologies to enact conservation and restoration actions, including re-seeding and invasive species eradication. Could a deep-learning system sustain the autonomy of nonhuman ecological processes at designated sites without direct human interventions? We explore here the prospects for automated curation of wild places, as well as the technical and ethical questions that such co-creation poses for ecologists, conservationists, and designers. Our goal is to foster innovative approaches to creating and maintaining the autonomy of evolving ecological systems.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Conservation of Natural Resources*
Ecology
Ecosystem
Ethics
Humans
Introduced Species*