Indigenous Urban Ecological Knowledge:Cultivating Carbon as both an Inward and Outward Journey

David Morimoto, PhD

3 May 2015

The Great Carbon Disconnect

Like the loss ofthe family farm,

Urban sprawl has disconnected us from our Nature

…at the same time ithas given us emergentunderstanding

Ecosystems, Carbon,and Biodiversity:

WatershedLandscapeCommunityPopulationIndividual

Greater Alewife Ecosystem: A Land of Contrasts

Unpaved parking lotBuilding removalEcosystem Restoration and Management

Forest Destruction for ‘development’Great Swamp memories

Cultivating Carbon by Connecting to Place: Natural History Immersion

Science 345, 1558 (2014);Georgina M. MaceWhose conservation?

It’s time for some

enlightened action!

Carbon Re-Connection: Cultivating the Carbon that is Us by ‘Farming Carbon’ in Diverse Urban Wilds around us

Indigenous Urban Ecological Knowledge

Nature makes us normal (in addition to storing Carbon and providing a host of beneficial ecosystem services)

Like Alewives overcoming the barriers of human development in order to complete age old migrations, we must overcome the separation from nature caused urban life to reclaim natural history as our oldest continuous human activity….cultivating carbon as both an inward and outward journey…