Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK.
Public Underst Sci. 2009 Mar;18(2):229-42. doi: 10.1177/0963662507082893.
The last two decades have seen a conceptual shift within environmental and social sciences from an emphasis on ecosystem stability and balance to an acknowledgement of the importance of flux and change in the natural world. This has profound implications for conservation management and policy and has driven an (incomplete) transition from managing to maintain (bio)diversity and ecological stability at some historically derived "optimum" to managing to maintain important ecosystem and evolutionary processes such as nutrient cycles and migration. Here, we investigate whether this change from a "balance of nature" metaphor to a more dynamic perspective ("flux of nature") is reflected in the representation of conservation and ecosystem management in the news media, the Internet, and the academic literature. We found that the media and the global Internet community still portray the aim of conservation science and of conservationists as being one of maintaining stability, harmony and balance.
过去的二十年见证了环境和社会科学领域的一个概念转变，从强调生态系统的稳定性和平衡转变为承认自然界中流动和变化的重要性。这对保护管理和政策有着深远的影响，并推动了从管理到维持（生物）多样性和生态稳定性的（不完整）转变，这种稳定性和生态稳定性是在历史上的某个“最佳点”上实现的，而管理的目标则是维持重要的生态系统和进化过程，如营养循环和迁移。在这里，我们调查了从“自然平衡”的隐喻到更具动态性的观点（“自然流动”）的这种转变是否反映在新闻媒体、互联网和学术文献中对保护和生态系统管理的表述。我们发现，媒体和全球互联网社区仍然将保护科学和保护主义者的目标描绘为维持稳定、和谐与平衡。
