Shifting baselines
Encyclopedia
Shifting baseline is a term used to describe the way significant changes to a system are measured against previous reference point
Reference Point
Reference Point is the first album by Acoustic Alchemy released in 1990 for jazz label GRP and their fourth album overall.Containing some of the band's more popular tracks, such as the title track "Reference Point", "Same Road, Same Reason" and "Cuban Heels", the nine-track album is also the only...

s (baseline
Baseline
A baseline is a line that is a base for measurement or for construction; see datum or point of reference .The word baseline may refer to:...

s), which themselves may represent significant changes from the original state of the system.

The term was first used by the fisheries scientist
Fisheries science
Fisheries science is the academic discipline of managing and understanding fisheries. It is a multidisciplinary science, which draws on the disciplines of oceanography, marine biology, marine conservation, ecology, population dynamics, economics and management to attempt to provide an integrated...

 Daniel Pauly
Daniel Pauly
Daniel Pauly is a French-born marine biologist, well-known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries. He is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia. He also served as Director of the Fisheries...

 in his paper "Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome
Syndrome
In medicine and psychology, a syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs , symptoms , phenomena or characteristics that often occur together, so that the presence of one or more features alerts the physician to the possible presence of the others...

 of fisheries". Pauly developed the term in reference to fisheries management
Fisheries management
Fisheries management draws on fisheries science in order to find ways to protect fishery resources so sustainable exploitation is possible. Modern fisheries management is often referred to as a governmental system of appropriate management rules based on defined objectives and a mix of management...

 where fisheries scientists sometimes fail to identify the correct "baseline" population size (e.g. how abundant a fish species population was before human exploitation) and thus work with a shifted baseline. He describes the way that radically depleted fisheries were evaluated by experts who used the state of the fishery at the start of their careers as the baseline, rather than the fishery in its untouched state. Areas that swarmed with a particular species hundreds of years ago, may have experienced long term decline, but it is the level of decades previously that is considered the appropriate reference point for current populations. In this way large declines in ecosystems or species over long periods of time were, and are, masked. There is a loss of perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...

 of change that occurs when each generation
Generation
Generation , also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring....

 redefines what is "natural".

Most modern fisheries stock assessments do not ignore historical fishing and account for it by either including the historical catch or use other techniques to reconstruct the depletion level of the population at the start of the period for which adequate data is available. Anecdotes about historical populations levels can be highly unreliable and result in severe mismanagement of the fishery.

The concept was further refined and applied to the ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 of kelp forest
Kelp forest
Kelp forests are underwater areas with a high density of kelp. They are recognized as one of the most productive and dynamic ecosystems on Earth. Smaller areas of anchored kelp are called kelp beds....

s by Paul Dayton and others from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and earth science research, graduate training, and public service in the world...

. They used a slightly different version of the term in their paper, "Sliding baselines, ghosts, and reduced expectations in kelp forest communities".

The term has become widely used to describe the shift over time in the expectation of what a healthy ecosystem baseline looks like.

Broadened definition

In 2002, filmmaker and former marine biologist Randy Olson broadened the definition of shifting baselines with an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

. He explained the relevance of the term to all aspects of change, and the failure to notice change in the world today. He and coral reef
Coral reef
Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, which in turn consist of polyps that cluster in groups. The polyps...

 ecologist Jeremy Jackson (of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and earth science research, graduate training, and public service in the world...

) co-founded The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project http://www.shiftingbaselines.org in 2003 to help promote a wider understanding and use of the term in discussions of general conservation
Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....

.

A conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...

 for a shifting baseline is the price of coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

. A cup of coffee may have only cost a $0.05 in the 1950's, but in the 1980's the cost shifted to $1.00 (ignoring inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...

). The current (21st century) coffee prices are based on the 1980s model, rather than the 1950s model. The point of reference moved.

The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project grew from its three founding partners (Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and earth science research, graduate training, and public service in the world...

, The Ocean Conservancy
The Ocean Conservancy
The Ocean Conservancy is a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States.-History:...

, and Surfrider Foundation) to over twenty conservation groups and science organizations. The project has produced dozens of short films, public service announcements, and Flash videos along with photography, video, and stand-up comedy contests, all intended to promote the term to a broader audience. The Shifting Baselines Blog, "the cure for planetary amnesia"http://www.scienceblogs.com/shiftingbaselines is run by the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project on the Seed (magazine)
Seed (magazine)
Seed is an online science magazine published by Seed Media Group. The magazine looks at big ideas in science, important issues at the intersection of science and society, and the people driving global science culture...

 Science Blogs.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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