Shifting Baselines

Shifting baselines is a concept used in an environmental context which draws attention to the fact that we are not entirely sure of what the original native ecosystem looked like at any given time in the past, but that to the extent our reconstructions are accurate, those ecosystems changed with time. Thus, what is presumptively native today may not have been present yesterday, and what was present yesterday may not have been native the day before yesterday.

Populations radiate and during some periods there is a process of extinction. These have been natural processes for most of the planet's history. Thus, any restoration activity is confronted with the question: restoration of what?

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• The above content is based upon public comment for Upland Research Science Action on the Draft Environmental Impact Report on the California Valley Solar Ranch drafted by Geof Bard and is reformatted for CC-BY-SA at Appropedia. The below references were obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline attribution history of which is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shifting_baseline&action=history.
• Dayton PK, Tegner MJ, Edwards PB and Riser KL (1998) "Sliding baselines, ghosts, and reduced expectations in kelp forest communities." Ecological Applications, 8(2):309-322.
• Papworth SK, Rist J, Coad L and Milner-Gulland EJ (2008) "Evidence for shifting baseline syndrome in conservation" Conservation Letters, 2(2):93-100.
• Pauly, Daniel (1995) "Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries." Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 10(10):430.
• Pauly, Daniel (2001) "Importance of historical dimension policy management in natural resource systems." ACP-EU Fisheries: Research Report No 8.