1 s2.0 S2213305413000027 Main PDF

Wilderness is dead: Whither critical zone studies and geomorphology in the
Anthropocene?
Ellen Wohl *
Department of Geosciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1482, USA
1. Introduction
Wilderness is dened in the U.S. 1964 Wilderness Act legislation
as an area where the earth and the community of life are
untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain. This is a slightly more poetic rendering than the usual
dictionary denitions of a tract or region uncultivated by human
beings or an area essentially undisturbed by human activity
together with its naturally developed life community. The common
thread in diverse denitions of wilderness is the absence of humans
and their inuences. Opinions diverge on how strictly to interpret
inuences, or even on whether wilderness is anything but a social
construct or a romantic myth (Lowenthal, 1964). Assuming
wilderness is a useful designation for a landscape, can a region
qualify as wilderness only if people have never inuenced the
landscape and ecosystem, or can it qualify if people are not
inuencing the landscape and ecosystem at present? To paraphrase
Justice Potter Stewart, wilderness may be one of those entities that is
hard to dene, although everybody knows it when they see it. Or do
they? In this paper, I argue that in fact many of us mistake landscapes
altered by humans in the past for wilderness that has never
experienced substantial human inuences, and that this misper-
ception hampers our ability to understand the intensity and extent
of human manipulation of Earth surfaces. By more fully compre-
hending the global implications of human manipulations during the
Anthropocene, we can more effectively design management to
protect and restore desired landscape and ecosystem qualities.
This is a perspective paper rather than a presentation of new
research results. I write from the perspective of a geomorphologist,
but much of what I describe below applies to anyone who studies
the critical zone Earths near-surface layer from the tops of the
trees down to the deepest groundwater and who wishes to use
knowledge of critical zone processes and history to manage
landscapes and ecosystems. I use landscape to refer to the physical
conguration of the surface and near-surface topographic relief,
arrangement of river networks, and so forth and the uxes that
maintain physical conguration. I use ecosystem to refer to the
biotic and non-biotic components and processes of a region. In
practice, the two entities are closely intertwined because the
landscape creates habitat and resources for the biota and biotic
Anthropocene xxx (2013) xxxxxx
A R T I C L E I N F O
Article history:
Received 14 December 2012
Received in revised form 18 March 2013
Accepted 19 March 2013
Keywords:
Critical zone
Connectivity
Thresholds
Sustainability
Tipping points
A B S T R A C T
Numerous studies document the extent and intensity of human appropriation of ecosystemservices and
the manipulation of Earths surface and uxes of water, sediment and nutrients within the critical zone of
surface and near-surface environments. These studies make it increasingly clear that wilderness is
effectively gone. This paper explores the implications for critical zone studies and management from a
geomorphic perspective. Geomorphologists possess knowledge of the long history of human alteration
of the critical zone. This knowledge can be applied to characterizing: historical range of variability and
reference conditions; uxes of matter and energy; and integrity and sustainability of critical zone
environments. Conceptual frameworks centered on connectivity, inequality, and thresholds or tipping
points are particularly useful for such characterizations, as illustrated by a case study of beaver meadows
in the Front Range of Colorado, USA. Specically, for connectivity, inequality, and thresholds,
geomorphologists can identify the existence and characteristics of these phenomena, quantify and
predict changes resulting frompast or future human manipulations, and recommend actions to restore
desirable conditions or prevent development of undesirable conditions. I argue that we should by default
assume that any particular landscape has had greater rather than lesser human manipulation through
time. This history of manipulation continues to inuence critical zone process and form, and
geomorphologists can use knowledge of historical context in a forward-looking approach that
emphasizes prediction and management.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
* Tel.: +1 9704915298.
E-mail address: ellen.wohl@colostate.edu
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ANCENE-1; No. of Pages 12
Please cite this article in press as: Wohl, E., Wilderness is dead: Whither critical zone studies and geomorphology in the Anthropocene?
Anthropocene (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.03.001
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.03.001
activities shape the landscape. I distinguish the two entities only
because the time scales over which each changes can differ and the
changes may not be synchronous.
The title of this paper alludes to the now well-known paper,
Stationarity is dead: whither water management? (Milly et al.,
2008). I use the phrase wilderness is dead because I interpret
wilderness in the strictest sense, as a region that people have never
inuenced. Given warming climate and rapidly melting glaciers
and sea ice, even the most sparsely populated polar regions no
longer qualify as wilderness under this interpretation. Just as
stationarity in hydrologic parameters has ceased to exist in an era
of changing climate and land use, so has wilderness. I use this
realization to explore the implications of the loss of wilderness for
critical zone studies and management from the perspective of a
geomorphologist.
I start by briey reviewing the evidence for extensive human
alteration of the critical zone. I explore the implications for
geomorphology of a long history of widespread human alteration
of the critical zone in the context of three factors of interest to
geomorphologists (historical range of variability, uxes of matter
and energy, and integrity and sustainability of critical zone
environments). I then explore how concepts of connectivity,
inequality, and thresholds can be used to characterize critical zone
integrity and sustainability in specic settings. A detailed case
study of beaver meadows along headwater streams in the Colorado
Front Range, USA illustrates how geomorphologists can uniquely
contribute to managing the critical zone. The paper concludes with
a discussion of my perspective on how geomorphologists can
respond to the understanding that wilderness effectively no longer
exists and that humans continually and ubiquitously manipulate
the distribution and allocation of matter and energy.
2. Humans, humans everywhere, nor any land left wild
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.
Numerous papers published during the past few years
synthesize the extent and magnitude of human effects on
landscapes and ecosystems. By nearly any measure, humans
now dominate critical zone processes. Measures of human
manipulation of the critical zone tend to focus on a few categories.
(1) Movement of sediment and reconguration of topography.
Humans have increased sediment transport by rivers globally
through soil erosion (by 2.3 10
9
metric tons/y), yet reduced
sediment ux to the oceans (by 1.4 10
9
metric tons/y) because
of sediment storage in reservoirs. Reservoirs around the world
now store > 100 billion metric tons of sediment (Syvitski et al.,
2005). By the start of the 21st century, humans had become the
premier geomorphic agent sculpting landscapes, with exponen-
tially increasing rates of earth-moving (Hooke, 2000). The latest
estimates suggest that >50% of Earths ice-free land area has
been directly modied by human actions involving moving earth
or changing sediment uxes (Hooke et al., 2012).
(2) Appropriation of ecosystem services. Human activities appro-
priate one-third to one-half of global ecosystem production,
and croplands and pastures now cover about 40% of Earths
land surface (Foley et al., 2005). Most measures of global
human consumption have accelerated dramatically since 1950,
including number of motor vehicles, fertilizer consumption,
amount of domesticated land, and loss of forested land
(Syvitski, 2012). The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
estimates that 87% of the worlds commercially important
marine sheries are fully shed, overexploited, or depleted
(FAO, 2012).
(3) Alteration of biogeochemical uxes. Irrigated agriculture has
expanded globally by 174% since the 1950s (Scanlon et al.,
2007), and this has been accompanied by substantially
increased riverine uxes of pesticides and nitrogen from
fertilizers (Boyer et al., 2006). Although reservoirs store some of
this increased ux (e.g., reservoirs store an estimated 13
billion tons of carbon; Syvitski et al., 2005), eutrophication of
nearshore areas is now common around industrialized
countries (Mitsch et al., 2001).
(4) Total extent of alteration. In the rst estimate of this type,
McCloskey and Spalding (1989) suggested that one-third of the
global land surface remained wilderness, although 41% of this
wilderness was in the Arctic or Antarctica. More recent
estimates indicate that >7583% of Earths ice-free land area
is directly inuenced by human beings (Sanderson et al., 2002;
Ellis and Ramankutty, 2008), and the remaining 25% is
indirectly inuenced by climate change and atmospheric
deposition of human-derived contaminants.
(5) River alteration. Over half of the worlds large river systems are
affected by dams (Nilsson et al., 2005), and nearly all rivers are
at least partly affected by dams, levees, channelization, ow
diversion, and altered water, sediment and solute yields from
the adjacent uplands (Wohl, 2004, 2011a). In the United States,
only 2% of river kilometers are unaffected by dams (Graf, 2001).
This equates to 1 dam per every 48 km of river among 3rd
through 7th order rivers (Poff et al., 2007). Extensive ow
regulation has resulted, among other things, in homogeniza-
tion of ow regimes and reduced diversity of riverine biota
(Poff et al., 2007).
An important point to recognize in the context of geomorphol-
ogy is that, with the exception of Hookes work, most of these
studies focus on contemporary conditions, and thus do not
explicitly include historical human manipulations of the critical
zone. Numerous geomorphic studies, however, indicate that
historical manipulations and the resulting sedimentary, biogeo-
chemical, and topographic signatures commonly referred to as
legacy effects are in fact widespread, even where not readily
apparent (e.g., Wohl, 2001; Liang et al., 2006; Walter and Merritts,
2008). Initial clearing of native vegetation for agriculture, for
example, shows up in alluvial records as a change in river geometry
in settings as diverse as prehistoric Asia and Europe (Limbrey,
1983; Mei-e and Xianmo, 1994; Hooke, 2006) and 18th- and 19th-
century North America and Australia (Kearney and Stevenson,
1991; Knox, 2006). The concept of wilderness has been particularly
important in regions settled after the 15th century by Europeans,
such as the Americas, because of the assumption that earlier
peoples had little inuence on the landscape. Archeologists and
geomorphologists, in particular, have initiated lively debates about
the accuracy of this assumption (Denevan, 1992; Vale, 1998, 2002;
Mann, 2005; James, 2011), and there is consensus that at least
some regions with indigenous agricultural societies experienced
substantial landscape and ecosystem changes prior to European
contact.
Many of the overview studies cited above also quantify the
current magnitude and distribution of human alteration of natural
uxes, rather than explicitly considering interactions between
humans and landscapes or ecosystems. Geomorphologists increas-
ingly focus on such interactions in the form of feedback loops
between resource use, landscape stability, ecosystem processes,
resource availability, and natural hazards (Chin et al., in press). An
example comes from the sediment budget developed for the
Colorado River in Grand Canyon (Wiele et al., 2007; Melis, 2011).
Much of the river sand within Grand Canyon comes from upstream
and is now trapped by the dam, but sand also enters Grand Canyon
via tributaries downstream from the dam. Sand present along the
E. Wohl / Anthropocene xxx (2013) xxxxxx 2
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main river corridor at the time of dam closure can also be
redistributed between channel-bed and channel-margin storage
sites. Alteration of water and sediment uxes by Glen Canyon Dam
has led to beach erosion and loss of sh habitat in Grand Canyon,
affecting recreational river runners and endemic native sh
populations. Resource managers respond to these landscape and
ecosystem alterations by experimenting with different ways of
operating the dam. The availability and distribution of sand-sized
sediment drives decisions as to when managers will create
experimental oods by releasing larger-than-average volumes of
water from the dam.
3. Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
Given the documented extent and intensity of human alteration
of the critical zone, a vital question now is how can geomorphol-
ogists most effectively respond to this state of affairs? More than
one recently published paper notes the absence of a geomorphic
perspective in discussions of global change and sustainability (e.g.,
Grimm and van der Pluijm, 2012; Knight and Harrison, 2012; Lane,
2013). Geomorphologists certainly have important contributions
to make to scholarly efforts to understand and predict diverse
aspects of global change and sustainability, but thus far the
community as a whole has not been very effective in communi-
cating this to scholars in other disciplines or to society in general.
Scientists as a group are quite aware of existing and accelerating
global change, but there may be less perception of the long history
of human manipulation of surface and near-surface environments,
or of the feedbacks through time between human actions and
landscape conguration and process. Geomorphologists can
particularly contribute to increasing awareness of human effects
on the critical zone during past centuries. Geomorphologists can
also identify how human-induced alterations in the critical zone
propagate through ecosystems and human communities that is,
geomorphologists can contribute the recognition that landscapes
are not static entities with simple or easily predictable responses to
human manipulation, but are rather complex, nonlinear systems
that commonly display unexpected responses to human alteration.
Awareness of the ubiquity and long history of human
manipulation of the critical zone, and of the complexity of critical
zone processes, has implications for at least three factors with
which geomorphologists are concerned and to which we can
contribute specialized knowledge and methods of inquiry:
historical range of variability and reference conditions; uxes of
matter and energy within the critical zone; and the integrity and
sustainability of critical zone environments and biotic communi-
ties.
3.1. Historical range of variability
Historical range of variability (HRV), like wilderness, has
varying denitions. HRV is most commonly used to refer to the
temporal and spatial range of variability in a specied parameter or
environment prior to intensive human alteration (Morgan et al.,
1994; Nonaka and Spies, 2005; Wohl, 2011b), but the phrase
sometimes refers to variability during the period of intensive
human alteration (Wohl and Rathburn, in press). I use the phrase
here in the former sense. Ability to characterize HRV in a highly
altered landscape inevitably relies on indirect indicators that range
from historical (human-created archives of maps, text, or
photographs), through biotic (tree rings, pollen in sediments,
invertebrate fossils), to sedimentary and geochemical records.
Geomorphologists are specically trained to interpret past
landscape process and form using physical records contained in
sedimentary and geochemical data. We can thus make vital
contributions to the collective effort to understand how a given
portion of the critical zone has varied through time in response to
natural and human-induced disturbances.
HRV is also sometimes delineated for contemporary landscape
process and form at sites exhibiting reference conditions.
Reference conditions can be dened as the best available
conditions that could be expected at a site (Norris and Thoms,
1999) and described using historical or environmental proxy
records or comparison to otherwise similar sites with lesser human
alteration (Morgan et al., 1994; Nonaka and Spies, 2005).
Interpretation of contemporary, relatively unaltered landscape
units as indicators of reference conditions is a form of the
traditional paired watershed approach, in which differences
between treated and reference watersheds that are otherwise
similar are used to infer the behavior and signicance of a
particular variable. A paired watershed study might test for
differences in channel morphology, for example, between a
population of reference watersheds and a population of treated
watersheds in which peak ow has doubled as a result of land use
(David et al., 2009).
Whatever approach is taken, HRV is difcult to quantify. There
is the challenge of dening when humans began to intensively
alter critical zone process and form. Process and form are
complexly interrelated and change substantially through time
and space in the absence of human activities, as well as in response
to human activities. Ability to quantify the range of variability in
individual parameters or entire ecosystems strongly depends on
the length and completeness of proxy records, as well as scientic
understanding of the operation of the unaltered ecosystem.
Reliance on reference conditions in a contemporary, relatively
unaltered ecosystem can be misleading because contemporary
conditions reect only a single state or limited portion of the HRV
(SER, 2002). In other words, we cannot metaphorically point to
some time prior to the development of agriculture or other
intensive human activity and use information regarding ecosystem
conditions from this time as a precise target for managing and
restoring an ecosystem. But, geomorphologists can help to inform
understanding of HRV, particularly by emphasizing (i) the depth
and breadth of records of the critical zone contained in landforms,
(ii) the extent, intensity, variety and duration of past human
alterations of the critical zone, and (iii) the dynamic nature of
landscape processes.
3.2. Fluxes
Fluxes of matter and energy within the critical zone inuence
landscape conguration and the processes that maintain or alter
that conguration in other words, geomorphology. Since its
origin, geomorphology has been especially concerned with the
movement of water and sediment at the surface and near-surface
(in the atmosphere and below the ground surface), and this focus
has broadened to include solutes and particulate organic matter.
Geomorphologists have numerous qualitative and quantitative
models of water and sediment transport and storage, and many of
these models are, or can be, coupled to solute uxes for hillslope,
river, glacial and other environments. Our specialized insight into
uxes exemplied by equations such as those developed for soil
production (Heimsath et al., 1997), hillslope sediment diffusion
(Roering et al., 2001), rainfall-inltration-runoff (Refsgaard and
Storm, 1995), ow routing through stream networks (Marks and
Bates, 2000), or bedload transport within rivers (Meyer-Peter and
Mueller, 1948) and storage within diverse landforms (e.g.,
oodplains, terraces, deltas, alluvial fans) positions us uniquely to
quantify how past human activities have affected uxes and to
numerically simulate and quantitatively predict the effects of
proposed future human manipulations on uxes. Quantifying
magnitude and spatial and temporal dimensions of uxes is at the
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heart of understanding interactions between human resource use,
landscapes and ecosystems, as illustrated by the earlier example of
sand uxes in the Grand Canyon.
3.3. Integrity and sustainability
Ecological integrity can be dened as the ability of an ecosystem
to support and maintain a community of organisms with species
composition, diversity, and functional organization similar to those
within natural habitats in the same region (Parrish et al., 2003). This
denition focuses on biota, although the physical and chemical
processes that sustain the biota are implicitly included. The
analogous geomorphic concept is that of physical integrity, dened
for rivers by Graf (2001) as a set of active uvial processes and
landforms such that the river maintains dynamic equilibrium, with
adjustments not exceeding limits of change dened by societal
values. A river has physical integrity when river process and form are
actively connected under the current hydrologic and sediment
regime. One component of ecological or physical integrity is
sustainability. Sustainability is most effectively dened within a
specied time interval, but implies the ability to maintain existing
conditions during that time interval. Another component of integrity
is resilience, which refers to the ability of a system to recover
following disturbance. A resilient ecosystem recovers the abun-
dance and diversity of organisms and species following a drought or
a tropical cyclone, for example, and a resilient river recovers channel
geometry and sediment uxes following a large ood.
Drawing on concepts of ecological and physical integrity, a
composite denition for critical zone integrity and sustainability
might be a region in which critical zone processes respond to uxes
of matter and energy in a manner that sustains a landscape and an
ecosystem with at least minimum levels of diversity. The core
concept of this denition is that biotic and non-biotic processes can
respond to uctuations in matter and energy through time and
space, rather than being rigidly conned to a static condition. In
other words, hillslopes have the ability to fail in landslides during
intense precipitation, rather than being shored up by rock bolts and
retaining walls, and sh populations have the ability to migrate to
different portions of a river network in response to ooding or
drought, rather than being partitioned into sub-populations by
impassable barriers such as dams or culverts. Layers of vagueness
are built into this denition, however. Over what time span must
the landscape and ecosystem be sustained? What constitutes an
acceptable minimum level of physical or biological diversity?
These are not simple questions to answer, but in addressing these
questions for specic situations, geomorphologists can make vital
and needed contributions to ongoing dialogs about how to
preserve vitally important ecosystem services and biodiversity.
Focusing on these questions can also force geomorphologists to
explicitly include biota in understanding surface processes and
landforms. The stabilization of hillslopes or the partitioning of
rivers does not really matter in a purely physical context. Although
geomorphologists may be interested to know that hillslopes
cannot adjust because of stabilization or rivers cannot continue to
move sediment downstream because of dams, these issues become
critically important only in the context of increased hazards for
humans in the hillslope example, or loss of ecosystem services for
biotic communities in the dam example.
4. Conceptual frameworks for characterizing critical zone
integrity and sustainability
The issues raised above are complex and difcult to address.
Three concepts connectivity, inequality, and thresholds or tipping
points can be helpful in characterizing critical zone integrity and
sustainability in specic settings. Numerous conceptual models
incorporate some or all of these basic concepts (e.g., Bull, 1991;
Simon and Rinaldi, 2006; Wohl, 2010; Chin et al., in press): in this
section, I focus on the basic concepts.
4.1. Connectivity
Connectivity is used to describe multiple aspects of uxes of
matter, energy and organisms (Fig. 1). Hydrologic connectivity
refers to the movement of water, such as down a hillslope in the
surface and/or subsurface, from hillslopes into channels, or along a
river network (Pringle, 2001; Bracken and Croke, 2007). Sediment
connectivity describes the movement or storage of sediment down
hillslopes, into channels, along river networks, and so forth (Fryirs
et al., 2007). River connectivity refers to water-mediated uxes
within a river network (Ward, 1997). Biological connectivity
describes the ability of organisms or plant propagules to disperse
between suitable habitats or between isolated populations for
breeding (Merriam, 1984). Landscape connectivity refers to the
movement of water, sediment, or other materials between
individual landforms (Brierley et al., 2006). Structural connectivity
characterizes the extent to which landscape units, which can range
in scale from <1 m for bunchgrasses dispersed across exposed soil
to the conguration of hillslopes and valley bottoms across
thousands of meters, are physically linked to one another
(Wainwright et al., 2011). Functional connectivity describes
process-specic interactions between multiple structural char-
acteristics, such as runoff and sediment moving downslope
between the bunchgrasses and exposed soil patches (Wainwright
et al., 2011). Any of these forms of connectivity can be described in
terms of spatial extent, which partly depends on temporal
variability. River connectivity, for example, uctuates through
time as discharge uctuates, just as functional connectivity along a
hillslope uctuates through time in response to precipitation
(Wainwright et al., 2011).
Connectivity can also be used to describe social components.
The terms multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, holistic, and inte-
grative, as applied to research or management, all refer to
disciplinary connectivity, or the ability to convey information
originating in different scholarly disciplines, the incorporation of
different disciplinary perspectives, and the recognition that critical
zone processes transcend any particular scholarly discipline.
Beyond the fact that the characteristics of connectivity critically
inuence process and form in the critical zone, the specics of
connectivity can be used to understand how past human
manipulations have altered a particular landscape or ecosystem,
and how future manipulations might be used to restore desired
system traits. This approach is exemplied by the connectivity
diagrams for rivers in Kondolf et al. (2006) (Fig. 2).
4.2. Inequality
Connectivity does not imply that all aspects of a landscape or
ecosystem are of equal importance to uxes of energy, matter, and
organisms. As scientists from diverse disciplines improve the
ability to quantify rates and magnitudes of diverse uxes, it
becomes increasingly clear that the majority of landscape change
occurs during relatively short periods of time and that some
portions of the landscape are much more dynamic than other
portions, as illustrated by several examples. Biogeochemists
describe a short period of time with disproportionately high
reaction rates relative to longer intervening time periods as a hot
moment, and a small area with disproportionately high reaction
rates relative to the surroundings as a hot spot (McClain et al.,
2003). Numerous examples of inequalities in time and space exist
in the geomorphic literature. More than 75% of the long-term
sediment ux from mountain rivers in Taiwan occurs less than
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1% of the time, during typhoon-generated oods (Kao and
Milliman, 2008). Approximately 50% of the suspended sediment
discharged by rivers of the Western Transverse Ranges of
California, USA comes from the 10% of the basin underlain by
weakly consolidated bedrock (Warrick and Mertes, 2009).
Somewhere between 17% and 35% of the total particulate organic
carbon ux to the worlds oceans comes from high-standing
islands in the southwest Pacic, which constitute only about 3% of
Earths landmass (Lyons et al., 2002). One-third of the total amount
of stream energy generated by the Tapi River of India during the
monsoon season is expended on the day of the peak ood (Kale and
Hire, 2007). Three-quarters of the carbon stored in dead wood and
oodplain sediments along headwater mountain stream networks
in the Colorado Front Range is stored in one-quarter of the total
length of the stream network (Wohl et al., 2012).
Because not all moments in time or spots on a landscape are of
equal importance, effective understanding and management of
critical zone environments requires knowledge of how, when, and
where uxes occur. Particularly dynamic portions of a landscape,
such as riparian zones, may be disproportionately important in
providing ecosystem services, for example, and relatively brief
natural disturbances, such as oods, may be disproportionately
important in ensuring reproductive success of sh populations.
Recognition of inequalities also implies that concepts and process-
response models based on average conditions should not be
uncritically applied to all landscapes and ecosystems.
4.3. Thresholds/tipping points
Geomorphologists are used to thinking about thresholds. Use of
the term grew rapidly following Schumms seminal 1973 paper
Geomorphic thresholds and complex response of drainage
systems, although thinking about landscape change in terms of
thresholds was implicit prior to this paper, as Schumm acknowl-
edged. Geomorphologists typically dene a threshold as a
signicant change in surface process or form, and distinguish
extrinsic thresholds that occur under the response of an external
variable from intrinsic thresholds that occur without a change in
an external variable. Other disciplines such as ecology use
thresholds in a similar manner, but the public may be more
familiar with the analogous phrase, tipping point, thanks to
Malcolm Gladwells 2002 book The Tipping Point. Gladwell
described a tipping point as the point in time when change in a
parameter or system is no longer progressive or linear but instead
becomes exponential.
In the context of the critical zone and geomorphology, we can
focus on thresholds that are relatively easy to identify, such as
exceeding a regulatory level for a specied substance. Examples
include mandated total maximum daily load for a river, permissi-
ble nitrate concentrations in drinking water, or standards for
particulate matter in the atmosphere. Understanding and manip-
ulating the factors that cause a substance to exceed a regulatory
level, or predicting the consequences of that exceedance, are
typically more difcult, but at least the exceedance is relatively
easy to identify. Identication of thresholds that cause the critical
zone to move between alternative stable states is more difcult.
Ecologists dene alternative stable states as different stable
congurations that an ecological community can adopt and that
persist through at least small perturbations (Beisner et al., 2003). A
community can move from one stable state to another by a
sufciently large perturbation applied to state variables such as
population density (in this scenario, different states can exist
Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the six degrees of connection between rivers and the greater landscape. The segment of channel (lighter gray) shown here is connected to:
upstream and downstream portions of the river network; adjacent uplands; the oodplain; ground water; the hyporheic zone (darker gray); and the atmosphere. The
photograph for upstream-downstream connection was taken during a ood on the Paria River, a tributary of the Colorado River that enters just downstream from Glen
Canyon Dam in Arizona, USA. In this view, the Paria is turbid with suspended sediment whereas the Colorado, which is released from the base of the dam, is clear. The
photograph for the hillslope-channel connection shows a large landslide entering the Dudh Khosi River in Nepal. The photograph for the oodplain-channel connection was
taken along the Rio Jutai, a blackwater tributary of the Amazon River, during the annual ood in early June. In this view the ooded forest is submerged by several meters of
water. The photograph for hyporheic-channel connection shows a larval aquatic insect (macroinvertebrate) as an example of the organisms that can move between the
channel and the hyporheic environment. The photograph for atmosphere-channel connection shows a mayy emerging from the river prior to entering the atmosphere as a
winged adult (image courtesy of Jeremy Monroe, Freshwaters Illustrated).
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simultaneously), or via a change in the parameters that determine
the behavior of state variables and the ways they interact with
each other (Beisner et al., 2003).
As with ecological integrity, the denition of ecological alterna-
tive stable states implicitly includes physical and chemical
processes, and can easily be broadened to include geomorphic
process and form. Wohl and Beckman (in press), for example,
describe wood-rich and wood-poor states in forested mountain
streams, and quantify thresholds of instream wood load that can
cause a stream to move from one persistent, stable state to another.
Arguably the most difcult thresholds to identify, but also the most
important, are those that dene the limits of sustainability for a
species, a biotic community, or a specic resource use by humans. As
noted earlier, sustainability is most effectively dened within a
specied time interval, but implies the ability to maintain existing
conditions during that time interval. Thresholds associated with
exceeding sustainability limits unfortunately seem to be most
commonly identied once they have been crossed and a species has
gone locally or globally extinct, a biotic community has disappeared
locally or globally, or a human community can no longer use a
resource such as agricultural soils that have eroded or become saline,
sheries that have collapsed, or ground or surface waters that are no
longer potable. Clearly, there is an intellectual challenge in
identifying these more complex thresholds before they are crossed,
and meeting this challenge has the added substantial benet of
contributing to sustaining critical zone integrity.
In addition to a tradition of explicitly identifying thresholds,
geomorphology has established conceptual frameworks for
considering scenarios in which thresholds are not crossed, as well
as the manner in which a system can respond once a threshold is
crossed. Relevant geomorphic conceptual frameworks include
static, steady-state and dynamic equilibrium (Chorley and
Kennedy, 1971; Schumm, 1977), disequilibrium (Tooth, 2000),
steady-state versus transient landscapes (Attal et al., 2008),
complex response (Schumm and Parker, 1973), lag time (Howard,
1982; Wohl, 2010), and transient versus persistent landforms
(Brunsden and Thornes, 1979).
I propose that geomorphologists can effectively contribute to
quantifying, predicting, and manipulating critical zone integrity by
focusing on connectivity, inequality and thresholds. Specically, for
connectivity, inequality and thresholds, we can provide three
services. First, geomorphologists can identify the existence and
characteristics of these phenomena. What forms of connectivity
exist between a landform such as a river segment and the greater
environment, for example? What are the spatial (magnitude, extent)
and temporal (frequency, duration) qualities of this connectivity?
Where and when do inequalities occur in the landscape where
does most sediment come from and when is most sediment
transported? What arethe thresholds in uxes of water, sediment, or
solutes that will cause the river to change in form or stability?
Second, geomorphologists can quantify changes in connectivi-
ty, inequality or the crossing of thresholds that have resulted from
past human manipulations and predict changes that are likely to
result from future manipulations. How do human activities alter
uxes, and how do human societies respond to these altered
uxes? To continue the river example, how did construction of this
dam alter longitudinal, lateral, and vertical connectivity on this
river? How did altered connectivity change the distribution of hot
spots for biogeochemical reactions in the riparian zone or around
instream structures such as logjams? How did altered connectivity
result in changed sediment supply and river metamorphosis from a
braided to a single-thread river, as well as local extinction of sh
species?
Third, geomorphologists can recommend actions to restore
desired levels of connectivity and inequality, as well as actions that
can be taken to either prevent crossing of a negative threshold that
results in undesirable conditions, or force crossing of a positive
threshold that results in desirable conditions. What characteristics
of water, sediment and solute uxes must be restored downstream
from the dam, for example, to re-create key components of critical
zone integrity and restore sh populations? What environmental
ows must be maintained as ow regulation accelerates on this
river (e.g., Rathburn et al., 2009)?
5. A case study from the Colorado Front Range, USA of
geomorphic perspectives relevant to managing the critical zone
I use the existence of beaver meadows along headwater
mountain streams in the Colorado Front Range to illustrate some of
Fig. 2. Schematic illustration of changes in connectivity. The example illustrated
here is relevant to the case study from the Colorado Front Range. An ecosystem with
a stable, persistent conguration (1) results from the presence of beaver dams that
limit longitudinal connectivity along the channel by obstructing ow and creating
backwater zones that store water, solutes, and sediment. The beaver dams enhance
lateral connectivity between the channel and oodplain by increasing the
frequency, duration, extent, and magnitude of overbank ows, as well as the
deposition and storage on the oodplain of ne sediment and organic matter. In a
scenario of linear response (A), when the beaver dams are removed or fall into
disrepair, longitudinal connectivity increases moderately and lateral connectivity
decreases substantially (2). The ecosystem assumes a stable, persistent
conguration that is very different than conguration 1. Return of beaver
colonies and reestablishment of beaver dams can potentially return the
ecosystem to a stable, persistent conguration the same as that of conguration
1 (indicated here as conguration 3). In a scenario of non-linear response (B),
gradual disintegration of beaver dams once beaver leave a stream results in more
rapid increase in longitudinal connectivity than loss in lateral connectivity
(conguration 2). Enhanced longitudinal connectivity facilitates channel incision
that eventually limits lateral connectivity (conguration 3). Return of beaver and
rebuilding of dams quickly limits longitudinal connectivity (conguration 4), but
accumulation of sediment along the channel may be required before lateral
connectivity is fully restored (conguration 5).
G Model
the ideas proposed in the previous section. Beaver (Castor
canadensis in North America and C. ber in Eurasia) are considered
ecosystem engineers that change, maintain, or create habitats by
altering the availability of biotic and abiotic resources for
themselves and other species (Rosell et al., 2005). The most
important ecosystem engineering undertaken by beaver is the
construction and maintenance of low dams of wood and sediment.
Beaver build dams on even very steep (>7% gradient) and narrow
rivers, but where stream gradient is less than 3% and the valley
bottom is at least two or three times the active channel width,
numerous closely spaced beaver dams can create beaver meadows
(Fig. 3). Dams vary from 7 to 74 per km along low gradient streams,
with a typical value of 10 dams per km (Pollock et al., 2003).
Beaver meadows large, wet meadows associated with
overbank ooding caused by numerous beaver dams along a
stream were rst described in Rocky Mountain National Park by
Ives (1942), but the term is now more widely used. A beaver dam
creates a channel obstruction and backwater that enhances the
magnitude, duration and spatial extent of overbank ow (West-
brook et al., 2006). Shallow ows across topographically irregular
oodplains concentrate in depressions and this, along with
excavation of a network of small, winding canals across the
oodplain by beaver (Olson and Hubert, 1994), promotes an
anabranching channel planform (John and Klein, 2004). Overbank
ows enhance inltration, hyporheic exchange, and a high riparian
water table (Westbrook et al., 2006; Briggs et al., 2012).
Attenuation of ood peaks through in-channel and oodplain
storage promotes retention of ner sediment and organic matter
(Pollock et al., 2007) and enhances the diversity of aquatic and
riparian habitat (Pollock et al., 2003; Westbrook et al., 2011). By
hydrologically altering biogeochemical pathways, beaver inuence
the distribution, standing stocks, and availability of nutrients
(Naiman et al., 1994). Beaver ponds and meadows disproportion-
ately retain carbon and other nutrients (Naiman et al., 1986;
Correll et al., 2000; Wohl et al., 2012).
As long as beaver maintain their dams, the associated high
water table favors riparian deciduous species such as willow (Salix
spp.), cottonwood (Populus spp.) and aspen (Populus spp.) that
beaver prefer to eat, and limits the encroachment of coniferous
trees and other more xeric upland plants. Beaver thus create (i)
enhanced lateral connectivity between the channel and oodplain,
enhanced vertical connectivity between surface and ground water,
and limited longitudinal connectivity because of multiple dams
(Burchsted et al., 2010), (ii) hot spots in the river corridor and the
greater landscape with respect to habitat and species diversity
(McDowell and Naiman, 1986; Snodgrass and Meffe, 1998; Wright
et al., 2002, 2003; Wright, 2009; Bartel et al., 2010), nutrient
processing and biogeochemical reactions (Correll et al., 2000;
Rosell et al., 2005), and carbon storage over time scales of 10
1
10
3
years (Wohl et al., 2012), and (iii) a stable ecosystem state that can
persist over periods of 10
2
10
3
years (Kramer et al., 2012; Polvi
and Wohl, 2012).
Removal of beaver, either directly as in trapping, or indirectly as
in competition with grazing animals such as elk or climate change
that causes small perennial streams to become intermittent, drives
the beaver meadow across a threshold. Several case studies (e.g.,
Green and Westbrook, 2009; Polvi and Wohl, 2012) indicate that
within one to two decades the beaver meadow becomes what has
been called an elk grassland (Wolf et al., 2007) (Fig. 3). As beaver
dams fall into disrepair or are removed, peak ows are more likely
to be contained within a mainstem channel. Secondary channels
become inactive and the riparian water table declines. Peak ows
concentrated in a single channel are more erosive: the mainstem
channel through the former beaver meadow incises and/or widens,
and sediment yields to downstream portions of the river increase
(Green and Westbrook, 2009). Nutrient retention and biological
processing decline, organic matter is no longer regularly added to
oodplain and channel storage, and stored organic matter is more
likely to be oxidized and eroded. As oodplain soils dry out,
burrowing rodents can introduce through their feces the spores of
ectomyccorhizal fungi, and the fungi facilitate encroachment by
species of conifer such as Picea (spp.) that require the fungi to take
up soil nutrients (Terwilliger and Pastor, 1999). Once a channel is
incised into a dry meadow with limited deciduous riparian
vegetation that supplies beaver food, reestablishment of beaver
is difcult, and the elk meadow becomes an alternative stable state
for that segment of the river.
Beaver were largely trapped out of the Colorado Front Range
during the rst three decades of the 19th century (Fremont, 1845;
Wohl, 2001), but beaver populations began to recover within a half
century. Beaver population censuses for selected locales within the
region of Rocky Mountain National Park date to 1926, shortly after
establishment of the park in 1915. Censuses have continued up to
the present, and these records indicate that beaver were
moderately abundant in the park until circa 1976. As of 2012,
almost no beaver remain in Rocky Mountain National Park. This
contrasts strongly with other catchments in the Front Range,
where beaver populations have remained stable or increased since
1940.
The National Park Service has undertaken riparian restoration
in the park for 50 years, with increasing activity during the past
decade and an emphasis on erecting tall fences that create riparian
grazing exclosures designed primarily to exclude elk. Elk (Cervus
canadensis) are native to the park. Predation by wolves historically
limited the density of elk and kept the animals moving, but wolves
(Canis lupus) were hunted to extinction in Colorado by about 1940
(Armstrong, 1972). Elk were hunted to extinction in the vicinity of
what later became Rocky Mountain National Park by 1900, but 49
elk were transplanted from the Yellowstone herd in Wyoming
during 191314 (Hess, 1993). The elk population reached 350 by
1933, when the population was judged to have met or exceeded
the carrying capacity of the parks lower elevation valleys that
provide elk winter range (Hess, 1993). Although elk hunting is
permitted in the surrounding national forests, hunting is not
permitted within the national park and elk have learned to remain
within the park boundaries. Elk numbers increased dramatically
during the period 19331943, decreased in response to controlled
shooting during 19441961, and subsequently rose rapidly to 3500
by 1997 (Hess, 1993; Mitchell et al., 1999). Like many grazing
animals, elk prefer to remain in riparian zones, and matched
photos indicate substantial declines in riparian willow and aspen
during periods when elk populations increased. Although other
factors may have contributed to the recent decline in beaver
numbers, increased riparian grazing by elk likely inuences beaver
food supply and population.
Beaver reintroduction in connection with riparian restoration
requires, rst, that beaver have an adequate supply of woody
riparian vegetation for food and for building dams. About 200
aspen trees are needed by each beaver each year (DeByle, 1985).
Second, reintroduction requires that the region includes sufcient
suitable habitat to permit dispersal and genetic exchange between
colonies of beavers on a river and between rivers. Beaver colony
size can vary widely, but averages 56 animals. Each colony has a
minimum territory of 1 km along a stream (Olson and Hubert,
1994). Third, successful reintroduction requires that human
communities sharing the landscape accept the presence of beaver.
Although the latter point might not seem as important in a national
park, beaver continue to be removed in many regions because of
perceived negative consequences of their presence, including
water impoundments and overbank ooding, felling of riparian
trees, and pulses of coarse wood to downstream river segments if
beaver dams fail during peak ows.
G Model
Options for riparian restoration in Rocky Mountain National
Park include gradual and more abrupt measures. Gradual
measures include grazing exclosures that include some lag time
for woody riparian vegetation to regrow, self-reintroduction of
beaver from populations outside the park boundaries, and
measures to limit elk populations to 600800 animals within
the park. Relatively abrupt approaches to riparian restoration
include engineered logjams or other obstacles to downstream
Fig. 3. (A) Schematic illustration of feedbacks between beaver dam and valley geometry that can result in the formation of a beaver meadow. Where beaver dam steep, narrow
valley segments, only small backwaters form and the narrow valley bottom limits the extent of oodplain storage of water, sediment, and nutrients (lower portion of
diagram). Where beaver build dams in lower gradient, wider valley segments, overbank ows of greater spatial extent can result in formation of secondary channels,
inltration and rise of the riparian water table, and storage of ne sediment and nutrients. Establishment of woody riparian vegetation such as willow (Salix spp.) is facilitated
by higher water tables, providing a food supply for beaver, and facilitating creation of more dams and a stable, persistent beaver meadow. (B) Schematic illustration of
feedbacks that can result in the formation of a beaver meadow or an elk grassland. Feedbacks in upper half of diagram that lead to a beaver meadow are as in (A). In lower half
of diagram, absence of beaver dams reduces overbank ow. Riparian water table drops, secondary channels become inactive, and primary channel incises. Xeric upland
vegetation encroaches on the valley bottom. Elk grazing can limit regeneration of deciduous woody riparian vegetation and thus limit stability of stream banks. Incised
channel can also widen slightly.
G Model
uxes of water and sediment within the primary channel, and
active reintroduction of beaver.
Geomorphologists can contribute to management decisions in
at least three ways. First, geomorphologists can identify the
existence and characteristics of longitudinal, lateral, and vertical
riverine connectivity in the presence and the absence of beaver
(Fig. 2). Second, geomorphologists can identify and quantify the
thresholds of water and sediment uxes involved in changing
between single- and multi-thread channel planform and between
elk and beaver meadows. Third, geomorphologists can evaluate
actions proposed to restore desired levels of connectivity and to
force elk meadows across a threshold to become beaver meadows.
Geomorphologists can bring a variety of tools to these tasks,
including historical reconstruction of the extent and effects of past
beaver meadows (Kramer et al., 2012; Polvi and Wohl, 2012),
monitoring of contemporary uxes of water, energy, and organic
matter (Westbrook et al., 2006), and numerical modeling of
potential responses to future human manipulations of riparian
process and form. In this example, geomorphologists can play a
fundamental role in understanding and managing critical zone
integrity within river networks in the national park during the
Anthropocene: i.e., during a period in which the landscapes and
ecosystems under consideration have already responded in
complex ways to past human manipulations.
6. Toward a new mindset
My impression, partly based on my own experience and partly
based on conversations with colleagues, is that the common
default assumption among geomorphologists is that a landscape
that does not have obvious, contemporary human alterations has
experienced lesser rather than greater human manipulation. Based
on the types of syntheses summarized earlier, and my experience
in seemingly natural landscapes with low contemporary popula-
tion density but persistent historical human impacts (e.g., Wohl,
2001), I argue that it is more appropriate to start with the default
assumption that any particular landscape has had greater rather
than lesser human manipulation through time, and that this
history of manipulation continues to inuence landscapes and
ecosystems. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite paper
titles, we should by default assume that we are dealing with the
ghosts of land use past (Harding et al., 1998). This assumption
applies even to landscapes with very low population density and/
or limited duration of human occupation or resource use (e.g.,
Young et al., 1994; Wohl, 2006; Wohl and Merritts, 2007; Comiti,
2012).
The default assumption of greater human impact means, among
other things, that we must work to overcome our own changing
baseline of perception. I use changing baseline of perception to
refer to the assumption that whatever we are used to is normal or
natural. A striking example comes from a survey administered to
undergraduate science students in multiple U.S. states and several
countries. In the survey, students were shown an identical series of
photos of river segments and asked to rate each river segment on a
numerical scale in terms of being natural, esthetically pleasing,
dangerous, and needing improvement. With the exception of the
U.S. state of Oregon, and the countries of Germany and Sweden,
students consistently rated river segments containing instream
wood negatively, viewing these river segments as unnatural,
dangerous, and in need of rehabilitation (Chin et al., 2008). This
completely contradicts the manner in which river scientists view
instream wood, and ignores the logical assumption that, since a
much greater proportion of the world was forested historically,
most river segments in forested environments would naturally
contain a great deal of instream wood (Montgomery et al., 2003).
The students negative perception of instream wood at least partly
reects the fact that most of them are used to seeing rivers with
very little instream wood, even in forested environments, because
of historical and continuing wood removal. Wood-poor rivers now
seem normal and natural to most people. Those of us who work in
rivers and are familiar with the scientic literature on instream
wood, as well as the idea of dramatic historical change in
landscapes and ecosystems, can metaphorically step back and
shake our heads at the students misperceptions, but identifying
our own unexamined and misleading perceptions is much more
challenging.
The default assumption of greater human manipulation of the
landscape appears to apply broadly to temperate and tropical
zones, whether arid, semiarid or humid. Archeologists have
developed convincing evidence that the seeming wilderness of
the pre-Columbian Amazon basin hosted many more people than
initially thought, although estimates range enormously from
500,000 to 10 million people (Mann, 2005; McMichael et al.,
2012) and remain controversial. Certainly some of these people
intensively managed the surrounding vegetation and soils, as
reected in the persistence of dark-colored, fertile terra preta
(Liang et al., 2006) soils that were created by pre-Columbian
Indians from 500 to 2500 years BP. Prehistoric agricultural
societies in central Arizona, USA created an extensive network
of irrigation canals that resulted in soil salinization that persists
today (Andrews and Bostwick, 2000). Only very limited areas of
high latitude (Antarctica, parts of the Arctic) and high altitude
appear not to have been manipulated by humans at some point
during the past few millennia (Sanderson et al., 2002; McCloskey
and Spalding, 1989).
Faced with the realization that most landscapes have been and
continue to be manipulated by humans in ways subtle or obvious,
geomorphologists can make at least three important contributions
to sustaining critical zone integrity. First, we are explicitly trained
to consider the historical context of landscapes, in the broadest
sense of historical reaching back through the Quaternary and
beyond. We can enhance our efforts to focus on the time period
that includes human presence on the landscape, and to character-
ize how past human manipulations continue to inuence the
critical zone.
Second, we can apply our knowledge of connectivity, inequality,
and thresholds to landscape and ecosystem management. I use
management here to refer to coordinated and directed actions,
rooted in scientic understanding, that are designed to maintain or
enhance the integrity and sustainability of a landscape or
ecosystem. This form of management contrasts with individualis-
tic, narrowly focused manipulation of landscapes and ecosystems
designed for immediate survival or economic prot, which
characterizes most of human history. On the one hand, I am
uncomfortable with the notion of management and the underlying
hubris, because I see so much evidence that we cannot or do not
intelligently or sustainably manage highly complex landscapes
and ecosystems. On the other hand, we have been manipulating
landscapes and ecosystems for millennia, and our manipulations
will only continue to accelerate as human populations and access
to technology increase. So, we might as well attempt to improve
our management. Among the ways to improve management are to
emphasize adaptive management (Walters, 1986), which involves
monitoring system response to specic human manipulation and,
if necessary, altering manipulation to obtain desired outcomes.
Another obvious improvement would be to practice integrated
management that considers, for example, not only how a proposed
dam will alter hydroelectric power generation and river naviga-
tion, but also river connectivity, biological connectivity, sustain-
ability of riverine and nearshore ecosystems, and so forth. Adaptive
and integrated management can be most effective if underpinned
by a conceptual framework that includes fundamental geomorphic
G Model
concepts such as feedbacks and thresholds (e.g., Florsheim et al.,
2006; Shafroth et al., 2010; Chin et al., in press).
Finally, geomorphologists can quantify thresholds, alternative
stable states of a landscape, landscape resilience, and critical zone
integrity. To return to the beaver meadow example, the input of
ecologists is needed to specify parameters such as minimum water
table elevation to sustain willows, minimum food supply to sustain
each beaver, and minimum genetically sustainable populations of
beaver. Geomorphologists can quantify the channel obstructions
and channel-oodplain connectivity necessary to maintain an
anabranching channel planform, or the differences in overbank
deposition rates of ne sediment and organic matter under single-
thread versus multi-thread channel planforms. Quantitative
thresholds can provide targets that management actions are
designed to achieve, as when environmental ow regimes are
designed around exceeding thresholds such as mobilizing bed
sediments or creating overbank ows (Rathburn et al., 2009).
7. Conclusions
A wide variety of metrics loss of soil fertility, proportion of
ecosystem production appropriated by humans, availability of
ecosystem services, changing climate indicates that we are in a
period of overshoot (Hooke et al., 2012). Overshoot occurs when a
population exceeds the local carrying capacity. An environments
carrying capacity for a given species is the number of individuals
living in a given manner, which the environment can support
indenitely (Catton, 1980, p. 4). One reason we are in overshoot is
that we have consistently ignored critical zone integrity and
resilience, and particularly ignored how the cumulative history of
human manipulation of the critical zone has reduced integrity and
resilience. Geomorphologists are uniquely trained to explicitly
consider past changes that have occurred over varying time scales,
and we can bring this training to management of landscapes and
ecosystems. We can use our knowledge of historical context in a
forward-looking approach that emphasizes both quantifying and
predicting responses to changing climate and resource use, and
management actions to protect and restore desired landscape and
ecosystem conditions. Management can be viewed as the ultimate
test of scientic understanding: does the landscape or ecosystem
respond to a particular human manipulation in the way that we
predict it will? Management of the critical zone during the
Anthropocene therefore provides an exciting opportunity for
geomorphologists to use their knowledge of critical zone processes
to enhance the sustainability of diverse landscapes and ecosys-
tems.
Acknowledgements
I thank Anne Chin, Anne Jefferson, and Karl Wegmann for the
invitation to speak at a Geological Society of America topical
session on geomorphology in the Anthropocene, which led to this
paper. Comments by L. Allan James and two anonymous reviewers
helped to improve an earlier draft.
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