Preface to the Fall Focus on Environmental Concerns:

Insights into a Variety of Environmental Problems

Francis E. Putz, Professor, Department of Botany

While our planet warms, the seas rise around us, toxins accumulate, species and ecosystems are driven to extinction at unprecedented rates, wars rage on, and an alarming number of people go to bed hungry every day, environmentalism, in a broad sense, suffers from scarcity of critical thinkers and effective communicators. Instead of insightful analyses of complex environmental issues, the public is bombarded by buzzwords, lured by simplistic explanations, and otherwise not encouraged to develop the deep understanding that motivates purposeful action. Almost worse, many people fail to recognize that lawlessness, war, hunger, and lack of educational opportunities are all environmental problems. Clearly, environmentalism is not solely the domain of experts on nutrient cycles, population dynamics, or photosynthesis. Instead, solving environmental problems will require the knowledge and expertise of humanists, social scientists, engineers, and biophysical scientists.

The articles in this volume range from philosophical to technological, but all provide excellent examples of the ways environmental problems need to be framed and addressed. Several of the studies focus on water, a topic of increasing concern in Florida and around the world. Water quality issues are explicitly considered in an investigation of a method for studying the movements of toxins through our aquifer. Many of these toxins are leached from the "chemlawns" that cover an even increasing portion of our landscape. A study on the costs of petrochemical and water-guzzling suburban landscape management methods provides convincing evidence that environmentally friendly alternatives are economically viable. There are also many ways to increase the efficiency of agricultural water use, as shown in a simulation study of irrigation. Economics and ecology are also combined in a study of the effects of economic globalization on the lives of farmers in Paraguay.

The breadth of research activities at the University of Florida is further displayed in this volume by two seemingly unrelated studies. One of these studies reveals remarkable similarities in the environmental ethics of Aldo Leopold and those described in the great books of Judaism. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum is a study on the mechanics of live oak timber. These two studies might seem unrelated, but given the iconic status of live oaks in the South, connections can be made. Searching out and acting on such linkages will help to promote our efforts to mitigate the environmental threats to life on our small planet.

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