Ideas behind Ecotenet

Ecotenet Origins

I've always felt very connected to the place that I live, and in particular, the woods. This most likely stems from the countless hours I spent roaming those woods as a child, climbing trees and splashing through creek beds. And as I grew older, the urge to develop a deeper connection with my environment strengthened. The idea of interacting with my environment in a way that was beneficial to both sides. Give and take. A real relationship.

This idea, this feeling, I think is what planted the seed for Ecotenet. A space where people can learn and share their knowledge about nature that is connected to place.

Species Distributions

Someone once shared the idea of having a tool that could be used as an ID guide specifically for all the trees where you live. I thought it was an awesome idea and got to thinking on it a little more. I have seen many Birds of (insert your state here) resources, which are amazing, but because political boundaries mostly aren't connected to the natural world, much of the information in them wasn't applicable to my specific area.

And then I stumbled upon ecoregions and the whole idea clicked. Why not map tree species to regions that are environmentally similar to yours. And why stop at trees or birds? Why not map all species? Luckily, there is a large amount of publicly available data on some(not all...yet) of these species.

And we're off!

Human Interactions

I feel like almost anyone who is interested in outdoor skills has read about starting a fire with a bow drill (for those who haven't, it is a primitive tool made from wood and cordage used to start a fire). I was reading one of these said articles and it listed about 5-10 different species that I could use to create each component of the bow drill. I wasn't really sure which, if any, of these species were present where I lived so I had to do further research to find out.

And then it clicked again. In my eyes, almost everything we do, how we interact with the world and each other, is in some way connected to our environment. And although this is becoming less clear through globalization and technology, everything from food to clothing to culture is connected to place.

A brief tangent on technology: at first glance this may seem applicable mainly to primitive skills or interactions very closely tied to nature. And that technology(to be clear, I'm using technology to mean machines and tools, not just computers and stuff) is removing the need for knowledge of place. But I see it a little differently. I think we are currently in a phase where we have used our technology to create generalized solutions to problems and then tried to scale those solutions into a one-size-fits-all model. But I think as our technology improves, the next phase will be creating specialized solutions to specialized problems, reconnecting us to place.

I also feel that how we interact, whether we see it or not, is often connected to species. So it seems like an easy way to tie knowledge and place together when needed.

So what I really want is to have knowledge about how to make a bow drill, how to grow food, how to build things, and how to be connected to culture where I live, not just generally. Because why not?

Ecoregions

There are a couple of problems when trying to connect knowledge to ecological place; proper scale and reliable data.

On the scale side, there are larger classifications like biomes and realms and smaller classifications that subdivide ecoregions. The larger classifications seemed slightly too broad to have the detail I was looking for. The smaller classifications seemed more detailed than the species data can reliably display, and also, just a little overwhelming when you have so many regions.

On the data side, the reliability is also related to scale. If you have one data point for a species in a larger classification, it becomes less likely that that species is present throughout the whole region(this is still a problem with ecoregions but less so). In a smaller classification it becomes more likely to say that a species is not present in a region simply because we haven't recorded it in that specific place. The same way that if I look out my front window and don't see a species and say “it must not be present here“, when in reality it could be right outside my back window. It would be very cool at some point to be able to draw a circle around an area of any size, big or small, and be able to know what species are present. But our species data just isn't that detailed yet, especially on a global scale.

Voting

Because how people interact with the world is so subjective in my eyes, it didn't make sense to make this similar to Wikipedia where a topic is created and then anyone can edit it. I think two people could write a post on the same topic and explore it in two completely different ways and each still be valid knowledge.

But, I do think some information is better than others, whether it be in detail or delivery. So voting on a post is a way to display to viewers and authors how helpful the information is, generally or comparatively.

This system may or may not end up being valuable. It may be updated and improved upon. And like all of this, is up for discussion.

Content Moderation

Currently all posts, comments, and profiles must be approved before being made public. We really want to make sure, especially at the beginning, that we are building a positive, inclusive community. At the moment this seems like the safest solution, but I think most likely will change in the future...not sure what to...again open to discussion.

Future Plans

I have a lot of ideas...the most concrete one that I think will happen is to add a forum so that communities can be built in the space and people can have more detailed discussions around topics. I also really like the idea of turning this into a decentralized platform where the content creators and contributors have complete control over the knowledge base. But we shall see...more to come.