VISUAL BIODIVERSITY SURVEY: 25 SAMPLES
When art has the ability to infiltrate the scientific world, the opportunity for thought provoking and intellectually stimulating projects abound. Art and science have a long background together. Before the advent of computers, scientists used hand drawings to document different plant and animal species, and many scientists today still make heavy use of art to show the biological world. Artists have been around to critique scientific ideas, and often borrow scientific technology for the creation of their art work. With the help of my biology and art backgrounds, I want to attempt to demonstrate how art and science come together. My idea is to use basic biologic research practices that are used in the surveying of biological diversity and to make a visual representation of the data I collect. I will use concepts from biodiversity research, mapping, and representing my data through drawings of the fauna of the area.
In any biological field research, knowing where species are located are key. This allows for biologists to determine patterns, such as nesting patterns or dispersal patterns. For example, if you were interested the nesting patterns of a blackbird, you would go out into the field, and mark their locations. (This is now made much easier with GPS systems.) If however, you are interested in the biodiversity of an area, the scope of the research changes. Instead of locating the area in which a particular organism is found, you will now focus your efforts on determining the number of different organisms that are found in a given area. (Incidentally, Biodiversity can be looked at by the number of species, or by looking at the higher levels, for example number of families. This can potentially give different pictures of how “diverse” an area is.)
In order to conduct a biological survey, some simple principles are followed. These include random sampling, and an attempt to standardize results through determining the time spent in each area and determining the size of an area. For example, if you are sampling trees, you would try to sample a large enough area to cover many different trees that would be picked at “random” for your data. Biological surveys often use some form of grid in order to divide up large areas into smaller areas of equal proportions, since the diversity of an area is what is of interest. These grids are often in the shape of some hexagon or square.
If one looks at The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, one will see sketches of plants and animals, for example his well known finches. Also, if one were to go to an antique print store, one will run into many old prints taken from biology texts. These prints were originally made for scientific study purposes, but now have been converted to expensive wall decorations. Sketches are still sometimes used today, but not to the extent they were in the earlier days of biology’s history. Generally today we are more focused on numbers, rather than anatomy, since we now have a good grasp of what species look like, but not a good grasp of what the population of the various species is out there.
Mixing art and science is nothing new. The idea of visually representing “samples” on a grid is also not new. For example, in the Painters Flat project “Remote Location, 1:100,000” Brett Stalbaum and Paula Poole created “a map consisting of 36 geo-referenced tiles.” (Stalbaum, 3) This became a visual representation of where data was collected, where it was placed in the final installation.
A more science based example comes from a previous trip to the White Mountain Research center. On this interdisciplinary workshop, Brett Stalbaum and Naomi Spellman brought along two scientists, Kimberlee Chambers and Nico Tripcevich. Tripcevich’s background was in anthropology, focusing on obsidian. For the workshop, Tripcevich led the group through the steps that he used in his search for obsidian deposits. Once they found a potential sight, he proceeded to mark off the area with a GPS device.
Chambers, whose background was in geography, with specific interest in “the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and cultural diversity, with a major focus on food plants in both agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies” (Spellman, 3) shared some of her thoughts on cognitive mappings. She said, “cognitive maps allows for individuals [sic] experiences and single points of data (where bighorn like to graze; where a certain plant can be found) to be incorporated. The results are more detailed information that can be crucial when thinking about things like where a new development should go but also in drawing awareness to climate change by focusing on the local level.” (Spellman, 5)
Many of the ideas in Chambers’ statement are important. Today, detailed information is very important in both the scientific and political spheres. How these visual maps are presented, and what details they choose to emphasize are very influential. My project takes these ideas of how to present biological data and information and brings them to the forefront.
Therefore, my goal is to use a biological survey method of choosing an area to map out and bring back the visual representation of biodiversity. My plan to do this is by “randomly” picking out an area on the map of the area surrounding the White Mountain Research center, and then creating a grid on it. I would obviously have to keep in mind practical issues when choosing the area to grid. For example, because of time constraints an area that I can easily traverse in the course of a day will be important. Actually, however, this constraint nicely parallels the fact that in actual scientific studies, many constraints keep areas from being as thoroughly researched as the scientists would like. For example, lack of time, money, and other resources (especially in ecological research) keep researchers from being able to survey areas as carefully as they might if resources were unlimited. When I have picked the area to grid, I will then actually map it out, not only on a map, but by walking through the grid. While I do this, I will produce my “biological survey.” However, instead of just coming back with the numbers of each species of trees, for example, which are in an area, I will come back with a drawing from each area on the grid of a species in the area, which is the most prominent, unique, or best exemplifies the area based upon some other criteria. In order to avoid bias, and to follow the idea of equal amount of time spent in each area, I will try to decide on a time frame that I can spend in each area. I will mark what I draw with coordinates using a GPS unit. This will then tie the drawings to their physical location.
On June 2, 2007 around 10am, I headed out into the untamed mountains surrounding the White Mountain Research Center. With a GPS device and sketch pad and pencil in hand, I made my way to an area I had already placed a grid on, in order to get a random data set. In an attempt to get a good variety, I picked an area of two hundred and fifty meters squared. However, this area turned out to be very homogeneous in terms of species diversity, which created a challenge to then be able to find new and interesting things to draw. Though this was perhaps a disappointment to me, it was not surprising.
The research center is located at an elevation of about 10,000 feet, and being on the other side of the Sierra’s, it is a very dry and harsh environment for most organisms to be able to adapt to. This is why what one finds up in these mountains is fairly typical. The bristlecone pines have been able to evolve adaptations to the harsh conditions, and are able to do well in the nutrient poor soil, dolomite. Sagebrush were amazingly abundant, and have adaptations of their own -- such as small hairy leaves that reduce water loss -- to allow them to survive. A few other species were present, but rather rare; except for a small ground cover plant and a grass, which were very common.
Despite picking what I thought was a relatively small area, (if I were conducting an actual survey up in these mountains, would most likely be much to small an area) I ended up spending roughly seven hours wandering from square to square, sketching a sample from each location. While sketching, I was rained on, snowed on, and wind blown. The monotony of doing the same routine for seven hours in these conditions started to get to me, and made me consider how it would be if I were to do this for day after day, counting species instead of drawing them (like many graduate students doing field research). And the sheer amount of time it took for one person demonstrates that for biologists, the amount of people needed to get a good ecological idea of what is going on in an area must be staggering. Which explains perfectly why we still do not know much about many important ecosystems, for example the tropics and oceans. In my opinion, this fact is a shame, especially today when we have the technology and know how to answer many of the questions that have yet to be answered. And it is becoming increasingly important today for many of the answers to become available due to the changes society is doing to the environment.
Though my intentions were to go to the mountains to conduct a biodiversity survey, it became clear that this was easily done (there were only about six or seven different plant species in the mountains). Therefore, I changed my focus to whatever I found most interesting, which in turn ended up being the rare species that managed to live in this harsh habitat, and the adaptations that all the plants had that allowed them to thrive and survive. These are reflected in my sketches.
25 SAMPLES
The outcome for my piece is twenty-five of drawings or sketches from each area of the grid I chose, representing a key aspect from that area. These sketches in a sense represent a visual map of the area I surveyed. By matching each drawing with its coordinate location, one can see a map of a sample of the biodiversity that is in the area of the White Mountain Research Center.
References
Spellman, Naomi. “The Performative and the Political in the Context of Locative Media.”
American Association for Geographers Conference in Chicoga, Illinois. March 2006
Stalbaum, Brett. “Paradigmatic Performance: Data Flow and Practice in the Wild.”
Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 14. Nov 2006.
SARA GEVURTZ
Sara Gevurtz is a junior at the University of California, San Diego. She is majoring in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution Biology. She is also working on two minors in art -- Computing and the Arts, and Studio Art. After college, Sara hopes to continue her education by going to law school or graduate school for a masters. Ultimately she hopes to engage in environmental policy work. Sara’s interests in art include realism, and exploring the combination of biology and art. Some of Sara’s previous work has been shown in juried art shows.