What is Personalised Ecology?
New research that aims to understand our environmental decision-making.
Every time I walk into the grocery store, I immediately turn to my right to look over the selection of flowers and plants. I love walking through the small area filled with bright colors and lovely scents. Sometimes the store has flowers for sale that were grown nearby; mostly the plant section is stocked with ornamental plants, which are primarily grown because they are pretty or because they smell nice. I like pretty things that smell nice! Very much! But it’s also deeply frustrating: stocking the shelves with only ornamental plants, rather than native plants, is an enormous missed opportunity to gently influence people to preserve and promote biodiversity. (By the way: native plants are also pretty and nice-smelling :)
Native plants are those that occur naturally in a region in which they evolved, and thus restoring native plant habitat is critical to preserving biodiversity. Most of the plants available in nurseries (or grocery stores) are alien species from other countries. These plants cut off the insect and animal food web, which negatively influences our food systems and food security. Ornamental and exotic plants can also become invasive and overwhelm native species.
Human health depends on diverse ecosystems and their services. We need clean air, safe water…
