Daniel B. Botkin
(19 Aug 1937 - )
American ecologist and writer whose interests include the history of the idea of nature and early trends in America related to the conservation of natural resources. He frequently publishes on environmental issues.
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Science Quotes by Daniel B. Botkin (1 quote)
Wherever we seek to find constancy we discover change. Having looked at the old woodlands in Hutcheson Forest, at Isle Royale, and in the wilderness of the boundary waters, in the land of the moose and the wolf, and having uncovered the histories hidden within the trees and within the muds, we find that nature undisturbed is not constant in form, structure, or proportion, but changes at every scale of time and space. The old idea of a static landscape, like a single musical chord sounded forever, must be abandoned, for such a landscape never existed except in our imagination. Nature undisturbed by human influence seems more like a symphony whose harmonies arise from variation and change over many scales of time and space, changing with individual births and deaths, local disruptions and recoveries, larger scale responses to climate from one glacial age to another, and to the slower alterations of soils, and yet larger variations between glacial ages.
— Daniel B. Botkin
Discordant Harmonies (1990), 62.