Introduction

This chapter is about the tension between two ideal type modes of learning and innovation. One mode is based on the production and use of codified scientific and technical knowledge namely Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) mode, while the other one is an experience-based mode of learning through Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI-mode). At the level of the firm, this tension may be seen in the need to reconcile knowledge management strategies prescribing the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as tools for codifying and sharing knowledge with strategies emphasizing the role played by informal communication and communities of practice in mobilizing tacit knowledge for problem solving and learning.

The tension between the STI-and DUI-modes corresponds to two different approaches to national innovation systems: One perspective focusing on the role of formal processes of R&D that produce explicit and codified knowledge and another perspective focusing on the learning from informal interaction within and between organizations resulting in competence building often with tacit elements.

There is, of course, an important body of empirical and historical work showing that both these modes of learning and innovation play a role in most sectors, the role being different depending on the sector characteristics as well as the strategy of the firm (von Hippel 1976; Rothwell 1977; Rosenberg 1982; Pavitt 1984). Recent models of innovation emphasize that innovation is an interactive process in which firms interact both with customers and suppliers and with knowledge institutions (Freeman 1986; Kline and Rosenberg 1986; Lundvall 1988; Vinding 2002).

Despite the broad acceptance of this literature, there remains a bias among scholars and policymakers to consider innovation processes largely as aspects connected to formal processes of R&D, especially in the science-based industries. At the policy level, this can be seen in the emphasis on benchmarking variables related to STI and in the focus on instruments such as tax subsidies to R&D, the training of scientists in high-tech fields such as ICT, bio and nanotechnology and strengthening the linkages between firms and universities in these specific fields. At the level of scholarly research, there is a tendency to expect that the increasing reliance on science and technology in the ‘knowledge-based economy’ will enhance the role played by formal processes of R&D requiring personnel with formal science and technology qualifications.

Introduction

The dynamic nature of sand dunes over relatively short spatial and temporal scales makes them an ideal phenomenon from which to obtain a better understanding of the interactions between the geosciences and biological sciences. Most early studies of sand dunes focused on classification of dune forms, plant species composition on various dune types, plant succession, and the morphological adaptation of plants to sand burial, salt spray, and xeric conditions. In this chapter, the interaction of ecology and geomorphology in the development of coastal sand dunes will be discussed, from the origin of ecology in the 1800s through to the present. Underlying this history is a struggle by both disciplines to move from a mainly descriptive approach toward an understanding of how sand dunes and plants influence each other. The difficulty has always been how to couple the physical processes of sand transport with the influence of plants and, in turn, how to connect plants with different life histories to sand transport. This undertaking is still in its infancy.

Physiography and Physiographic Ecology

At the end of the 1800s, both physiography (as geomorphology was called at the time) and biology adopted a neo-Lamarckian evolutionary viewpoint (Johnson, 1979; Inkpen and Collier, 2007). Evolution, at this time, incorporated ideas of directional development that could take place at scales above the individual or population (today this idea is called group selection and is mostly rejected as having no valid mechanism (Williams, 1966)). Stages in this directional development were believed to facilitate further evolution. The result was a belief that many forms in biology developed in a progressive, integrated manner with an end-stage that would be in equilibrium. Herbert Spencer, a prolific but now largely forgotten philosopher, was a popular exponent of these ideas, combining both “evolutionary” and “quasi-thermodynamic” ideas in Principles of Biology (1864). He is best remembered for the teleological term “survival of the fittest.”

These evolutionary viewpoints can be found in numerous scientific studies, such as the landscape cycles of Davis (1889; 1899) and in the ecology of communities and succession of Cowles (1899), Clements (1916), and Cooper (1926).

This is not an ecosystem textbook in the usual sense in being primarily about biology but rather it is a collateral book that introduces the physical environment into ecosystems using a biogeoscience approach. Why do this? A biogeoscience approach uses: 1) process- or mechanistic-based approaches and 2) formal (mathematical) models of governing equations that involve transport processes and continuity or conservation equations. Ecology has, in general, viewed the physical environment as a black box, using simple arrows to indicate the connections between the physical environment and ecological systems, but with minimal or no consideration of the operation of these physical environmental processes. The reasons for this are varied, but may be attributed partly to different approaches of problem solving in biological vs. geophysical sciences and to both disciplines not always understanding how the other could be connected in more than a descriptive or correlational manner.

The purpose of this book is to take advantage of progress in the geosciences (including geomorphology, soil science, hydrology, and meteorology/climatology) to advance the understanding of ecosystem science. The goal is to present these geoscience developments in a manner such that ecologists who have had limited exposure to these ideas and methods can gain an introduction and understanding of how these couplings can be used in ecosystem science. We intend the book not to be a hopeful discussion of what we should or could be doing to tie the disciplines together, but rather to be a set of chapters providing examples of explicit approaches and procedures of how such research has coupled successfully the fields of ecology and geoscience.

A quick look at the research areas of biogeoscience (Table 1.1) will note large and very active topics (e.g., geomicrobiology) that are not considered in this book. It is easy to think of topics that we could (should) have included in this book.