Brian Helmuth is a Professor at the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, with appointments in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs.
Brian’s research and teaching focus on ecological forecasting in coastal ecosystems including coral reefs and rocky intertidal systems, with the goal of informing policy and conservation using a range of approaches including physiology, field manipulations and environmental sensing.
A key feature of his work is how human perceptions of environmental change can in many cases serve as barriers to understanding how non-human species are experiencing impacts.
He is also Chief Scientist for Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus underwater habitat, envisioned as the International Space Station of the seafloor. Brian currently serves as an author on the 1st U.S. National Nature Assessment.
Presentation:
Thinking like a non-human: Escaping anthropocentric constraints to better understand and predict the impacts of environmental change in coastal ecosystems
Brian Helmuth, Catie Nielson, Angela Jones, Daria Healey and John D. Coley
Northeastern University, Boston, MA and Proteus Ocean Group, New York, NY
As humans, we view the world in ways that are fundamentally at odds with how the vast majority of nonhuman organisms experience the same conditions, a consequence of anthropocentrism (centering one’s perception of the natural world on humans) that often goes unrecognized. Weather and oceanographic conditions that we perceive as benign can in fact expose some animals and plants to extreme conditions, and vice versa. This not only affects our ability to effectively design and implement experiments in the field and lab to understand how climate change affects marine organisms, but can also influence decision making of how we use that information to implement conservation strategies.
In order to fully understand how our rapidly changing climate affects nonhuman plants and animals, we need tools such as biophysics and ecomechanics to “translate” environmental conditions at the level of organisms to drivers of physiology which then influence ecological and even biogeographic processes. Such approaches are also vital for designing the way we monitor environmental conditions and even how we manipulate and store data. Using case studies from coral and temperate reefs, and rocky intertidal systems, I’ll offer case studies of how biophysical techniques provide a window into how environmental change affects patterns ranging from hyperlocal to biogeographic
Ultimately, however, science remains a human endeavor and we as scientists are subject to the same biases and assumptions that plague the rest of our species, including how we think about nature and human-nature connections, especially in the ocean. Using a cognitive science approach centered on understanding perceptions of nature and in particular marine environments among students in environmental science and other disciplines, I’ll explore how we can potentially use that understanding to enhance systems thinking processes that better enable “thinking like a non-human.”