ABSTRACT
The Values of Vernal Pools .......................................................................................2 Biodiversity....................................................................................................2 Ecosystem Processes .....................................................................................3 Vernal Pools as Keystone Ecosystems ..........................................................4 Social Values..................................................................................................4
Conserving Vernal Pools as Ecosystems...................................................................5 Summary ....................................................................................................................7 References..................................................................................................................7
Consider some of the ways that science challenges our human-centered perspectives on time and space. If you are transfixed by your mortality it will be painful to view your entire life span as lasting less than 2 milliseconds scaled against the age of the Earth on a 24-h clock. Struggling up the side of Mt. Washington is not any easier if you realize that all that topography would vanish if the Earth were scaled to the size of a billiard ball, leaving a surface smoother than any human hand could craft by polishing. Shifting from macro to micro, it is difficult to grasp the world of a tardigrade (a.k.a. water bear) for which the film of water on a single moss leaf might be home for its life span of a few months. And then there is time and space as experienced by the bacteria living in a tardigrade’s digestive tract.
