The Entangled Bank Laboratory

We hear a lot about the negative effects of different industries on natural resources, like fish populations, but we have few indications of how some of these pressures have affected different marine and coastal systems and what their long-term or hidden impacts might be.

This original research is a re-examination of the historical origins of ecology and nature protection movements, and their epistemological development, by testing their theoretical frameworks.  It is revealed that ecology, like biology, for historical reasons has developed a scientific practice without fundamental scientific laws, severely limiting the ability of ecologists to produce generalizable results. Today this situation severely limits the relevance and credibility of much of ecological research in political arenas. 

At the Scientiae2016 conference this summer in Oxford, we gave a presentation about the importance of studying the intellectual history of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle for understanding the origin of the scientific practice of ecology today and its inherent weaknesses.

Shipworms were a significant hazard for maritime navigation for millennia. While there are a number of publications that describe the species of shipworms present in different marine environments, few have tried to estimate the rate of wood removal as the infestation progresses from in situ observations.

Our second article considering the place of quantitative tools in environmental impact assessments came out at the end of 2017.

This month, we've been testing a new acoustic survey technology for mapping coastal marine vegetation (especially seagrass meadows) in the Bay of Brest.

Since the term was invented in the 1970s, Environmental Impact Assessment has been roundly criticized for relying on untested, qualitative information to describe the impact of development projects. We develop the first quantitative framework in this publication.

31 May 2016. We were honored to give a presentation at one of the prestigious ICES conferences on socio-ecological systems, this year in Brest, France ...

High resolution LIDAR campaign along the French Catalan coast (France, NW Gulf of Lions) lays the groundwork for a new approach to EIA