Point Au Roche State Park, NY: Systems and Their Interrelated Parts

This past Tuesday my Environment and Society class made a trip to Point Au Roche State Park. When we arrived our class winded through the well maintained trials which let to a rocky cliff and shore surrounded by Lake Champlain as boaters casually laid across the lakes surface. On our left you could see Vermont and the Green Mountains and on our right was New York and the beautiful Adirondacks with windmill blades and farming facilities peaking through the mountain sides and peaks. It was almost overwhelming at first glance; the continuous crashing of water against the rocky shore, the soft but bold sun, and the clusters of sailboats and jet skis enjoying a mild August day as summer comes to a close. As we worked on our assignment I had a comfortable amount of time to relax and take in the beauty that surrounded me. We were left by Dr. Gervich to identify our surroundings as a social-ecological system focusing on its parts, interrelated parts, invisible parts, and their related functions in the given system. As defined, a socio-ecological system consists of a 'bio-geo-physical' unit and its associated social actors and institutions. We knew we were looking at a system because of four questions Donella Meadows speaks of in her reading "Thinking in Systems". They are as follows: Can you identify the parts? Do the parts affect each other? Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect each part has on it's own?Lastly, does the effect, the behavior over time, persist in a variety of circumstances? When initially identifying all of the parts of the system I wrote about and identified the biological parts. The trees on the shores and across the lake serve as habitats as do the underside of rocks on the bottom of the lake for microorganisms and the lake for a plethora of aquatic life. Next, I identified man-made or human related parts of the system. The boats which are used for entertainment, the State Park and access areas which are accessible because of the work of trail maintenance staff, the markings on rocks, trails and trees leaving traces of human interaction, the funding of the state to pave a parking lot and us as a class using this space as a classroom of nature. Now although those biological and man made parts of the system are easy to identify sometimes the invisible parts are harder to spot. In terms of invisible parts of the system some things to identify include the pollution of the water from boats and jet-skis, the commercial use of the water for fishery and water usage, the damage from those on the boats both recreational and commercial, the geologists who study the rocks we stood on, the mountain tops that surrounded us and took us back thousands of years to think about the primal stages of this land and how this lake came to be, and the politics that are behind the protection, formation and funding of the State Park. When breaking a system down it's much easier to start on a smaller scale and then begin to widen your lens and identify the relationships between these parts. For example, if it were not for legislators as well as advocates this space would not be a State Park. There would be no access, there would be no groomed trials, and the space may not even be protected green space but rather used for business purposes. When you consider these factors you must also account for the damage humans have still caused such as pollution of the land and waters from hikers and boaters alike. Each part of the system holds a unique function with its own set of consequences. As these parts work together they combine into a complex system of interactions. Being at Point Au Roche State Park became an excellent vantage point to observe and better understand the concept of a social-ecological system in a real world setting. Attached are two helpful articles that explain system thinking and give some more examples of systems in our own day-to-day lives as well as images i took from our trip.

Thanks for reading!