title: Designing Autonomy: Opportunities for New Wildness in the Anthropocene.
abstract: Maintaining wild places increasingly involves intensive human interventions. Several recent projects use semi-automated mediating technologies to enact conservation and restoration actions, including re-seeding and invasive species eradication. Could a deep-learning system sustain the autonomy of nonhuman ecological processes at designated sites without direct human interventions? We explore here the prospects for automated curation of wild places, as well as the technical and ethical questions that such co-creation poses for ecologists, conservationists, and designers. Our goal is to foster innovative approaches to creating and maintaining the autonomy of evolving ecological systems.
authors.affiliation: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Bradley
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cantrell
authors.affiliation: Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: lauramartin@fas.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Laura J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA.
authors.forename: Erle C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Ellis
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004463:Ecology; D017753:Ecosystem; D004989:Ethics; D006801:Humans; D058865:Introduced Species