Civic Epistemology and Plants: Lichen as Biomonitors of Environmental Health

• In Event: Controlling Plants, Growing Environments - I

Abstract

In response to the need for communicating universal indicator of climate change, scientists of professional and amateur nature throughout North America have assembled a technique called "biomonitoring," a way to measure environmental health via the physiological qualities of plants and animals. Among these biological indicators is the ubiquitously sprawled–across both urban and forest landscapes– lichen, a composite organism composed of a fungal thallus (outer layer of lichen) and a photosynthetic, symbiotic partner of either algae or cyanobacteria (within the thallus). Through the analytical lens of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), I survey the literature on North American biomonitoring of lichen by naturalists, scientists, and urban planners to argue how the civic epistemology of lichens can serve as a medium to sense wider atmospheric change. This study argues that the ethnobotanical use of lichen, in the methodologies of Western, in addition to more precarious forms of local knowledge, as biomonitors shows how plants can act as technological mediators of knowledge over health rights and claims. In relation to plants in controlled environments and plants used to control environments, this study speaks to broader movements of citizen science, biotechnology, visualization technologies, and environmental histories of urban and "wild" landscapes.

Author

• Aja Grande, MIT