I think your problem with a scientific definition of diversity is you are
treating the word wrong.  It is not a this is diverse and this is not.
Diversity is a continuum, which makes it hard to pin down.  We would likely
agree that the tropical rain forest is more diverse than the prairie (I
think we'd agree anyway, darn those assumptions), however the prairie
itself could be considered diverse because of the different number of
grasses, insects, microorganisms etc.  This makes it hard to talk about in
specific terms in my opinion.  I run into the same problem with other words
as well when I teach biology.  So we teach about parasitism, mutualism, and
commensalism.  The crux of the matter and the reason students (part of
anyway) have such a hard time understanding it is because it's such a
sliding scale.  We use examples like barnacles on whales as an example of
commensalism, but is there really any true example of commensalism?  We say
the barnacles don't harm the whales and the barnacles hitch a free ride to
find food, but don't they create some drag on the whale slowing it down?
The same problem comes talking about diversity, I'd say I practice diverse
agriculture, I use crop rotation, I plant compatible species together, and
I grow a large variety of many things in a small space.  If I compare my
garden to the neighbors corn field I'm the rain forest of agriculture, but
it still pales in comparison the acres of scrub just north of me my bees
love so much.

We talk about maintaining diversity, but everyone has their own idea where
that line is on the continuum.  Some mean everything left alone, some maybe
everything but those dang coyotes, and then there's the farmer that thinks
diversity means growing several different monocultures as insurance to
weather and price fluctuations.  None of them are wrong they're just on
different parts of the same continuum.

Jeremy
West Michigan

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