The 100th Meridian, Ecological Boundaries, and the Problem of Reification.

Fuzzy and investigative ecological boundaries are reconstituted as absolute and tangible when used to inform natural resource management policies. The process of treating symbolic representations of ecological discontinuities as if they were authentic reflections of reality represents a process of reification and may lead to inappropriate policy provisions with adverse local ecological and social consequences. This essay describes how the United States Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program takes the 100th meridian-a simplified representation of the ambiguous gradient between the non-arid East from the arid West-and hardens it into a concrete boundary where farmers follow different rules depending on what side of the boundary they reside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]