Ecologists have largely avoided race and racism as ecological factors, but events in 2020 have made it impossible to continue to ignore these impacts. This does not mean that ecologists have failed to contribute to the scholarship and activism of environmental justice. But the time has come for the science to more fully acknowledge the existence and impact of systemic racism, especially in the US. Acknowledging this fact in the various specialties within our discipline would complement the scholarship on environmental justice, and support the expanding efforts of ESA to be more racially diverse and inclusive.

We advocate for a new research agenda, the ecology of segregation. This entails an approach to data collection, model building, and practical application that recognizes the following. First, institutionalized racism, and the spatial heterogeneity that it creates for where people live and work, are pervasive in the US and elsewhere. Second, the origins and implications of, as well as changes in, such spatial patterns occur at various ecological scales ranging from populations to communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. Finally, racism is a system of formal and informal social norms that establishes a racial‐based power hierarchy; apportions sites, benefits, and hazards based on that hierarchy; and adopts mechanisms of resilience to maintain itself over time.

Consolidating these facts within a research agenda would facilitate the identification and formulation of broad guiding questions. What are the environmental consequences of institutionalized racism, including the spatial segregation of people by race? How do the environmental and social outcomes of, and the processes associated with, segregation influence one another? Answering these fundamental but so far largely unaddressed questions will boost ecological contributions to solving societal problems, such as those in climate adaptation, sustainability, and Earth stewardship.

The emergence of an ecology of segregation has been hampered by social assumptions. In the past, ecologists often considered ecological systems to be apart from human systems. Although ecologists gradually acknowledged that the two systems can and do influence each other, they often used simple social variables such as population density to indicate human impacts on ecosystems and employed assumptions that are now recognized as naïve: for instance, that everyone has equal access to money, information, and choice. However, as social–ecological science has matured, the idea that humans are components of, and not separate from, ecological systems has been widely accepted. An example of this maturation is the advice of social scientist Gary Machlis, who cautions that social–ecological models that exclude power, bias, greed, or corruption cannot yield convincing or realistic outputs. We explicitly add racism to this list.

Ecologists’ attention to race may have been hampered by the fact that the racist foundations of segregation and environmental hazard are often obscure. The mechanisms of US racial power have been hidden in idealistic language such as “post‐racial”, euphemistic constitutional structures such as the “three‐fifths clause”, and seemingly race‐neutral legal arrangements like those associated with residential zoning. Ecologists have been as misled by these pervasive social devices, as have many other groups. Attention to race and racism as ecological factors may also have been dampened because so few ecologists have “lived experience” with them. (Full disclosure: One of the authors is Black.) Consequently, one of the most fundamental and widespread aspects of US landscapes has been virtually neglected as an ecological factor.

Pursuing research on the ecology of segregation adds a social–ecological feedback that has been missing in environmental justice research. As a research topic, the ecology of segregation has several benefits. (1) It represents a broad intellectual domain, given segregation’s pervasiveness in the US over space and time and how it likely affects ecosystem structure and function. (2) It aligns with existing spatial scales within ecology. (3) It can strengthen the connection between the social and biophysical sciences as well as stimulate interdisciplinary research into the history and ongoing legacies of segregation. (4) It offers a gateway to increasing the racial and ethnic representation within the science, but does not limit itself to study only by researchers of color. (5) It may provide new practical “hooks” for ecology; namely, an improved understanding of the environmental outcomes of segregation may help empower underrepresented communities, inform policy, disrupt the stubborn resilience of racism, and suggest options for restoring habitats damaged by its legacies.

Human agents and institutions act within social–ecological systems, and the outcomes of their actions cannot be understood as independent of those systems. The ecology of segregation is a new system science waiting to be born.

生态学家在很大程度上避免了将种族和种族主义作为生态因素，但是2020年的事件使得无法继续忽略这些影响。这并不意味着生态学家没有为环境正义的学术和行动做出贡献。但是，科学界应该更充分地认识到系统种族主义的存在和影响的时候到了，尤其是在美国。在我们学科的各个专业中认识到这一事实将补充关于环境正义的奖学金，并支持ESA为使种族更加多样化和包容性而做出的不断努力。

我们主张建立新的研究议程，即隔离生态学。这需要一种可以识别以下内容的数据收集，模型构建和实际应用的方法。首先，制度化的种族主义及其在人们生活和工作场所所造成的空间异质性在美国和其他地区普遍存在。其次，这种空间模式的起源，含义以及变化发生在从人口到社区，生态系统和景观的各种生态尺度上。最后，种族主义是正式和非正式的社会规范体系，建立了基于种族的权力等级制度。根据该层次结构分配地点，收益和危害；并采用弹性机制来随着时间的推移自我维护。

将这些事实整合到研究议程中将有助于确定和提出广泛的指导性问题。制度化种族主义对环境的后果是什么，包括人种在种族上的空间隔离？隔离的环境和社会结果以及与之相关的过程如何相互影响？回答这些根本但到目前为止尚未解决的问题，将为解决诸如气候适应，可持续性和地球管理等社会问题的生态贡献做出更大的贡献。

社会假设阻碍了隔离生态的出现。过去，生态学家经常认为生态系统与人类系统是分开的。尽管生态学家逐渐认识到这两个系统可以并且确实会相互影响，但是他们经常使用简单的社会变量（例如人口密度）来表明人类对生态系统的影响，并采用了现在被认为是幼稚的假设：例如，每个人都有平等机会获得金钱，信息和选择。但是，随着社会生态科学的成熟，人们已经普遍接受了人类是生态系统的组成部分，而不是与之分离的观点。社会科学家加里·马克斯（Gary Machlis）的建议就是这种成熟的一个例子，他警告说，社会生态模型不包括权力，偏见，贪婪，否则腐败就无法产生令人信服或现实的产出。我们将种族主义明确地添加到该列表中。

由于种族隔离和环境危害的种族主义基础常常模糊不清，这一事实可能阻碍了生态学家对种族的关注。美国种族权力的机制被隐藏在理想主义的语言中，例如“后种族”，委婉的宪法结构（例如“三分之五”条款）以及貌似种族中立的法律安排，例如与居民区划相关的法律安排。与许多其他团体一样，生态学家也被这些普遍存在的社会手段所误导。人们对种族和种族主义作为生态因素的关注也可能被削弱，因为很少有生态学家对它们具有“活泼的经验”。（全部披露：作者之一是布莱克。）因此，美国景观最基本和最广泛的方面之一实际上已被忽略为生态因素。

对隔离生态学的研究增加了环境正义研究中缺少的社会生态反馈。作为一个研究主题，隔离生态学具有许多好处。（1）鉴于种族隔离在美国在时间和空间上的普遍性及其对生态系统结构和功能的影响，因此它代表着广泛的知识领域。（2）与生态学中现有的空间尺度保持一致。（3）它可以加强社会科学与生物物理科学之间的联系，并促进跨学科研究隔离的历史和正在进行的遗产。（4）它提供了在科学中增加种族和族裔代表性的途径，但并不限于仅由有色人种研究者进行研究。（5）它可能为生态学提供新的实用“钩子”；即

人类主体和机构在社会生态系统内行动，其行动的结果不能被理解为独立于那些系统。隔离的生态学是等待诞生的新系统科学。