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All animals affect the world around them. Humans are the only ones who are aware of this.

"We know what we are doing at a global scale when we farm one third of the planet and pave another 5 percent of it," said biologist John Marzluff. "We know what we are doing when we consume fossil fuels. We understand — though certainly many do not believe — that our actions are changing the planet's climate and biological diversity."

With that knowledge, said poet Cole Swensen, comes responsibility. "With the pervasive presence of humans, we cannot just assume that nature will take care of itself," she said.

Marzluff, Swensen and environmental artist Mel Chin will explore the intertwined fates of humans and nature as keynote speakers at the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature, a three-day event that brings together voices in the arts and sciences.

The symposium — with the subject "The Provisional City: Observing, Imagining, and reMaking Home" — takes place Wednesday through Friday, April 12-14, at the University of Utah.

Swensen will present the opening keynote talk on Wednesday, discussing the life and work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture and designer of many public parks — the most famous being New York's Central Park.

Olmsted, Swensen said via email, "has helped us recognize that parks are not a matter of importing the rural into the urban, but that they are in fact an aspect of the urban. Parks are every bit as much the city as skyscrapers are."

Olmsted also championed social reform, and Swensen said parks reflect that. "Parks remain one of the places where races, classes, ages and backgrounds mix the most," he said. "Not only are we among people widely different from ourselves, but we're among them in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility."

Marzluff, who will deliver the symposium's Thursday keynote speech, has studied bird species that have adapted to life in cities, suburbs and towns.

"A great variety of birds thrive near humans because we diversify the land as we settle it," Marzluff, the James W. Ridgeway Professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington, said via email.

He cited as an example the Salt Lake City area, which was largely desert before the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847. Utahns, he said, "have added trees, fresh water and grassland to the native shrub land, and in this way increased the suitability for many birds that were naturally absent or rare in the past."

There is a trade-off. "Accordingly, we have also reduced suitability for those specialized to live in the native Great Basin habitats that we now plow or pave," Marzluff said.

Birds learn to adjust to the presence of humans, with some species expanding while others have receded. "A common lesson from birds is that we are awfully messy!" Marzluff said, citing the many scavenger birds that feed off human trash or waste grain. "The birds are telling us to clean up our act, use resources more wisely and sustainably."

Chin, who will deliver the closing keynote talk on Friday, has put his art toward correcting some of the abuses humans have done to the environment.

In his "Revival Field," begun in 1991, he and agronomist Rufus Chaney installed plants in a circular space over a Minnesota hazardous-waste landfill, to extract heavy metals from the contaminated soil. For Chin's "Fundred Dollar Bill Project" (2006-present), kids and adults draw their interpretations of $100 bills, called Fundreds, to call attention to the dangers of childhood lead poisoning.

"As the evidence of the ecological record might indicate, humans have perpetrated destructive acts upon the Earth, while using all manners of justifications, in a short amount of time," Chin said via email. "The prosecution of our species over the lack of stewardship has started with the climate responding against the crimes we have committed. We are part of nature mostly active in its desecration."

Chin's talk is about a different form of evolution: his artistic one.

He says his current state is "becoming" an artist. "The act of becoming represents a proper evolution of the creative spirit," he said. "Making it as an artist may be a temporary or momentary achievement. The process of art is a serious preoccupation of applying the sensitivities necessary to realize the potential of imagination and expression, and making it meaningful alongside a larger reality — or world — that is more complex than the 'art world.' "

Gathering artists, writers and scientists together in a symposium should yield interesting results, Swensen and Marzluff said.

"I hope we'll all leave with a deepened understanding that the sciences and the arts are natural partners, and with a sense of the ways that scientists and artists can collaborate to enrich the possibilities of both fields," Swensen said.

Added Marzluff: "Whenever you get different perspectives together, novel insights are sure to emerge."

Twitter: @moviecricket Utah Symposium for Science and Literature

The Utah Symposium for Science and Literature, gathering artists, writers and scientists around the topic "The Provisional City: Observing, Imagining and reMaking Home."

When • Wednesday through Friday, April 12-14

Where • University of Utah — Wednesday and Friday events at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; Thursday daytime panels at Child Hall, seventh floor of the Eccles School of Business; Thursday afternoon and evening events at the Natural History Museum of Utah

To attend • Registration is appreciated; go to scienceandliterature.org for details and a speakers' schedule