Forest Faunal Systems

Chapter 1

Forests: The System of Concern

Forests, land areas of the world in which trees are the conspicuous dominant organisms, are wonderful places. For many people they are areas of mystery, for others a place for new and different stimuli, for others, areas of wonder. Others see them as a factory, a place to work. For others, they are the awful, too hot or too cold, pestiferous, dangerous places. They generate questions for they are complex, dynamic, and when best known, sure to produce surprises. There are 37 billion (1.5 x 10¹⁰ hectares) acres of land on Earth.

Mastering knowledge of the forest is a task beyond mortals. The forest limit is arbitrarily set. The borders are a problem in themselves. When does a mangrove area become the ocean? When does a savanna become a grassland? The boundary is a human decision, usually best made in each particular situation where a precise definition is needed.

Forests are extremely diverse, so it is difficult to produce general statements or principles that are useful in all forests. This is one of the risks taken in this book. The reader needs to learn:

• That there are general principles and that these need to be learned (though continually tested),
• That research is needed (but every forest worker can contribute to the volume of knowledge about forests),
• That systems need to be devised to prevent this knowledge, so hard won, from being lost, and
• That systems are needed that allow and cause knowledge to be used.
• There are 11 biomes (Table 1.1) or world regions distinctively different and characterizable by their plant life. Of these, 6 are characterized by forests. Within each biome there is great variation. There are within each biome named forest types (Burns 1983). Within each type, named so because of conspicuous and agreed-upon differences in tree composition, there are different animals.

In this book I cannot discuss management of fauna in each forest biome of the U.S. or the world. There are distinctive differences due to climate, socio-economic conditions, human culture and legal conditions, and forest treatment and use, but the principles and concepts, I believe, are the same and can, as a statistician may say, explain about 90% of the variance observed in such areas. The other 10 percent must be left to the inexorable workings of the tree spirits and stoneworms, and to the local research, observations, and creative juices of the forest faunal system manager and scientist.

Forests are areas where trees are dominant. Forests have no intrinsic or innate value. They are just there, like deserts, glaciers, and grasslands. In the instant that a human perceived some good that could come from a forest, whether for a chunk of wood for a fire after some Pleistocene glacier-walker slipped into a fir forest, or whether for a rustling cooling breeze on a hot summer afternoon, then the forest became a resource producer. There are many resources of the forest. The last one has not yet been discovered; it will be produced by an idea or solidified by a conclusion. In some instant when a biochemist isolates a new useful organic molecule, then there is a new resource. There are many well-known forest resources. Their names are so frequently used that the significance of them being a decision or a conclusion is lost. Lumber, firewood, pulp, naval stores, game, watersheds, beauty ... these are all aspects of a forest that have been noted because of a benefit or loss occurring to some human because of an actual or potential use. "Goods and services" has long been associated with the concept of a resource. Whether a forest "cools the air" (a service), or whether it beautifies (adds value), or whether it provides pulpwood (provides material of potential net benefit) is significant in determining whether it has resources. Resources are materials and processes of a forest that have attributes viewed by at least one human as valuable. Resources are things of the natural world with some associated human values. Resources are human constructs.

What is an "animal" is also a human construct. Among the microscopic forms of life in a forest there remain uncertainties about whether some forms of life are plants or animals. With each is a human decision. Except among the small creatures, there is general agreement about what are plants and what are animals. "The flora and fauna" was once a common phrase and connoted a more narrow study than one of "the vegetation and animals." The words are a problem. Increasingly there is a need to be more precise with the words used and, following nomenclatural doctrine, to stick to published definitions or to define each word when used anywhere in science or management. Herein, fauna means all creatures within those families recognized by modern taxonomists as being more animal- than plant- like. The problem with such a definition is that it may be too large a taxonomic cut. A book about all animals is likely to be judged naive. That is the risk, taken in the face of the competing view that species-specific or group-specific limits (e.g., "game") is reasonable. The limits may have to be drawn somewhere, but in the past they have been, it seems to me, drawn much too narrowly. To suggest that a person studies and works with the relations of plants and animals to each other and their environment (the openness of ecology) and then to draw the bounds very tightly is nearly prevarication.

There are about 100 major species of trees in major regions of the U.S. Such a number of species is enough to tax the abilities of the average forester in mastering the details of silvics and silviculture for each. The average faunal manager in the U.S. must deal, conservatively, with at least 3,000 species. There are the birds and mammals (including marine mammals), the reptiles and amphibians, fish, crustaceans, mollusks and ... the insects and other anthropods, and ... OK, yes ... the faunal parasites. The "conservatively ..." comment above is not an effort to dodge responsibility for the faunal groups which probably number at least 10,000 large creatures visible to the unaided eyes of people in most areas of the world. It is a means to say that 3,000 are:

• all that are of recognized importance in any resource system,
• all for which extensive literature can be compiled, and
• the limit of the species about which we know how to cause any desired change (i.e., know more than 2 ways to increase or decrease their populations or the associated net benefits resulting from them.)

Not about studying animals or forest zoology, this book is about how to cause desired change in resource benefits. Faunal resources are perceived as systems and they are to be operated, to be changed, to be held steady, to be under the control of the sophisticated manager. (See CAP03)

The minimum that must be known by the manager about each species can be summarized as:

• Taxonomy
• Distribution: County or administrative unit, latitude and longitude, potential natural vegetation areas, ecoregions, map names, watersheds, etc.
• Legal Status
• Origin
• Population Trends, Seasonal Distribution, Relative Abundance
• General Habitat and Land Use Associations
• Food Habits by Life Stages
• Environmental Requirements (and Limits) by Life Stages
• Management Activities, Both Beneficial and Adverse

These categories are now used in many faunal information systems. There is a nearly endless list of things that can be known and some people will argue that everything should be known about each species before it is managed. The probability of knowing everything is very low and so distant that such a requirement would suppress all action to change any species, whether it be a tree-eating deer, corn-eating blackbird, or rare species. For some species, we know much, but not the things we need in order to change predictably the population predictably.

The manager is the manipulator. Under management the resource must change. To change can only be expressed as to increase, decrease, or stabilize. If these do not happen purposely, the manager has not managed. A parallel drawn between a manager and a scientist with an experimental research plots may be instructive. A scientist applies fertilizer A to experimental plots. After analysis, the conclusion is: "there were no significant differences between the treated and untreated plots." In a similar way, some population, a resource, was the responsibility of manager A. After comparing similar areas and years, the conclusion was the same: no significant difference occurred as the result of the manager being present. Modern managers must make a significant difference in faunal systems or their efforts will be judged random or Brownian movement. Society will not pay for such effort. Future societies will not hold such managers of today guiltless.

I, and many colleagues, yearn for the compleat forester (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1. The compleat forester only exists at the center (Z) of the overlap and interplay among dozens of named disciplines (four symbolized above) such as history, watersheds, soils, economics, biometry, protection, silviculture, sociology, psychology, communications, engineering, wood technology, physiology, dendrology and botany, management science, etc. People who master the relevant parts of these fields of knowledge are rare. Most people are specialists. Increasingly, the needs are for people (or systems) that work within and synthesize at least several fields.

We imagine a person synthesizing the subject matter of many fields and using it effectively. Different people work at different parts of the picture as shown. Some work as specialists within only one or a few ellipses. Others master many; the compleat forester is that person who deals effectively with them all. The faunal system is only one ellipse in this figure. It is large because it embraces portions of many fields (all of which are not depicted). The challenges to become such a person are for the individual; they are for society too, for it cannot bet that such people will emerge naturally in sufficient numbers to manage well the forests of the world. Some alternative structures and functional relations are needed. Creation of compleat foresters cannot be left to chance. The only realistic alternative now seen is that of a systems approach to natural resource management. The pattern and pathway might be shown to other resource managers by the faunal system manager.

It is clear that the "wildlife biologist" is not the topic of this book, for the person needed is as much an economist as a biologist, as much an agronomist as a biologist, as much a specialist in causing human behavioral change as in wild animals. Wildlife biology is a narrow specialization and now a defunct concept. The ecologist, alone, is not needed. They, like biologists, study interactions. (There are very, very few, only relations or many cause-effect links and sequences.) After studying, there is the need for manipulating whole systems.

Resources

Why is the manipulation of whole systems needed? The need is pure assertion. The answer is: to optimize the resource benefits potentially and actually derived by people. The systems person's, the faunal resource manager's, chief slogan is "resist suboptimization." In later chapters, the needs for improvements will be suggested. Concern for making changes seems warranted in the face of limited supplies of material and energy and increasing numbers of people with increasing rates of use of these limited things. The average manager soon realizes that producing more is not always possible, perhaps unnecessary, and often uneconomical.

The concept of a resource is that it is (1) matter, (2) energy, (3) information, (4) opportunities, or (5) ideas that have associated with them positive values for people. The results of this stereoscopic view can be generalized as things or processes that are capably of producing "benefits." These will be described in detail in Chapter 4. It is something that has at least one attribute of interest or special value to at least one person. A resource is an entity (one of the 5 above) capable of producing benefit to people. An entity that is unavailable (e.g., helium on a distant planet) is not a resource. An elk on a distant mountain may not be a game resource but it may be a resource to a person who gains benefits from knowing they are there (known as existence value) or finds that they have value because of future, unspecified options. Excessive deer, those exceeding the number readily taken by hunters and preventing forest regeneration, are a resource, but with negative value. Resources are not merely physical, but may be conceptual, but always with a human dimension. Resources are ends and means to ends. Resources exist in a particular situation, a context. One person's resource is not always another person's. Resources are decided. For example, a little minnow in a stream, a non-resource, can be transformed into an exciting, named, important creature with fascinating life habits and noteworthy seasonal coloration. It becomes noted for its beautiful reproduction displays, its unique role as a host for fresh-water mussel larvae, and becomes a much-sought creature in a new sport of creating life-lists, lists of animals seen by a person in a lifetime. The number of fish does not change; the manager creates a resource.

Forests produce animals, but do managers? It is very important for the faunal resource manager to take credit (or blame) only for that which is appropriate. The manager of the faunal resources can only legitimately take credit for the change in the resource benefits produced and available over those which would occur naturally, at least if he or she was absent or inactive. The literature (as well as lapses within this book) is full of erroneous phrases about manager's production. They are prone to count all animals as theirs. True, but only the extra animals (and their associated benefits), the difference, should be counted as the results of management. Desired resource change actually resulting from a unit of investment is the awful weight borne by the faunal system manager.

General Systems

To understand anything, whether it be an animal or an ecosystem, is to be able to predict its behavior or function. To predict is to gain control, to bring order out of chaos. The faunal system manager's quest, as the quest of everyone, is to gain control over his or her environment and life. A universal and thus a powerful basis for ordering knowledge is the general system.

A general system is a symbolic model, a pattern for identifying, describing, delimiting, and explaining phenomena and for synthesizing and creating new ones (cf Von Bertalanffy 1968, Churchman 1968, Laszlo 1972a, b, Rabow 1969, Emery 1969, and the yearbook entitled General Systems). It is not useful to define a general system. It is best visualized as in Fig. 1.2. Readers are encouraged to memorize it and make it a part of their thought processes. Anything can be evaluated as a general system. The criteria and factors sought will always be (1) context, (2) outputs or objectives, (3) inputs, (4) processes, (5) feedback, and (6) feedforward. There are certain things that will not seem to have some of these components or organizational categories. That observation, however, does not mean that there is no system. It means only that the thing observed is not a system, is not complete, that it is poorly operating, or that the observer's perception is limited. Faunal system managers see systems as dynamic, inter-connected wholes, but of course they may malfunction when any significant element or process is ignored or weakened.

A system can be anything - a car, a university, a language, an ear, an equation. Those actively studied are typically large like industrial plants, forests, faunal management units, or agencies. They are often complex with multiple linkages.

Systems do not exist. They are, like resources, mental constructs of people. It is easy to point to that wildlife habitat, to that forest, but these are merely names for some part of physical reality observed by and of interest to people. A general system is a way of perceiving and communicating reality. Someone may call a group of data collectors, computer programmers, computer, and a computer program "the Province wildlife habitat analysis system." That name highlights the intended parallels between a particular working group and the general systems model.

Fig. 1.2. The general system of modern general systems theory.

The major components of any general system are as shown in Fig. 1.2.

Inputs are data on habitats, populations, and users; policy regulations and constraints; personnel; money; ideas; energy; and matter. (Inputs are nouns expressive of energy and matter.) These are the things assumed to be within the named system and that will be processed or will be a part of the system.

Processes are actions of manipulating inputs, describing the dynamic, expressing the interactions and relations, applying tests, and making comparisons and correlating the components. Examples of faunal and floral processes are metabolizing and photosynthesizing. (Processes are often expressed as verbs.) "Deciding" sounds like a process but is such a complex act that it, itself, is an entire system, one viewed as the decision making system with the output of its operation occurring in the instant of decision.

Outputs are the actual yields or consequences of a system. Objectives are the desired yields, the payoffs, the final decision, the solution or answer, or a recommendation. These, rather than outputs, are the emphasis herein. In designing a system, e.g., a management system or a report-generating system, the focus is immediately on the question, "What is the real objective; what is the exact, measurable output desired?" (Outputs are expressed as nouns. Objectives are purposive and therefore well expressed as infinitives.)

Feedback within managerial systems is the purposeful, corrective effect of the system on itself. Feedbacks are the internal messages or controls that say speedup, slow down, modify, adapt, switch to another set of solutions, or play another strategy. Field inspections with action reports and monitoring with control operations are some examples of wildlife management feedback. Monitoring alone is not feedback. Feedback (like each system component above) is itself a small system receiving stimuli, comparing the present with a desired state, and, if necessary, making some adjustments. In biology and elsewhere, the feedback within managerial systems is called "negative feedback."

Feedforward is applied futurism. It is the capability to simulate a process, predict the future, and, based on expectations, modify to improve the present system or its design. Evidence that feedforward has been employed is the observation that someone has "led the target," making the system or its design not quite right today, but more right for tomorrow, and most right over the long run. (Feedforward, like feedback, is a special type of process and is usually expressed as a verb.)

Fig. 1.3 A gross, informal general system depicting a general thought pattern. Identical in form to Fig. 1.2, it escapes the formality but not the power of the general systems model. It is a diagram of the process of people said to have "horse sense."

An informal system can be useful and interesting as a way to analyze a thought and to approach problems.

Systems as Subsystems

All systems are subsystems. Context is the decision about the scale of the system to be analyzed or designed. It accomplishes the naming of the relevant subsystem and specifies the limits. It answers, for example: That salamander? That species of salamander in Ohio? Rare and endangered salamanders? All salamanders?

The system designer or analyst names or specifies the subsystem. Is it the land up to the fence or up to the fence and 3 meters beyond it? The limits are set in just such a fashion; they are human decisions. They usually include limits set by ownership or agency responsibility, time, a user group, a sphere of behavior, a department's assignments, assumptions, or the manager's working area.

Deciding on the context is one of the most exciting topics in science or philosophy for it requires the student or manager to analyze for hierarchy (Allen and Starr, 1982), to decide on relevant levels of work. It involves taking risks. It is a bad decision, say, to decide that the watershed is the relevant system when only the slope to the right of center-stream was the relevant system. Naming the context is a risk taken in deciding that the species is the system when a feeding-group or guild should have been used, or perhaps an age and sex class used when species was the relevant subsystem. A system needs to be specified, but only tentatively, for usually the manager will be forced, in order to gain control, to move to the next larger or higher system. The typical forester's subsystems are the working circle (or district or region), compartments or watersheds, and stands. (See Chapter 7.)

The faunal manager, like the more broadly thinking forester, must deal with the forests and other systems that are in or affect them. They define systems - temporarily closed. There are no closed systems; a system is identified by stating the context ... and then hastening to adjust, because each such decision is suboptimum. The subsystem decision is a decision of risk and scale. Laszlo (1972:66) said:

Systems align themselves in supersystems, rather than disaggregate into them. Smaller systems are not melted down and recast into larger systems; the small units are still there, and they exercise essential functions. But these functions are part of the order in the larger systems, which in turn, may belong to still more encompassing ones. The top-level system is often hidden from view at the bottom. Employees of a business, social, or political agency may not even know which top-level corporation, agency, or conglomerate owns or directs their outfit. Yet functional efficiency is not impaired, for the structural is hierarchical, and members of a system on one level need only to communicate with their counterparts in other systems, and with the relevant subsystems of their own organization in the higher echelons.

One strategy for defining the context of a system is to identify a subsystem and to make probes into, or unions with, closely-associated subsystems. Next best is to describe a small to moderate subsystem, encouraging cooperation with anyone representing another subsystem. The best strategy is to name a client or user group, thus quickly achieving relevance. Systems must be useful, therefore there must be users. The user is one of the most important determinants of the context of a system.

For a systems approach to make any sense, there must be an assumption that people tend to be rational. Although there is much literature to the contrary, people generally (a high percentage of the time) operate as rational beings. "Some seem more rational than others" is a commentary on the relative nature of rationality, not on its absence. That people are irrational is a judgment by someone, operating with a set of criteria (which also may be questioned). Observations of what appear to be "stupid" acts usually include: (1) someone had poorly formed goals, and/or (2) they had insufficient or erroneous information, and/or (3) they had primitive intellectual processing tools, and/or (4) they never checked whether such decisions worked in the past, and/or (5) they never speculated on how their decision would work out for them in the future. The reader should consider how rapidly most decisions are reached (e.g., a two-hour long wildlife commissioner meeting), then assume that all five of the above provisions were working at about 80 percent efficiency. The probability of a "right" decision, one with results being consistent with goals, etc., is only about 0.33 (i.e., 0.805). In such a case, flipping an unbiased coin may serve the decision maker as well. They may increase, rationally, their chances for success. Lindbloom (1959), and Braybrooke and Lindbloom (1963) advocated muddling through.

Some people must increasingly deal with larger and larger systems. Subsystem decisions are tentative. The next subsystem may be larger ... or smaller. The very practical aspects of how big a system can be tackled for purposes ranging from general satisfaction to computer modeling are: (a) costs, (b) available budgets and equipment, (c) number of and skills of staff, (d) present state of knowledge, (e) perceived difficulty, (f) requisite precision, accuracy, and confidence, (g) the energy of and the intellectual horizons of the team leader, and (h) the political climate.

Having started, some faunal system students will work on a subsystem all of their lives. Others, the more typical systems people, will probe above and below their subsystem, at least a little. Other systems people will push to master some entire system, integrating cohesively the subsystems controlled by other systems people. The latter, whole-system performers, must start somewhere. They define the context of their activity and go to work, knowing that they will attempt to master the whole structure. Faunal management systems, whether of international agencies or of species-specific micro-climates, are built or torn down as major subsystems.

Most people intuitively know what a system is. Students of system theory list over 40 definitions (not unlike the number of definitions for carrying capacity; Edwards and Fowle, 1955, Lime and Stankey, 1971) so a single one will not be selected or another suggested. Systems may be depicted as in Fig. 1.4. They may potentially have all of the components shown with the flow of energy and matter in the directions shown by the arrows. A three-dimensional representation is made because it seems reasonable; it accentuates the multidimensional nature of most aspects of the world; it suggests potential equality of parts

Fig. 1.4 The general system of general systems theory can be comprehended as a tetrahedron. The context represents the tentative bounds, the user-specific limits. The entity is in a dynamic state akin to the state of water, with its two atoms of hydrogen continually in interchange with two others around a singular atom of oxygen. H2O is the molecule, but four hydrogen atoms are always involved. Feedback and feedforward are similar system components, each corrective and adaptive, the only difference being whether action is for the present or future conditions.

and processes (when making presentations in two dimensions, some arrows must be longer than others, length probably having unnecessary or inappropriate connotations); it symbolizes the smallest possible volume and most stable form of any polyhedron (one fully triangulated). It not only suggests all possible pairs of potentially interacting parts but also suggests the planes of interaction and the volume which is the whole, complete, comprehensive unit.

The tetrahedron is a recurring pattern in human thought and physical systems. Problems in systems analysis and design in the past have occurred because of having adopted a cubical pattern (providing a model for only three phenomena when, typically, four concepts may be simultaneously used). Buckminister Fuller (1970) described the excitement of his discovery of "... nature's own most economically integrated, comprehensive, coordinate system ... the tetrahedron as volumetric unity...," and then asserted it provided the conceptual reunion of "... the language and fundamental understanding of the sciences and humanities." He stated that the tetrahedron is "the minimum possible system" (Fuller 1970a:35). The regular tetrahedron is a "packing" form because it can be fit and packed adjacent to other similar forms in infinite variety and configuration. Packed, it leaves no interstitial spaces. Thus, it provides a geometric and conceptual model for all systems in various configurations. The more compact, the greater the sharing of sides (symbolic of interaction), the less likely a part will be removed, the more stable the system.

Perhaps most significant, the figure demonstrates and emphasizes the higher or purer form of interaction, that of synergism. Synergism occurs when the union of substances have results greater than expected from their sum. Buckminster Fuller asked "when is 1 + 1 + 1 = 4?" and the answer: when 3 triangles are unified along their edges, the fourth is gotten as extra (e.g., the base of the tetrahedron, Fig. 1.5).

Fig. 1.5 When is 1 + 1 + 1 = 4? This situation, called an example of synergism, results when there are 3 triangles appropriately located, producing a forth triangle (shaded here) "for free."

The result is a graphical synergism, but the results also explain the hardness (and light scattering) of diamonds, the stability of water, the bound energy of methane, and allows concepts to be entertained about how some ecological systems are more stable than others, how resource managerial groups might interact or form backups and share resources for greater stability, and even symbolize the tenuous and easily-broken relations that exist for (that define?) rare or endangered species.

A tetrahedronal system and words like isomorphic and synergistic are definitely not being used for academic or similar reasons. They are being used to help build the conceptual grounds and a basis for efficiently describing the best possible means in the modern world for managing faunal systems, particularly those of the forest. This is not a book of technique lists, or comparative methods, but a presentation of the best method or approach known. It has been studied, tried, and proven in over 35 years of personal experiences. Its parallels and successes are abundant in industry and some agencies. Failures in practice or execution have been harmful to some people and "the systems approach" has gotten a bad name because of some failures. It is unfortunate that the concept has been dispatched because of its conduct. It is not very new (as if that were a criterion of goodness). I argue that it is the best approach. To do so sounds as if I have relaxed my scientific skepticism. The skeptical reader may take my statement as a hypothesis. I have studied, compared, contrasted, and sought the best way to meet pressing national and international needs for faunal systems. I have noticed that I could wait before deciding, because deciding is risky. The resource problems that beset modern people will not wait; the animals and people dependent upon solutions cannot wait. A very good approach is needed ... and soon. The systems approach seems best.

Suppose it is not. Within its very structure lies the solution to its reformation. Feedback is present. Feedback is a special kind of process; it is a system itself. It receives stimuli, checks the condition of the system against a standard or set of criteria, drives the system ahead if appropriate, but if errors or differences occur, it takes corrective actions, often simultaneously (because there is rarely only one causative factor), and inputs are changed. Perhaps processes are changed or, surprisingly, even the standards or criteria. If the systems approach were not best for managing faunal systems, then properly conceived and operating feedback would redefine or revise it to make it that way. It might even require the name be changed, for if that was a significant barrier to the objectives being achieved, then let there be change.

Anything can be analyzed as a system. A book is a system, but it lacks feedback. Absence of a part or improper function does not deny the analytical power of the concept. Some programs on the CAPPER Diskettes are movements in the direction of overcoming the lack of feedback in a book as a system. There are questions at the end of chapters of some books. These have been called feedbacks. Not so, for even though monitoring may occur, there is no action, no turning of switches or dials, no acceleration or gate closing. If the context is enlarged to the reader and book as a system, then the reader may engage in feedback by using questions and answers to ascertain if the writing communicated well, if memory occurred, if behavior was changed.

State or provincial wildlife agencies are systems. Managers begin taking a systems approach when they conceive of things as systems. Things seen may not be very good systems, but that is a comment about function, not form. It is my observation that few wildlife agencies have an active feedback component.

There are farms, forests, consulting groups, even individuals that can be similarly analyzed using the same components. When people take a system approach they seek to see things as general systems, see where they differ, and then begin to make corrections.

An Approach

When some people think of a boat, they think of a boat in water. "Boat" connotes a floating thing. It is difficult to think of a boat without water or without someone in it. Similarly, an animal, for many people, does not exist except in an environment. Some people hear "stream" and think rainfall, soil, stream edges, fish, flowing water, marshes, and ocean, all in one thought. "Stream" denotes a system, not some flow of water in an imaginary volume. This book is for people who think of many relevant things all at once when they hear a code word for an animal or a forest type. It is an effort to work with such people and encourage them; it seeks to get others to join in the thought process, to see groups and related things not just as objects or components, but to see whole systems. The objective is for more and more people to see systems, to understand them, and then to conceive of all human systems as manageable. Seeing, comprehending, understanding and controlling systems - these comprise the action and meaning of approaching things as systems.

A systems approach has been defined in many ways. Herein a definition is not important, only the general concepts that 1) systems exist; 2) almost everything can be described using general systems theory; 3) things in nature have more things in common than exceptions; 4) principles and algorithms can be developed that relate well to and explain most natural phenomena; 5) optima, best states, can be described; 6) best-action(s) can be described and selected that tend to have systems achieve desired states; and 7) it is possible to control systems; to have them produce desired products and services; and 8) conditions change, and well-designed systems can change to meet the new conditions.

This list sounds very general and that is its intent. A general systems approach is what I advocate people taking, whether as the means for analyzing the endocrine system of an isopod or for designing regional fur management system. "General" means "universal" (not "vague" or "imprecisely formed"). It means that the pattern used in comprehending and working with the world is the same in all aspects of life and work. The word for this is isomorphism. For people willing to work toward seeing sameness and similarity rather than emphasizing differences and assuming universal uniqueness, the world is highly isomorphic. Everything looks like a general system! This point of view is not a half-empty vs. half-full argument. It is a philosophical as well as practical stance that concludes that in real time it is not possible to learn everything about everything as if each topic was separate and perhaps nonrepeatable, unique. That mastery of pieces and parts is possible, but is denied by observations. It is denied by the pressing needs to learn about an average of 300 things about 3000 species in each of the States - many more about animals in the developing countries. It is denied by general deductive logic, by probability theory itself. The alternative view is that things are alike in structure and process; they are isomorphic. Studying isomorphisms is part of taking a systems approach. Studying is not enough, for having studied them ... then what? So what?

Fig. 1.6 The fundamental separation in human action is shown. The relations may be dynamic. Analysis tends to separate, design tends to synthesize. Although value is omnipresent, analysts attempt to avoid value influences on observations, i.e., a form of bias.

A systems person will typically perceive the conceptual world as being composed of analysis and design.

The system as listed and disgrammed is the fundamental conceptual cut. The world and things in it may be described and taken apart (analysis) or they may be created, assembled, organized, maintained, operated and used for purposes (design). The words are overloaded but when taking a systems approach, there is a need to form the most general, comprehensive, universally-relevant conceptual taxonomy possible. The conventional lumper vs. splitter arguments of biologists do not have to be engaged. There can be an on-going dynamic. First; there is the need to lump or generalize or organize into big groups or categories, then to go for greater detail ... depending on objectives. Objectives are fundamental to a systems approach but Chapter 4 is devoted to that. Here it is useful to note that analyses tend to be value free, efforts to "tell it like it is," to describe outputs whatever they may be. Design tends to be purposive. The systems approach is continually, dynamically, shifting from value-free analyses and statements of outputs to value-laden statements of objectives ... and back again (Fig. 1.6).

The beauty of Fig. 1.6 is not only its simplicity but also the ease with which it becomes the pattern of the faunal system manager analyzing the relations of body weight and measurements of all sorts of deer and eventually producing an equation that specifies that the circumference of a male white-tailed deer's chest behind the legs is strongly related to its weight. In fact, the equation for adult male deer in fall and winter in western Tennessee (Weckerly et al. 1987:336) is:

Weight = 0.15C - 74.84

where C is circumference of the chest in milimeters and the weight is in kilograms. The r-square value is 0.74. There were other relationships reported (see CAP411) but the emphasis here is that a strong relationship was discovered by analysis. The manager, the ecosystem designer, may then use such an analysis 1) to determine differences in deer weights among regions, 2) to reduce costs and time of "weighing" harvested deer to get trends over time, and 3) to obtain an index to the balance of habitat conditions and populations in a particular area. Median weight will decrease if the food supply deteriorates.

In the first case, analysis, there is merely a report: Weight = f(C). In the second case, that of design, the manager used the conclusion from the study to move an area or population toward a pre-determined condition, the arena called "good." In the latter case, a tape (like that used to measure the circumference of a tree but reading as diameter) can be used as a diagnostic tool in the sense of Aldo Leopold's concept of land health (Leopold 1949). The parallels between "diagnosis-prescription" and "analysis-design" are unmistakable. The latter are the more general words.

The resource manager tends to be more oriented to design than analysis. Much of U.S. university education is analysis-oriented. The wildlife "biologist" is often the analyst; the manager is the one who gets things changed in the field. There is a need to rebalance the situation, to emphasize both analysis and design and especially its interaction. By interaction is meant not simple cause-and-effect chains but action coupled with direct response. A manager may need more information on soil-plant relations to improve predictions of the amount of wildlife food will be produced next year or over 50 years. The analyst responds, suggesting not a soil-plant but a shadow-water-plant phenomenon at work, thereby revising the manager's actions and, next, stimulating a request for an algorithm that provides shadows or light intensity on a map of areas whose food plants might be cultivated. An effort is made herein to stress design over analysis, not because of difference in importance but because of the current emphasis, perhaps overemphasis, on analysis in textbooks and university education in general.

When a systems approach is taken, a hair-shirt of ambivalence is donned. The systems person knows that any system that is named is too large and, simultaneously, too small. The systems person faces wrongness. Usually the system is too large, too complicated. A forest stand is a system; to comprehend it fully is absurd, too large a task. It must be tackled, perhaps it and several more, i.e., the forest compartment. Larger than too large! But it is too small. Its monetary worth is a function of international lumber tariffs, export laws, and the price of oil. Much too small! The systems person specifies the context to escape this problem.

A systems approach is in reality a subsystems approach. A system is named and limits are set. It is a subsystem, a part of some next-higher system, but at least in the instant of analysis or decision, it is the relevant system. The systems person is always in a tentative state in relation to a system. Some analysis or operation may take years, but it is tentative, admittedly not inclusive enough, not as large as feasible given a host of constraints, and as soon as complete or when necessary, the next larger (or smaller) system will be attacked. Whether subsystems are nested, overlapping, additive, or influencing each other are perspectives that people taking a systems approach tend to use in analyzing problems, and understanding how other people may see a problem. "Perspective" connotes a singular viewing point. What is badly needed is a dynamic, holographic view of the large, complex forest systems.

For many people, the admonition to deal with whole systems and yet to be forced to deal with subsystems seems irrational. There is no easy resolution of this problem other than a pragmatic one. People are limited. They must begin somewhere. The systems approach does not imply that a system must be comprehended as one gigantic whole. The quest is for the largest relevant subsystem (where "relevant" is defined by the objectives). The largest subsystem is the beckoning siren of the systems person. The system is mastered ... and in the next instant, the next larger or smaller one becomes the new quest.

There is a recurring note of disbelief about a systems approach among faunal resource people. They seem to say that their problems are too large for any approach to work. The approach provides the best conceivable basis for operation while awaiting a better one. Models of various sizes can be created. Some computer scientists say such models are beyond the capacity of present computers. They do not perceive that most game populations, as subsystems, are poorly coupled. Ashby (1956:48-59) used coupling to reflect the union of subsystems such that one affects the condition of another. Coupled subsystems form a whole, but retain their individual natures. Coupling with feedback exists. This implies that not only does some factor (e.g., a new pine plantation) influence another (e.g., deer feeding behavior), but it implies that affected part of the system also affected the initial factor. (Thus, deer behavior influences the abundance of pines and increases the light that later increases grass as food for deer.) It is my observation that wildlife populations are poorly coupled. DeVos (1969:152) reported that wild ungulates in an undisturbed savanna ecosystem have preferred diets that are complementary to one another. These diets involve both different plant species and different growth stages of the same plant. Therefore, all parts of the available vegetation contribute efficiently to support the biomass of mixed wild ungulates. Zebra select mainly the stems of grasses at the top level of the herb layer, wildebeest prefer mainly leaves in the middle of the herb layer, and Thompson gazelles favor low grasses and leaves of dicots. Giraffes eat trees; rhinoceroses feed on brush.

One implication is that large faunal systems can be modeled on a computer or "built" module by module, piece by piece, without major concern from problems of coupling. It is thus possible to model herbivorous populations as modular subsystems and couple them with available forage (Starfeld and Bleloch 1986). Partitioning out the forage may be a problem, but not insurmountable, and such a problem does not deny the argument of faunal systems being poorly coupled. Harris and Fowler (1975) have completed such a model. Although the next statement will be taken out of context by some readers and suggested as a denial of things presented elsewhere in this book, it needs to be said. Ecosystems are more complicated than complex. There are many parts, many processes, many cause-and-effect pathways, but few powerful feedback loops, few massive controlling principles. To assume simple coupling and attempt to get as much of the environmental system as possible under conceptual control will put society much further ahead than trying to isolate these few resistant issues and get them splendidly solved. Of course, both approaches would be nice, but society has neither the time, nor the number of skilled ecosystem modelers, nor the inclination to spend money to play much of this simultaneous strategy.

General-to-the specific, and vice versa, is the perspective for nesting or embedding systems. The deciduous forest biome may have nested within a corporate-owned forest. Within the forest is the compartment; within the compartment is the stand; and within the stand is the tree. The flatworm may be conceived as a subsystem physically as well as conceptually nested within the rabbit. Rapoport (1973:190) said:

In short, the contribution of the systems view to human betterment depends crucially on which systems are singled out for scrutiny and from what perspectives. The 'reorientation of our cultural values,' advocated by Laszlo (1972) and by several generations of men of good will cannot be achieved unless the following sobering fact is widely recognized: the viability, adaptability, efficiency, or internal harmony of a system has no bearing on its relationship to a larger system in which it is embedded. The embedded system may nurture the embedding one and contribute to this autonomous functioning; or it may sap its vitality and eventually destroy it as malignancies and parasites do.

Becoming aware of relations is a major gain for many people. Not just awareness of cause-and-effect, itself a major accomplishment, but comprehension of a strong functional dependency is a fundamental characteristic of people taking a systems approach to faunal system management. If ecology is "the study of the relations ... etc.," then the faunal system manager is a person who studies, learns, and uses knowledge of relations to operate and control faunal systems. The paradigm is: if I do this, then that will happen? with subsequent effects to that, that, and that? and what is my ability to take the first action? We must discuss large chained system, mindless sequences, and dozens of cause-effect couplets, but also huge systems with feedback loops, with effects modifying causes! It is a difficult perspective. There are not as many significant interactions (two-way relationships) in nature as many people have claimed. There are thousands of cause-effect couplets and discriminating among them to achieve control for lowest costs is the manager's task. Identifying the relations is essential, because at these points in systems managers can achieve can great economies.

In some situations, system analyzers and builders simply add the units contributed by different units or modules as total system output. For example, all forest stands of a particular type in a district might be added to estimate the forage base or habitat of an insect population. With computer assistance, a healthy regard for natural variation, and a load of suspicion about the objectives of the public or a client, an additive approach to forest systems may be the best to take. At least it may be the place to start to learn about differences that would be required for the manager to be paid for making "a significant difference" in the faunal resource.

People adopting a systems approach seek to find general categories for analyzing and designing their world. Everything at its most fundamental can be taken apart or put together. Analyze and design are the results of a fundamental conceptual cut. They provide the beginning, like inputs, processes, etc., for organizing and doing something with all knowledge. They emphasize the sameness and similarities in all human activities rather than the differences. They are steps along the path to a general systems perspective of the world and eventually, not just a perspective, but a functional, operational basis for faunal resource management ... and perhaps other aspects of human life.

On Taking the Approach

One consequence of taking a systems approach is that questions become more clear or at least less clumped. "How do you manage forests for wildlife?" is a very different question than "how do you manage faunal systems of forests?" "Context" of the systems person suggests the forest is the system of interest of the first questioner; wildlife a factor. The interest of the person asking the second question is less clear, but the interest is probably in a specific faunal system with forest practice as the means to achieve animal-related objectives.

With over one-third of the U.S. land being in public ownership, it is essential that foresters and faunal system managers be aware that very different operational systems result from foresters who work to achieve public objectives and those who work for corporate objectives. There is no proper forestry, no school solution, only an optimum solution for a particular forest with a particular ownership or clientele, and that optimum solution is difficult to determine. Propriety is contextual.

Much forest land is of such low productivity that it will never be of monetary interest to a forester. Much land is in small private holdings and foresters have a dark record in getting these people to improve their practices. It is easy for the conference hall miasma to cause frequent attendees to believe that what is heard there is the real world. There is much irrationality "out there;" there are people too busy to allocate time of any type to forest or animal interests. There are the truly ignorant and illiterate people. There are some so isolated from the forest and its fauna that any presentation, even of a picture, is no more than a sensory blink in a world of daily, meaningless TV watching.

There are some people who are very interested in forest fauna. Managers need to realize who they are, their social and professional context. The realization can reduce frustrations and improve judgments. Those interested are becoming more numerous, better educated, more likely to engage the courts in reconciling differences. With increased urbanization, people lose their sense of the practical solutions, often develop inflated expectations, and lose sight of growing periods, risks, and the amazingly frequent convergence of "low probability" events. Because of the increased tendency to form or join groups to press an idea or oppose a practice, "experts" quickly become lost in the crowd, their influence diluted, or else, the other extreme, they are driven to make statements beyond their competence.

Managers themselves come from different schools, have urban backgrounds, adopt particular "schools of thought," are taught from outdated texts (as this and all textbooks are), and have few (other than personal) continuing education opportunities or requirements.

In the public agency (now frequently in court), in the corporate meeting, or before the landowner, there is an increasing tendency to ask for "the bottom line." Computers have helped calculate it. Once almost impossible to calculate and thus a silly request, the emphasis on benefit-to-cost ratios (B/C), the requirement that government projects demonstrate a B/C ratio significantly greater than 1.0, and the frequent presence of corporate leaders on public advisory boards has increased the request for accounting. The bottom-line question is often asked: If the forest is managed for wildlife, what will be the difference in the monetary returns? It is a leading question, presumes an objective of maximizing returns, excludes other forest benefits, and rarely will tolerate risks being included (fires, insects, disease, wind, etc.). It is certainly not the same question as how to maximize returns from the comprehensive faunal system, but it is asked and asked by people who will get an answer (even though they may not know it is the right answer to the wrong question.

Conventional objectives of industrial forest owners, different from the many publics that influence how lands are managed regionally, and private owners of small forests, are (1) to assure supplies of logs or pulpwood to their plants, (2) to gain from increases in wood and land value, and (3) to profit from tree growth ... usually, counterintuitively, in that order. The role of the industrial forest owner as a realtor should never be discounted.

We now know from a few studies that joint forest and wildlife management efforts have higher monetary returns than forest management alone (e.g., McKee, 1987). CAP99 is a program that can help analyze such costs. Comparisons are best made in terms of investments and returns over time (e.g., a rotation) discounted to the present. In some cases, certain actions cause losses in one resource, gains in another. Evaluating the net effect is the task. The more comprehensive the world view (the broader the context) of the analyst, the more difficult becomes the task of giving a good answer to: What is the net return from the system? Analyses probably should include estimates in the categories shown in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Investments (costs) and returns (benefits) may be estimated for forest-related work alone or work directed at forest- and animal-related objectives. Here a narrow view is taken of wildlife-related returns.

Monetary Costs	Monetary Benefits
Agency or enterprise overhead	Returns from thinnings
Boundary marking	Returns from thinnings without investment
Site preparation	Returns from cuts
Road costs	Returns from cuts without investments
Planting	Land sale value
Prescribed burns	Land sale value without investments
Pre-commercial thinning	Fishing rights sales
Pruning	Hunting rights sales
Commercial cut	Trap line rights sales
Management and administration	Foregone machine and operator downtime
Protection (including wildlife damage)	Road cost savings (Dissmeyer and Foster 1987)
Taxes	Foregone public relations expenditures
Foregone streamside harvest	Foregone fire (arson) suppression costs
Land purchase value	Tree growth enhancement (nutrients, root fungae)

From one perspective, the systems approach is value free, even though from my value system, I claim it is "best." A system approach can be taken in order to destroy humankind, to win a ball game, or to kill a crop-eating groundhog (Marmota monax). Enormous or not; good for some, bad for others; right or not is not intrinsic to the approach. The approach is "objectives oriented." Such a statement needs to be resisted because each of the six components of the general system is equally important. It is a "______-oriented" activity; a person only need insert one of the six words for the components to make a particular emphasis within a particular context.

Objectives are very important in the systems approach. One reason why so much human activity seems flawed is that objectives are not stated or are unclear. Without them, a feedback subsystem cannot operate. Imagine a room thermostat, the classic simple example of a feedback system, without a setting for the desired temperature! Any temperature will be satisfactory if there is no criterion of goodness. So it is in so much faunal resource work. We look for facts, not realizing we have not decided whether we want many species, great abundance in some or all, harvests as counts or harvests as utilized meat, pelts as counts or profit for a region from pelt sale, more animals that are not of game status or fewer poisonous snakes of species x? Few have decided. Until they do so, any action will suffice. All actions are about equally good or bad ... or at least no one can tell how good or bad.

Resisting Suboptimization

"Resisting Suboptimization" should be on a faunal system manager's flag. Later in the book this will become more clear. For now, let it simply imply that resources are short, time is limited, knowledge scant, and any waste that can possibly be avoided needs to be. A wildlife manager who puts 2000 pounds of lime on a field when, based on soil samples and expected yield to meet demand, when he or she should have only put on 1200 pounds is suboptimizing. The 1200 is optimum; any more or less is inefficient. When a perfect "play" by the faunal manager can be computed, then there needs to be good reasons why the manager does not make that play. Nature may make a novel play in her game and show the manager to be wrong, but that is not a denial of the manager or of the system. Over the long run, with adjustments to such plays, the manager will win most (Chapter 17). The task is not necessarily to win every time, but to resist losses and maximize achievements based on decisions using expected values. With clearly defined objectives and abundant information, all well processed, it is possible with increasing ease and quality to describe a desirable condition of a forest and its related faunal systems. When that condition is known (or at least we are aware it can be estimated if we could only get on with the task), then no giant step is needed to know that the difference between the present condition and that desired condition can be estimated or calculated. Then, the same technology can show us how to overcome the difference.

The systems approach uses concepts from any and all relevant areas of knowledge because when all is the same, there are no walls. Concepts like demand and risk from economics, or energetics from physics and ecology, can be used to compute the genuine needs of people, the gains necessary to meet them, and the fundamental costs of doing so. In some cases, current animal populations meet demand. Any additional energy, time, or money spent on increasing supplies would be viewed as irrational. At least the expenditure could be judged suboptimal.

I have grim findings for the person interested in faunal systems. The chances for success are low. The saddening reality is that any faunal system, say a region in which hundreds of rabid raccoons (Procyon lotor) have been reported, has at least 10 major components over which a manager may have some control (see Fig. 1.7 and CAP50).

Fig. 1.7 Objectives (for example one for each species in an area) may be summarized in some index of how well the system is performing. That index is shown as Q*. The existing condition is Q. The significance of feedback, itself a system, is shown in an expanded version of a general system.

If the manager is sure he or she has mastered 90 percent of each component (the probability is 0.90) then the probability of control is 0.90¹⁰ or 0.35. The relationship is:

C = N S_i

where C is the index of certainty about system control, N, here, is the symbol for the product of all n elements, and S_i is the probability of mastery of each ith component, there being n of them. The source of the relationship is the product rule for probability theory. The frustration of the relationship is that for very large natural systems (meaning all of them), there are so many components (n) that even if each is known at a high level of confidence or certainty level, then C is usually small. For example, 98 percent mastery of each of all 20 components of some named system (a most improbable level) results in being "right" in management decisions only two-thirds of the time (i.e., C = 0.67 where S_i for each of the 20 component is 0.9820).

The managerial game seems rigged against the faunal manger. Taken one way, the condition is reason for despair; another, it is the motivation for very hard work, clarity, teamwork to master system components, and careful allocation of resources, because, given the enormity of the task, resources will always be short for operating a system with abundant fail-safe mechanisms.

All of the above and that to follow is general, but specific for forests, and for animals. They are largely for designing systems (though occasionally it is difficult to discriminate between analysis and design; they are blurred as if fast-moving).

Models

Readers recall that a simile is the figure of speech using "like" or "as" in expressions of comparison or likeness. Metaphor and analogy provide similar ways of expressing sameness, the isomorphic characteristic of things in nature, business, and management. This book, though dealing with forests, I believe deals with all fauna and related resource management. In that it does not discuss in detail 500 mega-faunal species; 5000 macro-fauna; or 50,000 micro-fauna it is very limited. It seeks to describe concepts, principles, and procedures that are useful. The reader must generalize. No area, no person, no population has been described well enough to avoid generalizing at some point. At that point risk must be taken; there appears to be no certainty. By limiting the book somewhat to forests, an effort is made to reduce the risks of overgeneralizing. My students in the past, not realizing the need to generalize and reluctant to take risks, have been critical of books about single species of deer or lectures about a crop field as a system. They seemed unaware of the need to see a pattern of thought, to master a process, and to reason and to create for new situations by using analogy. Analogical reasoning is essential for the wildland resource manager.

"Don't do what I say; do what I do" is a statement of the leader. Follow me! The hero figure is a model of a person performing, at least in some aspect of life, at perceived perfection. It is possible to create physical models. (Desktop representations of forests are common.) There are operational models used in flight training and some fire-fighting education. There are word models, poetic or prose representations of things and ideas. Photographs, paintings, and graphs represent reality, and at a more sophisticated level these may be represented by mathematical expressions. Fig. 1.8 shows how a graphical model may be expressed as an equation or mathematical model.

Fig. 1.8 A graph of the solid line Q can be expressed by an equation as shown. The distance along the y axis to the intercept is shown as a and the slope or rate of change in y for every unit of x is shown as b. The equation is called a simple linear regression (meaning a straight line) equation.The statistic called R2 expresses one type of goodness of the equation, how well the line accommodates and includes all of the points. A perfect equation has an r-square of 1.0.

Such models are excellent, because when real process events (or an hypothesis) can be expressed precisely in symbols that are widely known, then communication is enhanced for those who know the language. The more precise the model, the less fuzziness to the ideas; the less noise in communication; the greater the precision in transmitting knowledge. By models, one person's reality may become the reality of another person. Poetry, a model, is rarely precise. It tends to be highly discussible. A properly formulated mathematical expression is rarely discussible, only the observations and the steps to the formulation. For forest fauna there are wonderful monographs, beautiful prose, and a few equations. Progressively, over time, more will be discovered, more word models created, more mathematical models formulated, and more computer models implemented. The move with those taking a systems approach is toward increasing the precision of statement, communicating better, and creating clearer models that work under more conditions, all leading to improving predictability, reducing risk, gaining greater control ... all part of the desired human condition.

Questions

Special students may send answers to the following questions. Use email (rhgiles@vt.edu)and in general follow the starting guidelines.

1. What percent of forest land in the U.S. is in private (non-industrial) ownership?
2. Which, age or forest type, has the most influence on animal species that are present at a site? Any ideas why?
3. Why not use "wildlife"? Why use "fauna"?
4. Sketch for yourself (do not send it) a tetrahedron and then label the 4 vertices with the major elements of a resource.
5. Write a brief paragraph on marginal value and relate that to why only "extra" animals can be counted as the consequence of management.
6. Be sure that you can sketch for yourself from memory Figure 1.2. (Submit nothing to me now.)
7. Define isomorphism and then give a clarifying example within faunal system management.
8. When a deer has a chest circumference of 15 inches (back of the axilla of the front legs) about what is its weight in pounds? (Careful with conversions and measurements!)
9. Write clear notes that you might use as you present to your colleagues at a staff meeting (soon) a suggestion that you all attempt to take a systems approach. (You may be general or relate it to a specific project, problem, topic, etc.)

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Last revision August 2, 2000.