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Prescriptions for Managing Grassland Ecosystems: Preliminary Study Proposal

To create a demonstration system that produces a written report (suitable for electronic transmission) for a landowner providing an analysis and description of a grassland and a user-readable, linear-programming and expert system report that prescribes how to manage a grassland ecosystem to achieve owner's objectives.

Overview:

Widespread needs exist for managing pasture, prairie, rangeland, and wild grasslands (hereinafter" grasslands"). This project will list and describe such needs but move to describe grasslands, then how they can be described and analyzed, then develop a prescriptive system -- one that writes out a readable set of practical methods -- amounts, and sequences -- that, if implemented, will achieve landowner objectives.

The system produces a report. The report is created from two files, one a WORD text file, the other a data file. This site information file is merged into the text file. The site information file (1) may cause select parts of the report to be suppressed, or (2) words to be inserted (e.g., county name, date, "high"-"low" etc.); graphs to be drawn; or numbers to be inserted. The graphs are drawn, for example, based on summary data from a GIS window from a data base that includes the property. Models in ancillary programs (e.g, regressions) compute their dependent variable values based on field site inputs, then load them into the site information file.

The major optimization programs are linear programming, probably COPLAN with which we have worked, or LINDO. An alternative described in Giles' 1978 Wildlife Management will be studied for an alternative. EXSYS, an expert system shell will be studied for potential uses.

The new power that we bring, well developed in separate applications, are GPS-specific location of grassland units; 20 GIS factors (elevation, slope, aspect, slope position, distance from roads, distance from water, geology, temperature, precipitations, evapotranspiration, etc.)

We propose to provide the landowner with options for objectives but past experience (TVA) suggests this is difficult, so we shall present three likely objective formulations so that differences in prescriptions can be observed and evaluated.

The project develops a demonstration of a prescriptive system (an element of Leopold's concept of land health). It opens the door to a county-or region-specific service unit, one that will produce such reports, or a larger stable service center that may provide (electronically) these reports to many areas (and continual improvements).

The above is only possible or feasible due to our previous work. The needs are great; the potential for a major synthetic breakthrough exists.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.