A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999
A hundred years ago, General Imboden rode down into Wise County,Virginia, 200 miles west of Peculiar Manor, from Pennsylvania on a horse, rode over these hills, saw the coal and timber resources, and then went home to tell his company: "Buy it!" They did. Other companies followed and they've been reaping the rewards of their wise investment ever since. There comes an end to almost any investment. Buildings deteriorate, machines wear out, and coal seams run out.
My analysis of the reports of Virginia coal field resources and reserves, of mining rates, of investments and failures, of regulations and their relaxation or tightening, all add up to what I conclude is an awful problem. (It is a problem like that in West Virginia, Kentucky, and in virtually every area of the world where there has been intensive mining.) Make no mistake, it is a three-part problem:
I am convinced that unless major strides are taken in and on behalf of the coalfield, it will become a rural slum. It will be a place of desolation and poverty - a tax burden on Virginians and the nation. More importantly, knowledge of its existence will diminish my humanity, and that of other thoughtful people. The quality of my life is tightly bound to the lives of my fellow Virginians, Americans, and friendly people around the world.
Perhaps that is too personal. Consider the old but useful phrase. Your end of the boat is sinking! I am convinced that Virginia - the southwestern coalfield region - is the boat and we are in it together. I see no way to separate my personal concerns from those of the people of the coal field.
The coalfield is the seven-county region of Virginia - Lee, Scott, Wise, Dickenson, Buchanan, Russell, and Tazewell. If there was not a chunk of coal in it, I would still be concerned. Coal is not the issue. The issue is the lives of a quarter-million people that live there now and may do so for the long-term future. At least a hundred years - as we can relate that period with coal extraction. The issue is: what shall become of the people of the coalfield? How shall we create a viable, human, humane place for people, given the looming changes in coal? This a single-industry region. Like the mill-town, when the doors shut, the town suffers. It is no intellectual leap to think of this as the coal-region and when the mines close, the region suffers. Not the region, mind you; not some impersonal place on a map, mind you, but people - all of those beautiful people here, the people who have yet to glimpse their potential; the wonderful children still eager to learn and full of hope.
I'm not depressed or despondent. I just have a feeling that people don't see the same problem or situation as I do. Sometimes living close to a problem can make you ignore it. (Like driving a car with bad brakes; you really ought to do something about it, but you have to get to work!) We have a bigger problem than any car or household or medical problem. It can't be put off.
That problem is: How can we plan, design, and set in motion a scheme to make the coalfield a fit place for people and beasts - within only ten years.
We must discuss seriously the coalfield in the next decade.
I think I see the solution. When you do, you write a book chapter and give lectures because we all need to know. There is no time for false modesty. We need a lot of ideas fast, then a general consensus, and then we must take some positive, powerful steps. There will be disagreements, but action will be needed.
Ten years may sound like a long time to a college student, but four years seems pretty short to most graduating seniors in high school or college. Remember taking your child to the first day of the third grade and asking, "How could this be? She was just born yesterday!" How long did it take to get your place of business going from the first idea to the day you were in the financial black - about ten years? How long did your doctor spend in school? How long did it take for the latest change in mining regulations or reclamation? Ten years is a very short period. There is no time to waste. I wish I had seen the problem as clearly much earlier or I would certainly have said something.
Analysis
A few years ago I studied the coal fields carefully, looking for solutions to reclamation. Peculiar Manor land was especially attractive to me because I saw it was like that land - poor and steep. I was convinced the soil could be stabilized, that people could live "on the contour," that land could produce if carefully attempted at the right scale. It was my little experimental plot. For eight years I had engaged a question: When a company owns a large tract of land in an area (e.g., southwestern Virginia) recognized for its coal production, and that area is not agricultural or not a desert and the coal has been mined, then what?
What is to be done with the land? It is rough, some of it reclaimed after being mined, perhaps, to original contour, and there remains a large acreage that has thin or no seams of coal. Lands once held for coal profits, lands from which coal has been taken, lands reclaimed - then what? What is the rational investment for a person or company owning 1,000 to 100,000 acres in the Appalachian coal field?
Happy is the person or company at the edge of a coal-field town where a shopping center or similar development can be put. Happy, too, is some mountain-top action that begets an airport or condominium site where coal trucks once roared. But what of the rest? What of the taxes? What of the speculation? What of the promise? What of the corporate image? What of the foregone revenue?
I am now more convinced than ever of the need for a new strategy. The new strategy is called the geodesic corporation.
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I tried, but failed. Things just were not coming together. One day ... I can almost recall the physiological change, the real feeling ... the answer came. Remember a cool, cloudy, windy summer day in the field when suddenly you are warm and everything is bright, but only for a few seconds? The wind has blown past the clouds and you experienced a small break in the cover. It is surprising; you always look up.
If I could tell the company what to do, precisely, it would be to no avail. They, years later, would call me a failure. A good project cannot exist in a dying environment. There are no well passengers on a sinking ship. Everyone is moribund!
The discovery, like a religious revelation after words just like another "I told you so," came after the question: "What if you were 100 percent successful?" "What if some perfect design could be achieved and implemented on the ownership?" The answer was: an optimum solution within a suboptimum environment is still suboptimum. A great development in a bad location is not going to produce the desired results, whether they be corporate profit or social well-being.
I played with ideas like: give the land away to a public agency. This was a last resort idea and one with limited takers. "Sell it" was logical, but "to whom?" and "why were they willing to buy?" were the next questions. None of these solutions, including "just hold it" (the reason my studies were requested in the first place), seemed likely to give the greatest corporate returns.
There was no solution to the mine-bench question except a regional solution. The coalfield must be the system of interest. This was not a mere academic quibble, some esoteric topic of taxonomy. Yes, all companies are comprised of people so maybe the solution lies at the personal level. Yes, all companies exist in a region, but all regions exist in a state or nation. Perhaps the problem can only be solved at the level of OPEC, international trade, and world economies!? Ho-hum. There is a region of relevance, a domain of reasonable work, an area where something can be done and effects observed to begin to make significant improvements in the problem as currently perceived.
I described in over 500 pages, then called the "Crest Concept," a concept of systems ecology (a university course which I once taught), rooted in energetics (Odum 1984), and grounded in a managed system of enterprises with designed relations, dependencies, and backups. The answer was to be very capitalistic, very profit-oriented, non-governmental. The answer was to allow landowners with coal and those who had already exploited the coal they could get cost effectively to (1) hold their land (because of pride of ownership [ho-hum], the lack of buyers, and speculation); and (2) make money from its use. People who define themselves as "diggers of coal" will find no solution in the strategy. When there is no more coal, then there is clearly nothing to do. Other people who have a concern for a region, love the land, want to stay, and want a reasonably high quality of life need my strategy.
It is as simple and clear as the palm of the hand. A region is defined (say the seven coal-producing counties of Virginia where there are similar laws, attitudes, etc.). Next, the concept is that the region is important, that profits are to be tallied for the region, and that income is to be made wherever it can be found and extracted legally and cost-effectively.
The next part of the strategy is to focus on profit but not to get greedy! An area with twenty percent unemployment, social problems in bundles, abysmal land use, and great social welfare costs and mass exodus should not really expect to bump one of the Fortune 500 from the list very soon. The criteria of "good" and "success" for the strategy need to be realistic.
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| Figure 14.1. Separate enterprises may exist and serve. Cooperation and shared resources may reduce costs, improve markets, and achieve other synergism. The future will reveal the successes of a fully integrated, highly synergistic corporation for a region. |
Table 14.1. Potential Enterprises, Components of the Regional Geodesic Corporation Strategy for Effective Land Use After Coal Extraction
Diversity is next. Like any good stock dossier or relatively stable ecological system, a diversity of activities is needed. This is one of the problems of coal fields. "Boom and bust" is not the slogan of a sustainable group. By diversity, I mean a long list of enterprises; I easily listed those in Table 14.1). These units or working groups are like buildings in a factory, divisions in a conglomerate. They have a unique set of characteristics; namely, (1) they are all profit-oriented; (2) they share losses and gains; (3) all need not be "successful" independently; (4) the products, by-products, or service of each are used by at least one other enterprise; (5) resources (like a computer or office spaces) are shared; (6) staff are shared to achieve seasonal gains; (7) there is central leadership; (8) the production is from local physical resources (naturally, like coal), but especially (a) space, (b) energy, (c) ideas, (d) service, and (e) value-added action.
Past solutions from wise-men from the East have been to learn how to do things better, like raise cows on reclaimed strip mine benches or grow orchards. These are needed knowledge, of course, but the pressing need is not for new facts but for a way to use what we now know. The need is for a regional working strategy. Having many healthy cows in a ruined region will not result in the land values and long-term corporate profits so badly needed by the people of the region (or the absentee landowners). Not a better farm, but a better region is needed. The way is not to create hundreds of small, good farms. There are economies of scale! One of my students discovered through linear programming that a large herd of cows (more than several hundred) is needed and also they must be fed protein in winter to make profit over the long haul. To sell the idea of small cattle farms or to promote small herds, even good ones, is to further impoverish the region. Not the farm as the enterprise, but the system is the needed idea, whether it be a cattle, or nursery, or walnut system - each operated as one business, region-wide, but in concert with landowners and the other enterprises of the larger, total, regional system (Figure 14.1).
A Cattle System Example
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| Figure 14.2. A suitability index for annual forages based on July temperatures for Wise County, Virginia. The index ranges from 3 to 5 with the darker cells indicating better values. |
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A marketing and sales enterprise would assure best returns are gained from all parts - from bones to the bawling. Geneticists would breed a cow best suited to the environmental conditions (cows are energy budgeters, you know). The computer would select optimum feedlot locations, optimum butchering facility location, optimum waste disposal (including product drying with low-yield natural gas that is abundant in the coal field), cooling for processing and storage, and even storage (there is plenty of space) for sales when prices are highest.
Greg Kroll (1982) studied a cattle system and discovered that if I had continued to work toward the optimum farm, I would have failed. The solution was in a cattle enterprise, with a central management group, buying and selling, renting land, economizing on fence, running feed lots, centralizing veterinary and genetics work, and optimizing transportation, marketing, advertising, processing, and retailing. Profits from the cattle enterprise are the objective, not "farms on mine benches." To the company supporting the project and asking the questions, the answer was: start a coal-field-wide cattle enterprise. Some of the range-pasture will be on your land; most will not. Centralized offices, services, feedlots, etc. can be on your property. "Create a modern, complex cattle business," a total system, was the answer and then integrate it with other enterprises for the region.
A tightly-controlled, specialized cattle enterprise on the East coast may not be a bad idea. Alone, it will be bad and will probably fail as have other attempts. Success is to be learned from ecological systems. The magic word is synergism, the ability to add 1 + 1 + 1 and get 4, the extra results gotten from interactions. The cattle system interacts by design and by managerial insistence with:
I proposed a wildlife enterprise. Wild turkey production was linked to the cattle system. Clearings (the strip-mined benches grazed and in good grass) are essential for productive mountainous forest turkey populations. The cattle managers, because linked in a total profit-oriented system, helped the wildlife system.
Imagine a corporation composed of 30 enterprises, all nested in a geodesic form (Figure 14.1 above). One is forestry. Computers help harvest just the right trees to maximize profits, minimize equipment costs, and assure the highest value is added in the region to the harvest. Growing and cutting trees is not the enterprise - making profits is, and that includes pulpwood, firewood, and a variety of select desirable wood products ranging from pallets to pins, and including toys, sport equipment, specialty furniture, art objects, frames, fence posts and fences. There are new opportunities to vitalize the coalfields of Virginia. There are extreme challenges
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| Figure 14.5. Visibility maps, when combined with other maps (factors), can be used in selecting development sites, "hiding" undesirable facilities, and in improving trail and road locations. The darker cells are more visible from more points in the area. |
and problems recognized by corporate, state, and national leaders that have resisted efforts of the past to solve them. An alternative approach is being proposed and launched to solve these old, evident problems. Not a rehash of old approaches or a plea for more federal money, the novel approach incorporates the best of some very old, well-tried, proven solutions and creates new form and function from them. The result is a newly designed system, a unique corporation.
The design is to assure high interaction among divisions. Each adds to or enhances at least three others. Resources are shared; wastes from one are moved as raw materials to another; losses are reduced; economics are gained; personnel are given multiple opportunities; shifts are made among divisions for efficient use of staff; income sharing is done; trading is encouraged; maximum leasing is done to allow and encourage local ownership of land; analyses identify the economic margin within the divisions and collectively for the corporation; sophisticated management aids serve Divisions or units of the corporation; maximum involvement of people of the region is sought through a variety of contractual as well as voluntary arrangements. Because of uncontrollable factors, some of the Divisions in Table 14.1 will be highly profitable in some years, low in others. The diversity is designed to increase the financial stability and employment rates of the larger system. This larger system is closely monitored, and with computer aids, adjusted to assure very great overall efficiencies. Economics of scale are similarly sought through optimizing within Divisions as well as among them for the Corporation.
Landowners who desire to, turn over in a lease their forest lands to the enterprise for sophisticated profit management.
Proper tree and shrub species are planted on each site.
A nationally recognized fire-fighting team is created.
A fire-fighting school is created bringing hundreds to the area each year.
A high intensity, short rotation, sycamore enterprise is created for biomass energy and a new cattle feed. (The cattle feed is used with the grazing enterprise on the reclaimed strip mine benches).
To stop the awful clearcutting of these steep slopes and to begin to favor high quality hardwood production, new timber marking is used and mules and horses are used. A new breed of well-trained logging mules is created and the enterprise flourishes. Twice a year there are competitive "pulls" by these animals conducted at new recreational and public events. Trails become more widespread and a wonderful recreational and fire-protection trail system is created. Bus loads of weekend excursion recreationists are brought to the area for planned high quality outdoor recreation, including cross-country skiing, horseback rides, and hiking. An Olympic training center for walkers and runners is created to use select, specially designed trail systems. A youth wilderness program is created; youth wilderness challenge programs are operated. A nationally famous cross-country horse race is promoted and held each year. The "Rebel" cross-country 50-mile foot race is held annually through the forests to commemorate the accomplishments of the ridge runners of the War Between the States.
Forest equipment use is computer scheduled; work teams are formed; workers may shift to other field work when appropriate to get a break, to avoid destroying roads when they are wet, and to assist in other peak-work-load enterprises.
New wildlife - hunting, trapping, fishing, and bird watching experiences - all profit oriented - are planned within the forests.
The bee enterprise is favored by favoring certain trees such as sourwoods.
The walnut enterprise is used for intermediate grazing by animals in the goat enterprise.
The sycamore enterprise traps silt, rebuilds the valleys, reduces floods and flood damage, improves ground water supplies and feeds cattle and goats, and provides unique bird-watching areas.
A forest nursery is created. It supplies needs of reclamation, the forest, and then markets outside the region.
New lakes and ponds are created within the forests, forming a fisheries system in which high intensity management can provide a variety of fishing experiences and successes. The forest creates both the quality environment for people, as well as the protection of the watershed and the water to assure high quality fish and fishing.
In some areas, organic wastes are disposed in the forests, contributing to their growth and relieving a waste problem.
The list is long and the relations square the length. The sense of things is: separation into name enterprises but unification for a common purpose, regional spirit and autonomy, planned aids to optimization, protection from the "busts" with only minor cuts from the "boom"-year gains.
"You're dreaming" is the harshest local criticism to date. One Arizona expert said to me that the total system idea presented here for Virginia would work within an area where Indian tribes had similar problems. A track record or demonstration is not available. The start-up costs, as I see them, are about those of building a modern shopping center and much less than one or two military tanks. The idea is not to buy land or take over a region. The concept is to vitalize a region by creating a new conglomerate, a geodesic corporation, a money-factory, relying on the superior management of the resources present, using the best of economic theory, using land rentals and leases to gain rights to land (and returns from investing in it), betting on coal as one enterprise - but only one - and finding a solution to the extreme diversity that exists in the mountainous coal regions in people's abilities, interests, resources, employment opportunities, markets, and seasonal needs. The geodesic strategy seeks to overcome these problems and respond to needs.
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Walnuts
Another example of the potential relationships is that of a unit called Walnut Vales. I found by using a computer that only 700 acres out of 70,000 studied were superior for walnut trees. Planting on fewer or more acres would be suboptimum. Rather than "producing trees," the recommendation was to produce high-value trees (with secondary nut-meat, park-land, wildlife, recreation, and flood control benefits) on select sites. Do not plant them where they will be stressed, where insects will elicit insecticide use, where disease will take plants and increases costs.. Plant them where they will grow well. Fertilize these with wastes from other systems. Foresters know that spacing trees for timber growth is different than for producing crops of nutmeats. With the computer, we can select the spacing that will maximize profits from the sum of the two, discounting to the present. Walnut groves are excellent for gray squirrel hunts; excellent for parks and open-forest recreation. They may be planted so that their stumps become barriers in flood-prone areas. Imagine a new home being moved to or built on a mined bench, a walnut grove planted where the house that flooded every 2-3 years once stood. Rights to visit and recreate in the area are retained by the homeowner. The walnut grove enterprise feeds a sawing enterprise, provides seasonal labor, protects a watershed, respects family rights to and pride in land, maximizes profit from wood and nuts, reduces costs of flooding, and by design and stump-height provisions traps "deltas" of silt for improved future tree growth. The squirrels contribute to a well-advertised hunting enterprise, complete with guides ... with horses, with trails. The trail building crew may help harvest crops, work the forests, and provide security, including fire-fighting and rescue teams engaged in continual competition that spills out nationally and internationally.
When profits are seen clearly and success is measured by how well your enterprise is going (you get 70 percent of profits from your enterprise) and how well others are doing (you get returns from the 30 percent that all contribute to the common good), then the system can succeed. It provides direct incentives from maximizing each enterprise as well as all enterprises. A forester doesn't work only for the tree-related enterprise but for the walnut, wildlife, nursery, and outdoor-recreation enterprise. A rustic fence enterprise is tied directly to the cattle-fencing group as well as to security, recreation, and, of course, forestry.
Seterrain In the area are 30,000 acres of un-reclaimed mined land. This is in scattered areas throughout the mountains, areas stripped of their earth cover of coal beds and then left, bare and eroding. This is the land of the jokes about people and their livestock having short legs so they can walk around the mountains.
I don't really know where the figure of 30,000 comes from. It could not have come from aerial surveys because the area is too big. Satellite capability was only getting started when it was being used as an impressive number to get public interest up, thus congressional interest, thus money to flow. There are similar magic numbers around; they take on truth as a function of the frequency of use.
I don't doubt that there are that many acres. If you had to visit each acre for only one day each to get an idea of its condition, it would take about 150 years. It is hard to believe that there are only about 200 working days in a year. It is equally hard to imaging either 150 years or that anything meaningful could be done for mapping, analyses, or comprehensive observations on one acre (208 feet by 208 feet or about one football field) in one day after subtracting travel time - which in that country is always great. "Up thar" on the mountain is a "fur piece" by road because roads are jeep trails and are frequently washed out by stream torrents and mudslides.
I became involved because I thought the reclamation process might include wildlife. Why must an area be returned to forests or brought to good grazing land? Bob Downing, then with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, suggested that some of the areas should not be reclaimed. In fact, he argued, some were already in good habitat. To bulldoze an area, level it, put in terraces, etc. would disturb it again and the end results may not be as good for wildlife as the changes that had taken place since the mines pulled out of the area.
I suspected the hypothesis was true, but it seemed that criteria were needed for deciding when to let an area alone and when to do costly reclamation. Leaving it alone had wildlife and low costs on its side. Reclamation work had long-term water and erosion control and new forests or grazing land in its side. A long-term monetary justification might pay for the high costs of on-site work.
We had a team of people working on the project. They had studied fish, birds, and mammals on old mine sites. I never really knew where the data would be used. They were interesting and the students gained but the results never plugged in. It was like conventional three-prong electric plugs that are not useable in houses with the two-prong receptacles. Everything is logical, it "works," but it really cannot be used. My arguments for computer-based design, or comprehensive systems that allows all observations to be used and points to specific data needs before going afield was poorly communicated again. The field work proceeded simultaneously with computer work, not in sequence. There were wastes on both ends. Nevertheless, I developed the concept of a computer-aided prescription system. It had an analogy with Aldo Leopold's concept of a science of land health (in Land Country Almanac).
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| Figure 14.3.A cross-section of a mountain showing the bench produced by cutting into the mountain and removing the thick layer of coal. The over-burden is to the right. |
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A technician visit the site (the bigger the site the better because there are so many acres and so little time and money). Data forms are completed or a hand-held microcomputer asks questions and data are entered. A computer produces a book, a prescription, telling a great deal about the area because of equations, central data (such as climate and geologic) and gives recommendations about what to do to achieve objectives.
It was a good idea. The prototype was criticized because it was not validated (in science you can only invalidate something), was not complete, and was not as valuable as I once believed it might be because of two almost unpredictable events. One was that the price of coal popped up greatly - thus some abandoned sites were re-worked. The coal left far back in the hill became economical to dig out. Thus, these abandoned mines were re-worked to get now-pricey coal and now their reclamation was required under new laws. Second, the federal administration (the Regan years) drastically cut back on efforts to reclaim mines and even inspect lands that were currently being mined. The computer-aided reclamation concept came at an inappropriate time. It is still a good idea and I've expanded and transformed it as a general concept, with prescriptions in problem areas, not only to mines but forests, wildlife areas, watersheds, rangelands, even backyards.
I made the contacts with a major coal company in the region, did the preliminary proposals, and got a long-term project started with the university and the company. Then I began field work, computer programming with students, computer mapping, and writing of a large report, one of those now dusty on the shelf, the very thing newer computer based dynamic planning and knowledge-base ideas are designed to counter (see The Trevey). A planning report needs to be like a newspaper - a throw-away. The system is the thing that lives. Any change can be made and then a new computer run made ... perhaps just on a monitor, but at least on paper ... to be tossed out later, having gathered no dust.
My work in the coal field took me to many sites. I began thinking that highwalls were beautiful. They were like the massive stone layers of Arizona. They were beautiful in their order, layers, and form. The maroon rocks against gray layers were as if harmonized. Elsewhere, every shade of beige was present and different in the evening from when seen in the morning. In the morning, we would go out to the bench to look at erosion or grassed areas or wildlife habitat.
The miners were perplexed. They wondered, "Why cannot we leave highwalls when they are left along every highway cut in the state?" They probably could have if they had gotten together and formed a coalition and had been willing to do some trading. Independence has survival value in the old coal field. Getting together was not their style. The strip mined areas were abandoned. Highwalls ran for miles. Eroding benches and piles of acid shale were left. Streams once having trout in them ran rust-orange and acid, not a creature in sight. Eventually, in the late 1960's, people got fed up and in the "environmental era" laws were passed requiring reclamation. Reclamation has an historical connotation. Return the land to past conditions, which implicitly must have been good.
I contend that I can grow anything anywhere ... given enough money. This "given" seems unfair. Yes, I can grow bananas outside of Buchanan or grapes in Grundy, but the costs are too high. Too high as compared to what? "Reclamation" is a concept that has gotten completely out of control. Do we want to claim land for quality human existence or restore it to its original, steep, erosive, low-site-index shaley condition? Do we want to cover it with grass, trees or what? What are the criteria? We can certainly create beautiful terraced landscapes equivalent to those of China, Bolivia, Italy, Spain and elsewhere. Why is the original contour perfect? We can recharge aquifers, reduce erosion, stabilize stream banks, and retain waters for long-term bio-geo-chemical reduction-oxidation processes in a designed land surface.
Nature is assumed "good" but people need to ask: compared to what? My students want to "do good for wildlife," but I ask: as compared to what? How can you tell? That which is good for foxes is bad for quail. Good for cardinals and song sparrows is bad for pileated woodpeckers. How can you tell? Wildlife is a resource. A resource, by definition, is a thing with associated human value. There is value applied everywhere. A rattlesnake on a mined-site flat rock is the same as a shiny blue skink (lizard)? Do we want any number of rattlesnakes and copperheads? Moths are pretty; they are nice; do we have no value associated with mosquitoes, gnats, and the little delta-winged bastards called "deer flies" that tell you they have visited you by leaving your blood to look at? (Evidently I have some preferences.)
Wild animal life has relative value to people. Thus, it is a resource and thus can be and will be controlled and regulated. It needs to be better controlled, i.e., managed to improve net benefits - at least to keep them in the positive column.
Similarly, land is a resource. Land map area has value; its real shape shapes that value. Moving mountains is no longer the project or problem it once was. In the coal country, there are "mountain top removal" projects. People don't create highwalls, they remove the entire top of the mountain and remove the flat thick coal seam on which the top of the mountain once sat.
People ought to visit mines, at least mining conventions where they can see equipment. When you stand next to tires with radii twice your height, your world scale changes. There can be seen machines with scoops that can hold my entire house. The operator is many stories off the ground, a very peculiar expression of scale. Trees and other human-scale items are not useful references to the surface miner.
For people in wildlife management, funds are limited, scale is farm tractor size, and work is discussed in terms of pounds of fertilizer. These mining operations are of another world. It seems useful to me (and I think for other wildlife people) to shift scales, at least temporarily.
One consequence of such a shift is to say, since I can move mountains and there is no principle that says natural landform is best (or even good), and since in the future fossil fuel will be short and I may not get another chance to move mountains, then what is the optimum land surface for the long-term future?
The question would have been silly years ago. Technology allows unthinkable questions to be thought and vented. The computer, in a similar fashion, allowed unthinkable questions to be asked like "on the day after the hunting season can we give a report on wildlife harvest to commissioners who must set the next year's season?" Some states still struggle with their data, reporting last year's results after the season has been set for next year. Absurd! Technology changes the scale of thought.
The concept of optimum land surface was equally difficult because there are metaphysical aspects to land. God, or at least nature, shapes land. Part of the difficulties in mining and other land use is the godly and personified nature of land. The phrases are "Mother Nature," "rape of the land," "running sores" (referring to erosion gullies), "the thin topsoil skin" and others. Wilderness and naturalness are given the category of "good" without realizing that reasonable people need for that assignment a list of criteria. What are the criteria of goodness? By what standards is the natural landform good? Best?
I contend that land is a resource, thus having the dimension of human value. Difficult to describe, at least value means having importance to several reasonable people, having relatively more importance then other things in life, less than others. It means that something is perceived to have actual or potential benefits to people. When I think of resource preservation, conservation, or use, I think of " ... by people, for people." Unless I do so, I am without criteria. There is no other functional basis for decision. I cannot tell what to do, what is best. I need criteria for goodness, for optimality, and these only come from people.
When I remove coal or reshape the land for any purpose - a shopping center, other minerals, transportation corridors - what should be the final surface configuration?
The long-term future is at least 2,000 years, a brief tick in Earth-time, five periods of camping at Peculiar Manor. I do not know what the details of that future will be, so the solution must be very generalized. There will be other changes (like digging a basement or placing a road) but the surface must have some overall, general best configuration, probably not a 100 percent slope (a 100 percent slope, by convention, is land surface at a 45 degree angle to the horizon).
To formulate the objective and the criteria of optimality is the most difficult work of the systems person. There is risk; it is easy to solve perfectly an invalid problem.
My quest has been to design an optimum land surface shape. What was to be planted, what would grow, how top soil would develop, what uses would be made? These might all change over 2,000 years and probably would several times. The task was to "hold what you got" retaining soil nutrients in place (for supplies of several nutrients, particularly phosphorus, are limited, energy costs of transportation are high (and will not be used to haul fertilizer in a fossil-energy short world!), and energy costs of producing nitrogen are exorbitant. We need to retain water and recharge aquifers for evident reasons. Most importantly, in an energy-dependent world that will become fossil-energy short, we need energy. As plants over the eons have done, we must capture energy. I suspect technology will find a way to reproduce some of the energy collecting processes in plant leaves. It will be inefficient, costing as much energy to get it as the amount gotten. (Not bad, though, in an energy-short world.) I'm not willing to gamble on this being low-cost or massively successful. My concern is for surfaces for fixing solar energy. The new land form is one that is a maximum energy fixing surface, a surface covered with plants. (Such form, mind you, is only for areas where land is being re-shaped anyway.This is not a concept for all private and public lands!) Perhaps later, there will be high-tech solar collector areas like the current fields of wind machines and glass and mirror systems. I prefer not to discuss them for they are very, very high in costs of energy to produce them. My concern is for areas for plants, the natural collectors. Type of plant is not yet specified. Today's garden is tomorrow's forest, which is tomorrow's garden.
I call the concept Seterrain, system engineering terrain. I do not yet have the computer programs that do the work. I work on them slowly; other people are much more facile programmers. Interest in big, futuristic ideas are very difficult to sustain. Creative-work-time is usurped by idea-defending-time. Ideas are like infants. They best be cared for, nourished, cleaned, protected. An adolescent idea, as big and healthy as it may appear, is a very fragile thing. It too needs nurture. In academic circles, modern professors seem to be trained to attack ideas. Criticism is good, needed, and required but within the community there is real need for family-like cooperation, mutual tending, kindly critique, not that which is vicious. There is a need to move good ideas to a state of maturity where they can then display their toughness under attack.
I am not alone with Seterrain or its premises. Dubos (1976:460) observed that the magnificence of the English parks
"... symbolizes that human interventions into nature can be creative and indeed can improve on nature, provided that they are based on ecological understanding of natural systems and of their potentialities for evolution as they are transformed into humanized landscapes."
Schaefer et al. (1979) presented a paper on "Sculpturing Reclaimed Land to Decrease Erosion." They observed that natural watershed and slopes are relatively fixed. The forces that give rise to developing watersheds and the stream channels achieve a type of equilibrium with the forces that resist such development. When this occurs, erosion from the channel becomes very small.
They said a designed drainage system could be developed with equations relating:
They suggested reclamation including a way " ...to sculpture the land into a shape that approximates what would be a natural surface in dynamic equilibrium with its environment".
I do not assume the task will be easy, but it is not a Manhattan Project - more on the order of one or two Ph.D. studies with continual improvements with use and discoveries being included.
Yamamoto (19 ) probably saw some of the answers as he asked basic questions in reclamation of:
He claimed that "unless the regional geomorphic trends and their ecological implications are understood, the mere back-filling and re-contouring of mixed disturbed lands, particularly in areas where major volumetric landscape alteration is expected, are mere cosmetic routines that lack scientific rationale."
Jacob (1977:1164) made the distinction between engineering and tinkering. The former relating to having tools and materials that exactly meet his needs (implying a known end); the tinkerer having a collection of leftovers and odds and ends and making something out of what he has. In one case, a project defines the tools and materials; the reverse determines the tinker's results.
My thoughts on Seterrain go something like this. We need a surface at right angles to the sun's radiation, at least those elements of the spectrum useable by plants that can get through our polluted air. That angle is determined by the latitude of the work area. There is no one best shape; every site is likely to have a unique shape because its factors, in combination, are unique.
The angle changes during the day. High noon may be the criterion but I suggest the middle of the photosynthetic growth curve for the area (which is not noon) and is affected by local temperatures. A series of convex, dome-shaped ridges might work well. Rather than one general surface that is best at noon and suboptimal early and late in the day, the ridges may have a morning side, a noon crest, and an evening side or slope. Which is best? My guess is that they are both very close in ability to capture plant-growth sun rays. The computation is essential; a little wrong, suboptimal, over 2,000 years, is a lot wrong!
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| Figure 14.4. A preliminary idea of how an area undergoing formation as Seterrain may appear. |
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The solar surface is designed first, then adjustments are made to it. The ratio of actual surface to the unadjusted surface can be useful in comparing sites, perhaps in actually designing the surface.
Adjustments must be made due to soil characteristics, geological formations, and esthetic and historic phenomena. Of course, managing water is the major topic after solar radiation. Designs are for site-specific, three-in-sequence maximum rainfalls. Since these are the relevant hydrologic variables in land forms. Sheet erosion is there, interesting, but ponderous and follows the leader - the recurring big storm. These events that come shortly one after the other, are not single events. The recurring storm is the singular event. One is a function of the previous one like "function" is one word but " ...tion" only has specific meaning when preceded by "func ..." It is one thing. A similar phenomena is rain after a freeze. The water that enters the ground in a 2-inch rain is 0.5 inches of rain. Much runs off the surface. Should the rainfall be read as 2 inches or 0.5 inches. Downstream, the volume produced and of relevance for the engineer is that related to 1.5 inches; for the ecologist interested in plants, the amount of significance is 0.5. Two inches, as reported from the rain gauge, is almost meaningless.
Long solar slopes are slopes that can carry water. The longer, the more soil the water can carry. Major contour terraces are probably going to be a part of the land design. Evapotranspiration rarely exceeds rainfall, so water storage - either underground (the aquifers concept hardly applies; only gross water in the inter-spaces of rocks and soil particles), or in impoundments, will be needed with all designed for our irrigation role. As implied by Schaefer and his colleagues, the careful design of drainages to deal effectively with the occasional surplus water will be required.
There will be other constraints and adjustments. Field projects never go exactly according to plan. A threatening landowner, a peculiar water source, impassable clays, and temporary equipment failures all cause shifts and improvisations. I compare it to wood carving. The perfect form hidden in a piece of wood needs only to be removed, but a knot, a slip of the knife, a twist of the grain - anything can cause modifications and a new concept will emerge. The standards and criteria, when clear, can produce the same end-state.
Some people with whom I have discussed Seterrain suggest this is an "ecosystem approach" to land management. Not so! It is total systems - economic, resource, computer, esthetic, energetic, mechanical, hydrologic, etc., etc. It is more abiotic then biotic. The emphasis needs to be on the total system, on regional development, not on mined land reclamation to a vegetative state. It needs to be long-term and clearly based on the risk-filled assumption that fossil energy will be in short supply in the U.S. in less than 1,000 years. It utilizes high technology to regain a place for humans when the human condition has, unrecognized, been largely a function of abundant energy collected and stored by plants over millions of years. Securing a human place in the distant future will require having collectors, since our stores will have been used up. Rather than lament the loss and weep for our grandchildren, I suggest we move to change. Seterrain is an option but only while fossil energy is obscenely cheap.
There are days of great discouragement when I recall how difficult an idea is to get past the thickness of a skull. My shift from seeking the optimum farm to seeing the optimum set of linked enterprises often comes to mind. I suspect Seterrain will never exist. If and when the programs are run, it will probably grind for hours and then say "do it like the Chinese" who have worked it out over the centuries. "Make terraces as wide as possible on the south-facing side of the mountain; narrow, so they can be safely traveled or worked, on the north-facing slopes". I cannot tell which is correct. It is very easy to make suboptimal decisions. Often they are best for the day and then the chance to re-think the solution for the long-run is foregone. Surface mining gives people a chance to re-think the decision. It will be too bad if we do not use the results of that thought. We might miss a good buy to assure our future.
The solution as I see it is to create a unique corporation. I call the idea the geodesic corporation largely because of the way the pieces are interrelated.
The corporation is a special idea. It is carefully designed to do the following:
This new corporation being proposed is an optimum mix:
Of course, research is a part of it like any good experience, but it is highly applied. For the next ten years we know enough to move ahead. We need only the most minimum research to get this proposal off the ground. We are not waiting for new knowledge or a breakthrough. The needs, however, are very great. The needs are not for more inductive studies but more deductive work. We need to sift through the messages of history - of regional development to find the stepping stones ... and the slippery rocks. We need to work on dynamic economical models of the firm - to learn what the economic balance sheets for seven counties would look like if they were conceived as a large factory. In fact, they are producing utility for people.
We need to fit patents to people and to capitalize a few studies. The U.S. Forest Service has developed a new wooded-beam system for frame houses. We need - not to reinvent - but to discover how to use those prior investments to our advantage. Given the resources here, we need to manufacture these building systems here, adding profits, hence not shipping logs out to where the value is added.
We need to avoid the laws that can trip us.
We need to look to modern control theory to aid in building feedback loops and monitors that provide incentives and keep us on course.
We need to create new art forms and beautify - not only our surrounding but our inner selves as we see ourselves in a vital independent effort for ourselves, our families and the region.
Not once have I called for a religious reformation, or the new environmentalism, or new educational programs, or government subsidy, or a new political party, or corporate denial of their mode of operation, or an industrial takeover, or leaving the region (before it sinks), or denial of the bill of rights. I recommend self-interest, profit-motivated capitalism of a new kind, the described geodesic, distributed system of enterprises.
I said we are not waiting for a breakthrough for this to work. On second thought, we are waiting for two breakthroughs. One is the dawning that the coal region is going to be a hell of a place in ten years if something is not done. Just the awareness gives the fathers and mothers of this region's children new responsibilities in this decade of the coalfield. Without action, that awareness will only leave a layer of guilt over the region, a burden on taxpayers, and a region full of disgusting socio-economic problems. A viable region cannot be sustained for the next 100 years by deep coal alone. Coal should be only one of the enterprises.
The other breakthrough needed is the formation of a corporation by a group of investors and it needs to go to work. Creation of one, or only a few new enterprises will not work. A total system is needed. The economies of scale, of shared resources, of shifting employees, of planned multiple use of resources and equipment, of adding value to products in the region - not shipping them out, of personal incentives, of rewards, of loyalty to the region and its people and to the corporation, of assistance in planning and economic analyses - all of these make the difference between success and just another government program. They make the difference in the enthusiasm created by a new factory that hires 300 people but only temporarily keeps "their end of the boat from sinking."
I planned it, laid it out, and thought I might get to work toward its accomplishments. No one reads big books of recommendations; big ideas cannot be written in little books. Journals publish research; professors review; new collections of old ideas do not fare well when reviewed. The concept did not sound enough like what a wildlife professor should do for some administrators. They withdraw support and the concept was put on the shelf for ten more years. Just as "the farm" was not the solution, so "wildlife management" is rarely the answer. Only complex, well-designed, computer-augmented decision making can take land use into the future so that it provides a quality place for humans.
The last of the coal is now being mined and studies are being conducted on growing turf grass, small herds of cows, and and awards being given for planted trees on mined-land benches. Ho-hum.
There is really nothing very new in the geodesic corporation concept. It is a special way of addressing a unique, local problem. My view is that the concept is realistic, the economics are conservative, the needs are great, the essential structures are set. The needs are (l) to see the need, (2) gain capital for the investment, (3) enlist the people, (4) encourage non-resident landowners to enter their lands into corporate management for profit, and (5) create a new home for humans. The needs, as for any other idea, are for someone to try it ... or shoot it down. The prospects seem worth an investment, whether done by a singular corporation operating off of or out of its own lands or by a group of stockholders who really want to know: What will we do with some steep, brushy, mountain land that we can't give to Uncle and that no one wants to buy ... after the coal is gone?
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Last revision September 19,2000