|
|
|
Draft of a Proposal to the The Managed Ecosystems
Program of the USDA
Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, College of Natural Resources, Blacksburg, Virginia, Contacts: RHGiles@RuralSystem.com or 540-552-8672 February 1, 2004 This is a DRAFT...Comments and suggestions are solicited
Objectives:
Overview:
To those interested in the future of land policy, my message is straight-forward: reframe the issue; negotiate at the beginning with principal stakeholders; defer to science as the best compass for turbulent times; focus on rewards and incentives; develop decentralized approaches to decentralized problems; and exploit new technologies.W.K. Reilly, former Administrator, EPA, 1996
This proposal addresses the points of Prof. Reilly's summary. It develops the grounds for an anternative policy bundle, an entrepreneurial approach, to managing the terrestrial and aquatic resources of the ecosystems of regions of the US and, later, other parts of the world.
The project tries to deal with the difficulties within the gray space, the intersection of the zone between research and development, between business and ecological systems, and between government initiatives and private continuance. On one hand it seeks to test in a limited way the researcher's null hypothesis that a modern ecosystem management system being designed is unlikely to sustain estimated rural (agricultural and natural resource) productivity while maintaining ecosystem health and enhancing social and economic development. It is likely that we will reject that null hypothesis. On the other hand it presumes access to many privately-owned natural resources and seeks to simulate a dispersed working system, literally a "business ecosystem," that can restore and manage ecosystems upon which such a business can be perpetuated.
The proposal is grounded in our premise that for rural ecosystems to be sustained throughout the U.S., there must be stable, lasting financial incentives to land owners and land managers. To deliver those incentives, there must be started a diverse business conglomerate operating that uses many computer databases and optimization procedures to protect, restore, and manage the production from enhanced agro-forestry and related ecosystems of private lands. We hypothesize that there is a need for a system of managed enterprises using current knowledge about ecosystem structure, functions, and relations. Well managed with continual adjustments, such a system can continue to produce desired human benefits as part of a high quality of life.
We propose to complete the design for and create a meso-scale model of that total enterprise, and test using a marriage of optimization and simulation (Van Dyne and Abramsky 1975, Swartzman and Kaluzny 1987, Urban 1994:134) a system for aiding and improving decisions that achieve and enhance lasting ecosystems. On private lands and waters of the U.S. and capitalist countries, we see no way to sustain rural ecosystems other than through a managed, firmly-grounded diverse business system.
|
| Figure 1. The modified general system concept (after Von Bertalanffy 1968, 1975) as used herein. The modifications are: Specifying the origin or start-up, the context (the subsystem), and current action to accommodate the future (feedforward) . |
We propose to create a computer-enhanced system that provides guidance for making rural resource system decisions. The typical decisions include those for agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems, their constraints, services, and potentials. In summary review, we use general systems theory; clarify and advance new statements of objectives relating to social and economic development; link "benefits" with diverse objectives as well as present-discounted net monetary values of rural goods, services, and opportunities; present a business conglomerate concept for managing the valued produce and potentials of unique areas (described in a geographic information system); create a set of decision tools and dynamic planning system for managing the conglomerate and the managed complex of private lands with which it works; prepare automated decision-support messages and progress reports; and prepare educational and "marketing" messages to encourage participants and gain others.
"We" are The New River Community Partners (hereinafter The Partners) and we seek an opportunity to implement our concept and design for a region-empowering system. Once developed and tested, it may be used and creatively adapted (Holling 1978, Walter 1986) thus providing continuation and "outreach" of the funds invested on behalf of taxpayers. The central decision guidance unit that will be developed will be made available to start-up enterprises. They, with The Partners, will promote the uses of the developed system locally and then custom fit it to other regions.
Funds are sought (1) for designing and implementing a rural-resource enterprise simulator, inclusive of agro-ecosystems, and (2) for estimating the likely consequences of using such a simulator for improving decisions for an enterprise that works to sustain and improve natural resources of a region and the quality of life of people there.
Over several decades, workers have developed applications of computer simulation and modeling in natural resources (e.g., Giles 1977, Cowles and Giles 1982, Swartzman and Kaluzny 1987). These successes along with computer optimization, creating natural resource data bases and geographic information systems (GIS), applying expert system technology, and using heuristic programming have lead to startling value-adding strategies, risk avoidance, and scale efficiencies. They have shown potential environmental impacts and ways to avoid them and their costs. They have led to dynamic planning systems that produce decision-aiding or guidance documents on the Internet. This analytical and descriptive power has been poorly exploited among small private landowners and the host of businesses that serve them.
In this project we can bring together our best current knowledge for predicting the effects of natural and human-induced environmental change resulting from managerial decisions on agricultural and forest ecosystems. We use modern technological advances in satellite and GIS work to place on maps parts of ecosystems, describe them, and then work precisely on them. Such work can then be based on models that use our knowledge of the structure and function of these ecosystems. Beyond this modeling and descriptive work, we develop further our design of a rural resource enterprise, a means to sustain management of the ecosystems. As stated, we hold that private rural land and resource systems can only be sustained if they are within the context of a profit-producing enterprise or organization. We use the idiom of the land (the aggregation of ecosystems under a decision maker) as a factory, one that must be tended very well if it will continue to produce profits. Of course land and water are much more than a "factory" but we believe that profit is or will become a profound limit to strongly-held beliefs about the needs for agriculture and rural resources for a high quality of life for U.S. citizens and others.
Public land agencies continue to struggle with disparate and changing objectives. Private landowners have many of the same difficulties. We believe that our analytical systems for forming sets of quantified objectives are essential for designing and measuring precisely the quality of systems designed to "enhance productivity," "sustain yield," or even "manage well" rural systems. "For what?" "For whom?," "When?," and "By what criteria?" are pressing questions that must be answered for ecosystem decisions to have meaning. In a related way, the meaning of "health" (as a reasonable objective) is required for land before a decision can be reached about whether a computed optimum practice or set of them will produce a condition acceptable as healthy. We shall clarify these concepts early during this project.
While historical emphases have been on crop, lumber, and animal productivity, profits are "net" topics and costs and risks can be as profound as gains from research, water, or fertilizers. We develop in the proposed system a strategic set of activities related to preventing and treating damage, injury, or other harm to plants and animals and unify that with managerial effects on the estimated probability of failure and on the magnitude of failure in addressing expected value of production.
The approach that we shall use may be deduced from the fundamental operational units, ingredients, and dominant premises that we shall use within the large proposed project are merely listed as follows (and will be elaborated as needed).
Further details of the proposed project are provided below. First, we present the needs to which the system is believed to be responsive.
The Needs
Expanded knowledge is needed to protect, restore, and enhance natural resources and the environment, the rural resources that are so important to the people of the US and the world. Private and public landowners are beset by many contemporary issues (globalization, energy conservation, drug use in the back-country, and viable communities and optimum public school size and placement) not only by those of classical agriculture and forestry. Policy changes, forest fire threats, anti-hunting attitudes, emerging pests and diseases, and changing markets and employment policies and needs beset workers within the classical land use categories. There are many profound linkages and challenges from changing land use. There are needs to address them. Boulding (1991:30) discussed the categories of power that may change the future in desirable ways. He suggested that economic power may be effective only in the context of integrative power (implying legitimacy, respect, loyalty, truthfulness, etc.)
Institutional
We need to unify existing computer hardware and software capabilities and meld them with unique programming into a practical system that leads to lasting profitable solutions for the people and lands and
 |
What is at stake is not a splinter market, but virtually all goods manufactured for almost all purposes. Producers of goods ranging from yogurt cartons to cars must increasingly respond to the new environmental imperatives. In a global economy, no nation can successfully isolate itself from the policies and demands of others. A nation that attempts to do so will find itself with a dwindling share of the international trade in manufactured goods and, as a consequence, with a shrinking standard of living ...There is no good reason that limitless profits should flow to Japanese and German investors for technologies that were developed with American sacrifice and dollars.(Moore and Miller 1994:15)
Critics of several types often minimize or overstate the importance of rural resource and environmental laws and regulations and their impacts on national and world economies. Anderson (1994:131 quoted Dahlberg 1991)) saying "Struggles for agricultural reform with related discussions about energy, transportation and health, reflect a broader concern regarding lifestyles and consumption patterns in industrial societies."
" ...Of the world's industrial nations, only the United States has yet to fully appreciate the lasting significance of the change being wrought by burgeoning environmental concerns ... virtually all of America's primary industrial competitors have adopted a wide range of policies designed to coax or compel the development and commercialization of technologies, practices, and industries that do their jobs as well or better than in the past while producing less pollution." (Moore and Miller 1994:5)
We acknowledge the global scale of the agricultural food and fiber problems. The spectrum of scale varies from the endangered small ecosystem to international commodity markets. We have selected to work toward a meso-scale system, one that has specific inputs from the results and consequences of the workings of the macro national and world system.
We seek to address a market need in a region of western Virginia, generally, Roanoke westward but concentrating on the New River watershed (lightly colored in the image above). By attempting to develop a general system, we expect it can be modified and re-developed for other regions.
 |
| The New River and its watershed. State line of North Carolina (to the south) and West Virginia (upper mid section) are shown as small-dot lines |
The designers of the proposed system are aware of and intend to be creatively responsive to the above quotations. We are fully aware of counter opinions such as those of Beaton and Maser (1999:103) that " ... if viewed as alternative criteria for directing the philosophy of a local economy, a seriously pursued notion of sustainability is the virtual opposite of full and eager participation in the global economy." We are of the view that sustained profits can only be achieved from a system of goods and services produced from within a very well managed agro-ecological regional resources, nested within the global economy. Such management requires sophisticated computer power united with a major dynamically improving knowledge base. Gaining these for use, then using and reforming them, and then sustaining the investment in them is the purpose of this project. While there are major public lands of the state and federal forests, we address private landowners usually served by the Cooperative Extension Service and others. Reports of needs for improved land management after years of advice and recommendations persist. The Governor's Natural Resource Summit (Virginia, 2003) noted needs for regulations as well as incentives for improving water and land conservation and outdoor recreation. The economic resources of the region are very diverse and counties there are among those with the highest unemployment and below-poverty levels.
Our project is designed to seek for-profit solutions to the problems of the people, communities, as well as the natural resources of the region, working within the law with willing land owners to provide new employment options, information for improved but lasting productivity, value-added strategies, economies of scale, and synergism. When successful, it will link citizens as well as visitors to the land and its long-term potentials for profits. It can provide an alternative town and regional identity, one of a place for modern regional rural resource development and management. It will link buyers and users with producers of certified forest products and wildland resource opportunities from well-managed rural land and water resources. It is likely to provide the prognostics and analyses that press decisions to the positive side of the "margin" where so many people of the region now live. It is fundamentally dependent upon sustained ecosystems.
We concur with Forest Service chief Bosworth (2003 and 2004) that the major problems of the public forests (and many private forests) are forest health Rogers et al., 2001), invasive animals and plants, off-road vehicle use, and fragmentation resulting from urban and residential expansion. A book was issued in October, 2003 on Human Influences on Forest Ecosystems: the Southern Wildland-Urban Interface Assessment, which examines the urban and rural fringes in the Southern US where multiple land uses meet forested lands. It is noted that urbanization will have the "most direct, immediate, and permanent effects on the extent, condition, and health of forests." In this context, the proposed system provides a framework for enterprises to address issues of sustaining healthy and productive forests in the forests of the region.
We are vitally concerned with human migration out of the region, the resulting loss of tax base, and the resulting difficulties of educational support. In areas of the region 50% of the children are living in poverty. There are fewer children now, the population ages, and the tax burden increase for those that remain. Our concern is transformed into a proposal for a system to provide significant employment opportunities in rural regions, opportunities that are dependent on maintaining ecosystems ... and probably improving them.
About 53% of the population of the region lives in area that is classified as rural. Depending on where the lines are drawn, there are over 700,000 acres of land in the region owned by private citizens that live outside of the state. The land are unmanaged, trespass is evident. The potential financial productivity, now and for the planned future, is lost. Agricultural land remains the largest contributor of sediment to streams. Poorly designed forest roads are a major problem for the stream fishery and rare mussel populations. State and federal employment for advisors is being reduced, needs seem to increase. Lands are put under easements to assure their future beauty ... but unless they are managed (e.g., modern grazing systems and Smartwood-certified forestry), the expected present pastoral and forest beauty will not persist. The expertise and workforce for such management action is not readily available (but may be met by the proposed enterprise).
The literature of conservation is replete with pictures and stories of land and resource degradation. We are aware of the many techniques and procedures for minimizing degradation of ecosystems. We know that few are used and believe that a financial incentive is needed for more of these to be used. We have a strategy, one paid for by profits from a Rural System, that go beyond stopping degradation ...one developed to re-build, restore, and enhance ecosystems. Fully aware of second-law principles, and aware of massive public investments in resource improvement (but rarely sustained and thus often failing) we propose to examine the potentials of proportionate investment of profits from a for-profit enterprise, one using the developed proposed system for overcoming past losses and extractions, i.e., for improving ecosystems.
Staff of the proposed project initiated the now-well-known Powell River Project (Virginia) to solve for a corporation "What shall we do with our land when the coal is gone?" Core studies can be used to assist people in the Virginia/West Virginia coalfield who have recently expressed in many meetings the needs for businesses, employment, non-polluting industry, involvement with the Internet and high technology, and improved education.
The Mid-Atlantic Highlands Action Program (Canaan Valley Institute, 2002) was developed to foster local decision-making in support of sustainable highland communities, to empower stakeholders and increase their ability to improve their quality of life. It saw the current situation as "forged by past decisions" with a legacy of problems (Caudill 1962; Gaventa 1980). Environmental problems noted included habitat loss, stream sedimentation, forest fragmentation, acid rain, acid mine drainage, flooding, and invasive non-native species.
While that Highlands Program highlighted the skills and resources of the region "that cannot be duplicated anywhere" - its people, history and cultural heritage, institutions, climate, scenic beauty, open space, biological diversity, and globally significant forests - there is little in the list of evident financial importance. Even with resources, the people have major needs. The conditions of the New River Valley are very similar. The challenge to designers of the proposed project has been to conceive a desired "end state," a profitable system to begin to meet the needs of the people and communities ... all while carefully protecting the special places, protecting and restoring the ecosystems, improving the natural productive base, all for a very long planning period (we have set it at 150 years sliding forward a year annually). We can intertwine the economic concerns and values of communities of the region with classical environmental stewardship. With the proposed system we believe we can add meaning to the old definition of "conservation" as "wise use," providing decision-making power for the analyses, valuations, tradeoffs, and predictions needed behind perceptions of "wise." Maser (1994:281) went so far as to claim that we need "a new paradigm for our trusteeship of the land based on a sense of place and permanence, a sense of creation and landscape artistry, a sense of ecological health and sustainability, and a sense of humility and humanity." Elements of such a paradigm we shall attempt to include.
We continue discussions of the separate categories of agricultural and forest ecosystem needs to which the proposed system will be designed to be responsive.
Fishery
In Frontiers in Ecology (2003) Poff and eight coauthors said that the ecological sustainability of river ecosystems is threatened by the extensive hydrological alternations carried out by humans, that the challenge is to define ecosystem needs so that balances can be made among competing demands, and that " innovative funding partnerships between government agencies, not-for-profit foundations, and the private sector" need to advance the scientific basis of water management. The needs in the fishery are to gain increasing control of the groundwater system and that of the total watershed. Integrated systems for pastures, fallow areas, road and trail system, ponds and streams, mined areas, and forests have to be created (Giles and Nielsen 1991). All cannot be managed in the mosaic of private and public lands. A means for providing financial incentives for the desired land management seems essential in the context of the U.S. and elsewhere. That seems likely to be possible when a full-scale modern fishery is created.
Within past work we have developed novel procedures for forming several types of objectives (including goals) and conducting needs assessment. We intend to implement these in a modern fishery and "ranging system" (diverse outdoor recreation including ecotourism). The computer output is to be designed to guide policy formation as well action in the field. We shall work with existing groups, diversify and expand activities, and develop a comprehensive modern fishery linked to the other parts of the work of the imagined enterprise that we shall collectively call (hereinafter) Rural System and listed in the following table. We know of the results of excellent research and development projects that can be implemented now. We see major economic opportunities that can enhance, not further despoil the New River as well as other waterways west of it.
| Table 1. Sixty groups of the proposed conglomerate, Rural System are being studied to be managed together as a single small enterprise. A central system provides the administration, management, education, and leadership for the major economies. By centralizing many services and functions this group overcomes major reasons why similar enterprise-efforts have failed.Major categories are shown; a list is available at www.RuralSystem.com. |
|
Office-Based Groups
Outdoor-Based Groups Private lands of the region (many lands of absentee owners) are brought under a specialized contract and used for profitable developments among:
|
Wildlife
Wild animal species were a major resource during settlement and the first 99 percent of human history. Gray (1993:134) observed that in the past 100 years " ...the human economy has been so thoroughly altered by mechanized agriculture, fossil fuels, and industrial development that wild plants and animals have been relegated to decidedly lesser roles. Wild species have become the forgotten resource." Surrounded by the difficulties with threatened and endangered species, hunting and trapping conflicts, poaching, new pest and damage problems, invasive species (starlings, wild boar), re-introduced species (elk, coyote, even the eastern cougar), and growing and almost unlimited interest in songbirds...the state agency struggles for an adequate funding base. Past support from hunting license and equipment sales has diminished. Staff is inadequate to meet the needs on private lands. Staff for managing available public lands consumes most available financial resources. One of the project co-directors has taught wildlife management in Idaho and at Virginia Tech for 35 years and now teaches an international distance-learning course via the Northern Virginia Graduate Center. This is to be made available within the region. He has devised a set of for-profit wildlife-related enterprises, all described within his web site www.RuralSystem.com. Gray (1993) said, " ...we must bring economic principles to bear in the management of the nation's fish and wildlife resources or they will continue to be considered as marginal luxury products." The status of large animals, the "wildlife" of ecosystems, has been the basis for naming some of these systems and has been used as the indicator for the well-being of some ecosystems (Lovejoy 1989, Block et al. 1986, and Landres et al. 1988).
Forestry
Clearly linked but rarely within the same private, for-profit company, fisheries, wildlife recreation and forestry need to be managed as a whole singular system. Forest systems can be managed for improved profitability, recreation and ecotourism and this has been called for by many, including O'Toole in Reforming the Forest Service (1988) and Bolgiano (1998) in The Appalachian Forest. A member of The Partners has experience as a Smartwood consultant. That company studies private lands, determines whether they are managed in a sustainable fashion (complex official criteria), and (if so) certifies the land as properly (sustainably) managed. The certification brings potentially instant increase in wood value! Exported woods bring premium prices and Lowes and Home Depot (among many others) participate in the forest products certification program. We propose to cooperate with Foresters, Inc., advocate Smartwood certification throughout the area, and provide cost-effective means for owners to have their lands certified ...for increased profits ...and enhanced quality of life for the long-range future.
New stresses (as well as opportunities) are placed on forest ecosystems from harvesting non-timber products such as medicinal herbs, fruits, nuts, fungi, etc. (Emery and McLain 2001).
Soil
The rate of topsoil loss throughout the region remains astonishing. More importantly, the rate of nutrient loss so fundamental to future ecosystem productivity is very great. The relationship of soil erosion to the fishery and wildlife is evident and the economic influence can be made clearer. We have developed GIS maps of soil erosion potentials and these can be used to help public and private efforts to slow nutrient loss and increase land productivity. We have created pseudosoil maps of counties (Hamm 1978, Ziewitz 1982) and have devised a new suitable-use-oriented mapping system that will be used by all of the above major resource sectors of Rural System. We have implemented USDA hydrologic systems (Findley 1994). Improved pasture management depends upon careful analyses of soils, topography, and evapotranspiration (for which we now have preliminary computer maps, Hassouna 1997, Klopfer 1998) avoiding over-generalizing, and paying careful attention to the financial margin for profitability.
Garden, Pasture, and Livestock
Drastic change in demand for tobacco products from the land, limited flat lands and flash flooding, past overgrazing, and fluctuating cattle prices have produced conditions in need of "repair." The region has a complex geology (now computer mapped), some dated soil maps, and abundant soils management research from within Virginia Tech. Extensive research exists on reclaiming strip-mined lands. Students of the project advisor have developed county-level pseudosoil maps and have done linear programming analyses of optimum cattle herds for the strip-mined benches of Wise County, Virginia (Kroll 1982). That study showed the positive financial advantages of a single but distributed and managed herd in the region. Computer programs now exist but are inadequately used for managing pastures and producing profits from managed livestock herds. Altieri (2004) has summarized the ecological advantages and sustainability available in developed traditional agriculture. New potentials abound for small homeowner gardens ... but with value added to items produced by careful marketing, pooled stocks, and distribution to market centers.
Opportunity Spaces for Outdoor Recreation
The waters of the National Historic River and its watershed streams and ponds provide recreational opportunities as well as do all types of private and public lands of the region. The spaces and the vegetative diversity of the region are genuine resources. The national Appalachian Trail is present as well as the Jefferson National Forest and Mount Rodgers National Recreational Area and several State Parks and Forests. Ecotourism is heralded as a solution to many regional problems, but it has its own list of detractions and calls for management are poorly heeded. The recreational potentials are poorly known or developed, financial gains are missing or undeveloped, and abuses occur (trails, campsites, disturbance, law violations, off-road vehicle uses). Back-country safety and security remain needed. Many solutions and ways to respond to these needs are now available and need to be presented and put into use.
Water Supply
Clearly linked to needs mentioned under those of The Fishery, the needs for large quantities of high quality water tend to increase with populations and urban and industrial pressures. The New River flows northward eventually into The Gulf. There along with other ocean waters it is over fished. A report before the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2003) said that in 1960, only 5 percent of marine fisheries were classified as overfished or fished to capacity. Today, that number is estimated at 70 percent. Runoff pollution from our farms and cities has left large areas of the ocean devoid of life, one in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey. From cottage developments in the headwaters, non-point pollution from farms, brownfields in cities, and point sources from mines, defense and other industries, the waters of the New River, like so many others need pollution prevention, care, and restoration. Knowledge of the groundwater resource is scant. Models handle poorly the fractured and folded consolidated sedimentary layers of the region. Karst topography presents special complexity for water quantity and runoff analyses in the region. Water hardness varies locally as do total dissolved solids. The hydrologic response, a percent of the annual precipitation that appears as quick flow in small streams, is about 8% but moderate storms have produced devastating floods in narrow valleys often with coal surface mines. Water quantity problems (usually from 3.8 to 12.6 liters/sec ) beset many citizens that now purchase bottled water. Quantities for washing and other uses are uncertain. Water quality problems include pesticides, heavy metals, phenols, and PCBs and iron in mined areas. In the nearby Manongahela National Forest in West Virginia, acid rain in this 917,000-acre forest causes stream damage from airborne acidity, and with 40 percent of its land considered at high risk for nutrient depletion caused by the acidic fallout. Conflicts exist over use of the river for stabilizing power-generation lakes for their recreational use, industrial cooling, and urban growth. Protecting unique biological resources of the caves, springs, streams and river of the region add a special dimension to the needs for stabilizing water quantity and quality. A modern water budget for the watershed is needed, one including fog drip with evapotranspiration models, flood risk, sediment loads, interbasin transfer potentials, climatic warming scenarios (Alig et al. 2002), the influences of sustainable forestry initiatives, and improved pictures of baseflow with groundwater volumes. With it is needed a dynamic planning system (Giles 1977, The Trevey - http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/trevey/index.htm) with performance measures. We're still polluting where we drink; we need to understand the consequences and stop that.
The Proposed System Work
Here, repeated, are our objectives:
|
Fundamental Premise
 |
Objective: High Quality of Human Life
Foundation: Sustained Agro-Forestry Ecosystems |
In the above sketch (list) we suggest the nature of the proposed project, a way to an objective built on a solid foundation of understanding of agricultural, forestal, and natural resource ecosystems but one requiring a for-profit diverse modern enterprise, a conglomerate, to manage the ecosystems and provide financial incentives for doing so forever, at least 150 years. Proportions of profits (Profits*) are fed back to restore and enhance ecosystems. In much systems work, there is an admonition to "begin at the end." The statement is akin to "start with objectives," but in this proposal which is devoted to sustained ecosystems, it is essential to see the final institution, the responsibility, and effective policy in which the proposed work makes sense and will work.
We need to clarify objective 2. We care deeply for ecosystems and understand their complexity of origin, structure, function and dynamic, and relations. We understand their dynamic, usually termed "succession." We believe that knowing much about an ecosystem, understanding it very, very well, will not of itself sustain that system. Of course it may help when that understanding is used to improve decision making (Hammond et al. 1999). "Help" is an inadequate expression for what is needed to meet the needs outlined above. A solution system is needed, one that can be operated and improved, and that will provide a format for using research results and discovered rules (Wolfram 2001, Wilson 2003), and that measurably achieve human objectives. Such a solution, undoubtedly a system, must payoff for a group of people, must at least break-even financially, must have an operating space and dedicated staff, a training and back-up program, and must accommodate major fluctuations in inputs, processors, marketing effectiveness as well as demands. Without these conditions, all of them sustained, a research, development, and management program cannot be operated that sustains consistent equitable production of goods and services from agricultural and natural resource systems, the ecosystems of interest.. Such a solution is not discovered. It is created.
We are designing such a system. It is dependent upon having access to, having the responsibility for, and being able to work with ecosystems within an area so that they can be sustained. We see greatest interest among absentee owners of large tracts of land, among those placing land in easements, and in people within forestry cooperatives. There must be a measurable standard for the concept of "sustained." That may be debated and we shall clarify a standard, one beyond the 1960 legal statement of the multiple-use sustained yield act of 1960 (16 U.S.C. 531). Costanza et al.(1991:8) said that sustainability had been variously construed but found " ...the amount of consumption that can be continued indefinitely without degrading capital stocks - including 'natural capital' stocks" a useful definition. They said that definitions were dependent on time and space scales and that "to achieve sustainability, we must incorporate ecosystem goods and services into our economic accounting."
We believe a modest bounded sustained flow of profits can be realized from all such lands and rural resources ... if ecosystems are protected, changed with care, and when harvests and treatments are regulated with computer assistance (e.g., Watt 1968, Holling 1978, Odum, H.T. 1983, Dykstra 1984, Starfield and Bleloch 1986, Covington and DeBano 1993, Hof and Bevers 1998: 224), overall sustainability expressed grossly in bounded financial profits for the owners of the resources. Profits arise after the land is "cared for" and restored as needed (the costs), all as present-net-discounted values.
Our premise for financial analyses is that there are many goods, services, and opportunities provided from the land and ecosystems that are difficult to measure in dollars. Of course many can be readily accounted. We propose to simulate a system that operates, counting readily-available dollar values of benefits, making minimum local-expert estimates of others, and counting others in terms of constraints, using estimated minimum foregone financial gains resulting from imposing a constraint, i.e. "opportunity cost." For example, to have the presence of a set of old-growth-forest-related bird species (selected richness) citizens seeking satisfaction in achieved objectives must be willing to forego the wood-value from otherwise harvested trees. We hypothesize and will test with our models, that a well-quantified profit objective will significantly accommodate the non-market and incommensurable objectives held by large groups of people. Rather than concentrating on the difficulties of expressing and measuring the non-market benefits, we intend to concentrate on how to "sustain profit," hypothesizing (and testing) that in doing so, the non-profit objectives will be largely achieved or available.
There are foregone financial gains resulting for reserving lands and waters from harvests, but other gains may be made from alternative uses (e.g., recreation and scenic benefits). Our proposed end-system includes land and water of private landowners. The imagined Rural System enterprise manages such lands for them under contracts of several types. Income from land use is shared, the better managed the land, the greater the profits over the 150-year planning period. All of the profits of the company are shared by staff, owners, several membership groups and a proportion is used to restore and enhance degraded ecosystems and to repair damaging conditions and replace harmful practices.
As Sauer (1956) asked "Must we not admit that much of what we call production is extraction?" By using part of profit to restore and enhance land and water we provide a feedback for the watershed and its landowners. We contribute rather than extract. The monetary feedback is a computed proportion from the gains made by Rural System. It can thus be seen as a philanthropic for-profit enterprise. This status and role, we believe, represent an important change in agro-silvo-pastoral activities. The financial feedback or capital formation can be said to be an intergenerational contribution to ecosystems, "just because," without further analysis except for its influence on the resources of the watershed and the probable quality of life of the people there (Martinez-Alier 1991:126). It suggests that intergenerational equity is not satisfied by the activities of this generation merely by not imposing irreversible costs on future generations.
The main social benefits of the company are easily listed: past public research investments and results are harvested, employment is increased, people continue to live in the area, the land and water quality is improved, the tax base is increased (or stabilized), and motivations are provided for natural resource stewardship. The operating enterprise overcomes the old failures of natural resource management, i.e., diseconomies of small-scale operations, inadequate information and plans, unclear and mixed objectives, lack of diversity, seasonal work, lack of annual income, and failure to add value to products and efforts. The income of the people of western Virginia and the watershed are "nowhere-near" the theoretical realm at which the marginal utility of money will significantly diminish as the result of increasing income resulting from this project.
A clear bottom-line to this imagined and being-designed-enterprise is that profitable, lasting agro-ecosystems must be understood and managed very carefully with increasing sensitivity. If such an enterprise exists, there is likely to be more than recreational curiosity about "nature;" there begins a financial mandate to stabilize productivity and reduce risks and costs. The incentives are all financial for working together, encouraging improved land use, using the best available knowledge, sponsoring research, and even reporting violations and undesirable management conditions for correction.
The needs for Rural System seem clear, but with risks that can be studied, confronted through simulation studies, overcome, or avoided and other strategies sought. While the ideas herein are not new, the application is new. The newness includes:
Such a system, an "entrepreneurial ecosystem," is formed based on some ecological principles - general systems structure, energy flows and budgeting, mineral cycles (recycling), diversity, product life cycles (succession; Sirgy and Giles 1986), competition, predation, synergism, and related concepts. It is composed of about 60 enterprises ("groups" listed above in Table 1) that work as a single for-profit enterprise or business conglomerate.
Rural System will be housed initially within and maintained and developed by staff of The Partners and operated from within Radford University. Some of the subsystems or enterprises are new, some very old. Half of these units work from the private lands that are managed under contract. The other half are office-based and deal with software development, membership groups, education, conferences, and laboratories. A central group provides office space, accounting, payrolls, insurance and benefits, field communications, legal services, wholesale buying, deeds and records maintenance, marketing, and the transportation policies (the "motor pool"). It develops the contacts for efficient contract reviews and approvals, and in the first year play a major role in recruiting staff. Safety programs are implemented early.
The novelty and advancement potentials of Rural System, the current economic uncertainties, and looming political pressures should make potentials for meaningful work very attractive and some of the best university natural resource program graduates and agency professionals may be recruited.
The income streams from hay fields and livestock are rarely separated by landowners from the income of forests in the annual budget accounting. Similarly, there seems to be no rule or reason to separate any income categories for the land of a single owner. Financial gains, all legal, made by all enterprises within Rural System are accounted together. The gains may come from services (e.g., haying), from handicrafts, from non-timber forest products, from hunting permit sales, from a book manuscript, etc. The total land as a platform or factory is producing products, services, opportunities, performances, and ideas ...many having financial value. Costs are usually general and affect many product systems at different times. Benefits are separated from costs but combined within "profits."
We have attempted to utilize the early concepts of ecological economics (Costanza 1991) as we describe and develop a business system, its objectives, and the processes to achieve them. The working, profitable enterprise provides areason and rationale for understanding ecosystems (beyond the typical, classical premises for "basic research" or over-generalized "applied ecology").
The Business Control
That system, as mentioned above, called Rural System, needs a strong managerial system, a complex business decision-support system. It needs computer data bases, word processing, publishing aids, communication devices, networking (e.g., The Brain ™ software), dynamic planning systems, servers, and, beyond advanced business systems, it needs useful optimization aids - expert systems, linear programming, and advanced decision aids (e.g., the Criterium ™ software). To have an optimum array of ecological system and then to find that business decisions were being made sub-optimally (e.g., those of pricing, marketing, communications, service and equipment scheduling, inventory, etc.) assures a sub optimal rural resource system. To avoid that sub-optimization, we propose to create a computer-augmented hardware and software core called "R-Nexus," a unit that provides economies and exploits synergism.
The major strategic functions within the central unit, with a role called by someone an "incubator," are those of assisting in central administrative services of the company. It provides to the divisions staffing, housing, accounting, legal, marketing, security, information, publication, Internet, transportation and other services and functions. Aided by R-Nexus, the services include: e-business, the Internet, laboratory, and education. These are discussed next.
E-Business
E-business work is a mainstay and includes:
Internet Strategy
Related to the above, the unit provides:
Our web site(s) will provide major communication links among all members of Rural System and open the gates to users, buyers, and members. Innovations in wireless communication (e.g., the Dickenson County's (Virginia) DCWIN) will be sought out and used. The group will provide an e-commerce catalog, access to land, services, and products, and will serve several memberships within Rural System. It provides a creative space for presenting ideas, but also one for listening to the ideas, interests, and needs of potential customers. Distance learning will be conducted from the site.
With competent work from an aggressive sales staff, this may become a major site for coordinated crop, livestock, forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and wildland-related equipment, products, and services. It will link successful hunters and anglers, suggest "hot spots" for activities and provide "bragging space" for some outdoor users who have been very successful. It will provide links to land purchase and sales to sophisticated analyses (for the realtor as well as the potential owners) (e.g., virtual (Internet image) tours with services) and sets the stage for cost-effective future land management involving the diverse units of Rural System. Advertising contracts will be sought, but gains are from a percentage of sales resulting from orders originating from this site.
Laboratory
As with other units of the Rural System, existing enterprises will be sought for affiliation and cooperation. There are few laboratories within the region but access with others throughout the region is readily available. We shall seek cooperators, and then develop a specialized laboratory to meet unique and cost-effective needs for ecologists and enterprise staff. These include rapid approximate analyses of geological strata, soils, soil bulk density equivalents, wildlife food analyses, comprehensive pond water analyses, polymer degradation rates, and air quality monitor assessments. It assists as needed in the education strategy.
Education
"Whoever has the most intelligent customers will flourish, and this is true for countries as well as companies."Hawken, 1993:155
Hawken was commenting on changing consumers into customers, an important distinction. One working group with computer aids, will be formed for youth and adults to deal with a variety of corporate interests. Youth tutoring and classes with agro-ecosystem topics linked to standards of learning requirements will be highlighted, but adult education will be integrated with participant-paid group activities in the area (Koeln and Giles 1983). A major role for the Radford location will be for educating people about the power and potentials of the system once it is developed. An outdoor lab and workshop in a high technology educational space there will provide potentials for special markets.
The novel criterion of the strategy for production effectiveness is maximum units of pre-specified behavioral change per dollar (or unit of energy) per hour. The strategy includes:
Programs will be developed to bring citizens into an advanced educational status about agricultural and natural resource systems. A key element of the program is to teach the teachers about optimal rural conditions. There are major educational aspects to all parts of Rural System, and all employees must understand the system. Programs will bring experts to improve performance within each entrepreneurial group.
Part of the funds requested are to support developing the computer hardware and software needed for a set of analytical and managerial systems to make the above-described system profitable and useful in the lives of the people and communities of the region. We plan to deliver notable incentives: All people may be members; members receive part of profits; county governments benefit; land owners receive part of profits; individuals make salaries in relation to profits made by their groups; staff benefit for themselves as well as through the corporation; participating land owners and other areas of the watershed gain restorative investments from a proportion of the profits; the land productivity improves, the erosion, pollution and nutrient losses decline. When the difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses and even whether people can continue to live on the land is a mere few dollars, it is critical that when living in such "marginal environments" that work "at the economic margin" be done very carefully. By using the Rural System concept, we change the concept of "agricultural or forestry production" to rural resource platform production and thus the production price of all produce from an ownership within the system is that which, at the margin, covers the costs of production, profit, land taxes, and rent-equivalents. We view holding, buying, and selling land as a separate enterprise, almost unrelated in modern real estate investment strategies and taxation to actual agricultural or forestal productivity from the land.
While we have much experience with the elements needed in "the central office," applications within the university and government and technology change rapidly. We shall seek advice from within the universities and from contractors. We have an approximate list of our needs based on design of Rural System and its divisions outlined at http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/aruralbusiness/businessplanbase.htm. The elements we propose to acquire and develop within R-Nexus include the software for a conventional e-business, business office software, statistical analytic tools (e.g., SAS), small business economic analyses, GIS delivery (with innovations from the Conservation Management Institute of Virginia Tech), linear programming, organization and concept display (The Brain ™ software), ColdFusion ™ for a dynamic planning system with computations, and return of information via the Internet to decision makers providing an array of agriculture and natural-resource programs from Extension Service, agencies, and vendors. Development includes simulation of a rural business, aids to new approaches to agricultural, wildlife, and fisheries model building (Grant 1986, Burnham and Anderson 1998), and re-packaging outputs of programs (e.g. in javascript for the Internet) to make assumptions and outputs understandable in decision-making situations. That system requires superior decision systems and ecosystem models and commentary.
The Objective Functions
Thadis Box (1995: 5) after retirement (Utah State) said, "What cultural values will the next generation bring now that the threat of nuclear destruction has diminished, I don't know ...But whatever they are, the new cultural values will determine how we use our land base to meet societal needs. Sustainable development depends on what we demand from the land."
Experience has taught us that groups of people, more so than individuals, have great difficulty in "making up their mind." They cannot decide how to decide; they experiment with objective functions. We operate on the basis that very clear objectives are needed for ecosystems to be managed. To be accountable, these must be as precise as possible with clear performance measures or indices of success.
We have analyzed and described agricultural and forestry objectives (cf Giles 1981, Decker and Goff 1987) within a chapter on Forest Faunal Systems (Giles 1999: Chapter 4). We shall add to that description later. Herein, we briefly describe our proposed processes. Details will be available to the land owner but the usual presentation to the landowner or decision-maker will be brief. It will typically be (a singular document or Internet pages) parametric results, text with tables with high, modest, and low estimates for three objectives of (1) minimizing a risk estimate, (2) minimizing the bounded dispersal of probable system profits around a level, and (3) maximizing a regional Benefit-to-Cost Score, B*. This is a 3 x 3 table for aid in making decisions. We are not yet able to correlate (3) with the " bounds" or limits of acceptable annual deviation of (2), but we shall attempt that analysis. Next we describe the three ways of conceiving the objectives:
1. Minimizing Risk
We have done substantial analyses of the often-stated objective of "to minimize risks" and find that for ecosystem work, the people, the community, the spatial scope, magnitude (or intensity), and the period are usually unclear. The degree (or proportionate loss or failure or impairment) is similarly unspoken. Probability or confidence levels are scrambled with "uncertainty" and "risk" and for ecosystem understanding, reducing risks may simply equate with gaining more knowledge with higher and higher statistical confidence levels (which may reduce to refining sampling and statistical manipulations).
We believe that risk connotes probable harm or failure but also an intensity or amount of loss and thus we limit computations of zero or negative consequences, excluding discussions of "the probability or risk of improving conditions or generating alternative benefits."
We do analyses using computer simulation for 150 years.
We have cautiously narrowed the scope of our work (with planning for further developments). We compute the estimated probability of an action resulting from a specific decision and the magnitude of the loss (a proportionate loss function applied to a transition curve, described in Figure 4 below) over time (e.g., the total action associated with clearcutting and removing debris from a forest stand). This can be seen as "probable impact" or "probable foregone benefits" and will involve area (more precisely, alpha units), and production categories over the planning period. Presentations for the decision maker or his or her advisors are:
2. Minimizing the Bounded Dispersal of Probable System Profits around a Level
We have had perplexing results attempting to develop an expression for the logical notion that from sustained ecosystems may come sustained profits if they are well managed. Expressing " sustained profits" for the 150-year planning period has been challenging. We have approached the concept as shown in Figure 2.
 |
| Figure 2. The meaning of bounded profits. A starting point is cautiously selected based on local needs and start-up conditions; B an upper bound for allowable deviations is selected (expenditures to gain large profits may foreclose future profits); C Even though the lower bound of D for total profits has been exceeded, such deviations may be expected early in systems development and with marketing difficulties; E catastrophes of many types can reduce profits to near failure status; F A homeostatic condition may result from intensive management. D, lower bound on the objective, is reflective of an approximate Hicksian income (the maximum available for consumption without consuming capital stock). |
The upper and lower bounds are likely to differ due to perceived risks and other limits. Deviations are not squared as in statistical computations. The "score" is the sum of the annual deviations in profits from the total enterprise beyond the bounds ... deviations to be minimized. A transformation for a positive sounding score may be devised for 1.0 minus the likely proportion of the years exceeding the bounds. The centerline and bounds may be adjusted in the future with experience and with efforts to gain greater profits while refining managerial control.
3. Maximizing a Regional Benefit-to-Cost Score, B*.
We express the minimum actual benefits derived from the people of the watershed using
| P | I | T | ||||||||
| B* | = |  |
|
|
Dpit | Vpit | Kpit | Epit | Spit | [R] |
where
PIT represent the superscripts for the summations, from i =1 to each P, I, and T
By identifying and using the expressed inputs from groups of people, P, we, like Norgaard and Howarth (1991:99), would rather further " ...the development of political societies" than have imposed environmental constraints. We believe the formulation opens wide all of the major avenues of public inputs, participation, and points of impact for conservation- and environmental education, extension, information transfer, communications, and out-reach (cf Gray 1993).
We then work to achieve a set of desired benefits, B* [B-star]. This is a condition of bounded well-being for the group, maximizing within limits their probable achievement of their stated objectives. Later we express costs, C, as the total present discounted cost of any and all activities, programs, and projects over the planning period.
To maximize B* is a reasonable basis for deciding on when a manager is doing well. Promotion, praise, and raises can be based on B* where
B* = [1.0 - ((B - B*) / B*)] x 100
For example, where 1345 benefit units are desired (e.g., the objective line A in Figure 3 above) and excess is achieved (2345) in a particular year, then the score is
B* = 1.0 - ((2345 - 1345)/ 1345] x 100 = 74.
B is the actual score; B* is the percentage of the stated desired condition; B* is the "score" which is perfect at 100. We believe 85 and above is reasonable for the proposed system.
The benefits are not in dollar units and thus a net value cannot be obtained in this formulation of the objective function. A B*/C score, desired by some, follows logically with all costs for all operations aggregated. Costs are discounted as in classical long-term forest investment analyses. The discount rate is the return on foregone present consumption that is sacrificed to secure future consumption (approximately the rate of return on capital investments). Determining that rate is a profound intergenerational problem. We temporarily bypass the determination by using three rates and reporting analyses using all three - current rate plus 7 and minus 2 percent. The higher-than-current-rate being inspected (7%) is using the investment strategy of classical forestry. It accommodates the losses expected (e.g., those from insects, Giles 1980) but also the impossible-to-foresee costly or destructive events in the expected lifetime of the ecosystem (e.g., the forest stand). Norgaard and Howarth (1991:90) saw an emerging consensus for a dual approach (discounting and benefits to be sustained) but were cautious. We treat cleanup costs as those of production, for we propose through managing well, most frequently there is no cleanup or downtime. The "waste" stream from one enterprise becomes the planned raw-material stream for another. That B*/C score is to be maximized as is B*, thus C minimized.
Hawken (1993:179) said that "We must reunite the concept of efficiency to include both natural and human communities, a union that is inherent in the true concept of economy, but has been set aside in its present practice. Because efficiency should be the common ground between economics and ecology, it represents the bridge to a restorative economy." The actual benefits, B, are derived from agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems.
The Micro-models for Estimating Benefits
Context
Like "sustainability," "models" and "modeling" have many definitions, especially differences in scale (Giles 1979). We have written and conceptual models but tend to write and exercise these within the computer, typically C++, HTML, and Javascript languages. We argue for the rationally robust (Giles et al. 1993), an effort to model the best thought processes and knowledge of experts today related to ecosystems (obviously as strongly and directly tied to biophysical structure and processes), then to refine those premises, assumptions, and information as well as processes in the moment that known corrections are appropriate, otherwise as soon as resources (time, money, knowledge, labor, etc.) become available and allocated by the above-described central business system, R-Nexus.
"Environmental managers, unlike medical personnel, lack agreement regarding the scale ofmanagement and the perspective from which it will be carried out. Consequently, important questions, including value questions regarding the proper goals of management, remain unresolved" (Norton 1991:107).
The scale of the proposed system has been decided for it to be responsive to major decision needs within the New River watershed (Giles 1977, large but limited (18,075 km2 [6,952 square miles], with a river of 400 km). It is to be responsive to major decisions within the resource categories of:
Within these categories we believe we accommodate all of the twelve major themes of ecosystem management listed by Spies et al. (2002): regional environment, ecosystem types and patterns, vegetation in geologic history, deciduous forests, riparian zones, productivity, disturbance, tree death and decomposition, forest development, human influences, road effects, and aquatic-terrestrial links.
 |
Inputs
| Table 2. The modeled benefit-producing ecosystems or main discrete modeled units |
|
1. Structures (historic sites,
homes, industry, farm buildings) 2. Streams and rivers 3. Ponds and small lakes 4. Springs and seeps 5. Large lakes 6. Wetlands 7. Croplands and gardens 8. Orchards and pinetums 9. Pasture and grasslands 10. Yards and cemeteries 11. Mined areas and fallow fields 12. Cliffs and talus areas 13. Roads and trails 14. Backcountry recreation sites 15. Wilderness and ancient forests 16. Forest stands |
We construct "nearness maps" reflecting influences of nearby factors or conditions of alpha units (e.g., the presence of pond water for wild animals near an otherwise dry site) and their patterns (Giles and Trani 1999). We operate on the general premise that a few abiotic factors dominate ecosystem functions (e.g., Fies 1983), and now have data for them. They are
We make preliminary alpha unit classifications, typically leading to many units being unique (there being 391,000 different unit conditions if each of the above has only 5 different value classes (i.e., 58).
We have developed vegetation maps for Virginia from satellite imagery (Morton 1998) and procedures to confirm land use type names from roadside inspection (Zack 1983, Mower et al. 1996), now with improved accuracy from GPS use. We work with the height (usually age related) of vegetation and, where possible, use vegetation layers that are highly influential in light reaching the ground, fog drip, evapotranspiration (Klopfer 1998), and wild bird and bat use of forests. Information on layers is rarely available from satellite imagery. Vegetation (land "cover" in some soil-loss equations) is assumed to be constant for short periods. Getting area-wide vegetation data is costly, even for a farm, and needs to be done at least every 3 years for most resource analyses. Cover changes rapidly throughout the mid-Atlantic region. We use aerial photos to delimit land units (the typical named ecosystem) and generalize of subdivide these photo-map units depending on the challenges of the decisions being. Such analyses are beyond the scope of widespread regional expertise. Budgets for as well as payoffs from use are often low. We operate on the basis of probable potential natural vegetation in most cases or generalize about existing conditions that are highly variable and have typically high rates of re-vegetation (although not to the prior community). We use water layers (as volumes) as we refine fish living volumes and productivity of waters for fish and recreational use. Soil and mineral layers are used.
Processes
We have the major links to "decision support" systems and will seek assistance from Dr. H. Rauscher (Rauscher 2001) in implementing NED and closely related systems, especially as related to hardwood forest stands. We are keenly aware of the long development times required, the technical support that must be backed up and maintained, the extreme difficulty of documenting active systems, and the continual necessary discussions about proper precision, scale, and confidence. Developing high quality outputs useful to landowners from the system is a vital process. Educating staff about progress and required changes is a contest during the development period.
We propose to devise models that describe likely ecosystem-related changes in (1) an ownership and (2) the ecosystems of the relevant watershed resulting from a decision. The decisions have ecosystem influences that are generalizable as:
Existing or actual conditions in alpha units are assumed replaced by the decided conditions. The resulting conditions are estimated or projected using mathematical and elementary expert system models.
We establish a zone of unknown land conditions around the watershed. The context of modeling is the watershed, but edge phenomena invariably present problems with nearness algorithms, circularity measures, and directions of runoff.
We "set aside" or class some land units as "reserved from analyses." These are structures in most cases or a pending land use change that, while not yet present, will affect the entire analysis probably before it can be completed. These sites require special extra-system analyses.
We use soil suitable-use data to set major limits and describe a feasible working area. Knowing that a house should not be built on soils of types A and B, and that soil C and D are unsuitable for a septic field, then these soil types should be reserved (removed from computer analyses for the house site). Decisions about the optimum placement of buildings are the carried on for the ecosystems of the remaining alpha units of the ownership or on information about land likely to be purchased.
Modeling Transitions
"But even with the best conceivable modeling capabilities, we will always be confronted with large amounts of uncertainty about the response of the environment to human actions."(Costanza et al. 1991:13).
We advance in the face of such uncertainty expressed by Costanza and many authors in Covington (1994). We labor with the insights of Burnham and Anderson(1998). We model probable transitions in alpha units over 150 years. We work from a modified concept of "ecological succession," a major part of ecological theory for years (e.g., Clements 1916, Knight 1965: 271-310, Odum 1971: 251-267). There have been revisions, refinements and discussion of whether changes in plant communities are deterministic or probabilistic (Drury and Nisbet 1973, Shaffer 1987, and Murphy and Noon 1991). We hold, based on observations, experience, and the literature that changes are highly predictable in plant communities from a pioneer or age-0-to-1 class to a widely recognized potential natural vegetation class. There are multiple, but limited (approx 5), likely natural pathways from "age-zero" to "climax" age-class conditions (Rapp 2003). Areas often exhibit equifinality. The path (or limited set of end states) taken on a site can be estimated given abiotic factors and proximal communities and given changes and inputs to the site at different times. The emphasis, however, is not on the path (except in very long-lived plant dominating communities with nutrient cycling ;Young, 1967, Perry 1994) but on the end state. The practical importance of the concept for market-based resources is usually on starting- and end-states. There are multiple pathways to a particular end state, usually with a well-agreed type name.
Foresters use "yield curves" to describe the average change in wood volume and weight over time in a forest stands. Multiple curves on the same graph show different growth based on site quality or "site index."
We have advanced a concept specialized production functions, succession curves, or yield curves since 1968 (Giles and Snyder 1970). These were described in Giles (1978) and advanced by Waldon (1987) and Giles (1999). Herein, avoiding major issues with "succession," we use the concept of probable ecological community transition.
We see alpha units being described and then used when needed to delineate and evaluate forest and other sites, as did Smalley (1979). We now believe that every alpha unit is probably unique, and that range and mode statistics on units may serve us well (and better than means). We use supervised classification procedures of remote sensing, controlling on GPS located and field-named conditions (nominal ecosystems of Table 2, with refinements).
From the literature and from experts (as did Waldon (1987) and with experience within TVA (Giles 1978).) we develop transition "curves," and from these a matrix (spreadsheet software) of probable benefits in each 5-year age for each resource for each named community. Figure 4 (showing smoothed plotted results of an hypothetical histogram) provides additional information.
 |
| Figure 4. Relative productivity of benefits (RP) for example bobwhite quail (Colinus) abundance over time starting at a pioneer (plowed, burned, flooded, etc.) stage. The abundance is graphed (A) and scaled to 1.0 at the maximum achieved, shown as E. The actual abundance is not needed and confidence bands may be broad. Conditions in B are those of A multiplied by a factor reflective of modifying factors of the habitat such as edge length, edge-zone width, and juxtaposition and other spatial diversity measures. C represents the population abundance that is very low or absent within the pine and later hardwood forests typical within the area (for quail, it probably occurs after transition age 15). D reflects losses or declining health resulting from pollution, or other system failures (see K in the above equations related to B*). |
Relative productivity curves are approximated, then improved along with other parts of the total system. Balance is sought, it is essential, because gaining extreme precision with one species or type can be very expensive and when such numbers are combined with another one of zero or small probabilities, the gains are canceled. There are within the area about 200 large wild animal species, 2000 plant species. We have an improving statewide information system for the animals (Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries) and have modest efforts toward a plant database ( Mason 1994).
Ignoring loss adjustments and refinements to the curves resulting from " habitat improvements," we can see the potentials in and need for multi-species or community transition curves suggested in Figure 5.
 |
| Figure 5. Given the benefits or (profits) from a curve such as A, then in the same area, there may be a ecosystem-entity producing benefits (4) such as shown by curve B. Assuming these are the only two named benefits from an area, then when these are scaled to 1.0 as above, and when they are assigned weights of relative value or importance (V) then they then become "benefit curves" (not, for example, quail and squirrel curves) and so the weighted and scaled benefits from one area over time can be added. At (1) curve B has zero value and is added to A. The shaded area of (2) is added to values of curve B. The dotted line at (3) is the probable total benefits produced by the area. |
Probable transitions are very well known and values can be improved. Gross terrain analyses and more-gross expressions of objectives, and fluctuating prices and interest rates all argue for system-building but with reasonable approaches to data collection and processing, i.e., the rationally robust (Giles et al. 1993). The curves for many benefits being produced from the same area (alpha units) can become complex as seen in Figure 7.
 |
| Figure 6. Complex or highly irregular curves (many mathematically intractable) can result from various ecosystems and from weights assigned by various users. They are rarely "smooth" as suggested in the inset. At A (year 0-1) there may be substantial benefits (grassy areas, viewscapes. There are many early-succession benefits (e.g., game species), B, but few in the often-dense stems of the emerging forest, C. Many watershed, forest, and wildlife benefits are provided in the "mature forest" as suggested in the region of D. |
 |
| Figure 7. A shows the flow of benefits from the past. A harvest is made from the forest at time B; benefits are temporarily reduced. If there had been no treatment the flow would have been that of the dotted line, D. The new transition curve, C, when added to the residual from the past, restores the relative production of benefits to that existing before the harvest, approximately that at B (cf Bragg 1997:149). |
These complex curves (Figure 6) are developed for each alpha unit, (each of the same size) then the manager, with computer, can place them in time (equivalent to moving conditions to pioneer status or cutting a forest stand) and then all such curves are added to achieve the stated "level" objective as suggested by Figure 8.
 |
| Figure 8. The sum of the benefits from an area. Each transition curve can be modeled, each as a row in a matrix, benefits over time. Over a very large area (a farm) there are many curves, each starting in a different year, each with a different height (a function of the area of each ecosystem). The starting time for each can then be simulated, then added to produce curve C. That curve is used for scoring how well the system is doing (Figure 2 above). B here is the line for B*, the desired condition over time, the sustained agro-forestry enterprise system. Upper (A) and lower bound lines for the objective are shown. |
In addition to curvilinear benefits, there are linear and constant ones (or linearly-declining with increasing costs and depreciation) that result from an object such as "to create an organization." Once created, it and its linear function are assumed to exist for the entire period or the mean time for similar organizations. These singular actions and events, like the ecosystems, are also added, for they too are producing relative potential benefits from the land ownership.
At the political borderline, but not crossing it, a Consequence Strategy is developed. With the system we can create important inputs for environmental impact analyses, thus to cut the costs to citizens of these documents and the work to produce them for public projects that are desired ... and for projects that are not desired and that groups wish to fight. Under contract, Rural System could produce via the best available information on the consequences of a range of projects proposed within a county or watershed, classes of action such as
This ability comes from knowledge of ecological modeling and systems building and use of transition tables or ecological succession. Over many years with graduate students a set of resources has been developed that deal with " ...accepted principles of integrated environmental management, which call for systematic, integrated, and comprehensive approaches to compliance with environmental regulations, especially those mandated by NEPA." (Lemons and Malone 1994). We have developed statewide GIS maps and served the legal staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission in providing powerline and airport impact analyses. We have access to significant databases of the Conservation Management Institute of Virginia Tech, to the Southern Forest Resource Assessment, and to growing relevant databases for the region including those of EPA, The Corps of Engineers, and the US Census Bureau. Only presenting the best data for others to use, the enterprise does not "take stands" and is available for either (or both) side of often-difficult environmental decisions. The mere presence of such a system, we have been told, has deterred people from presenting questionable proposals that would impact county or private ownerships.
We will develop a set of land use practices, tools that cause a consistent pattern of ecosystem change (e.g., clearcutting, thinning, applying fertilizer, flooding). These are named practices each with an expression of probable proportionate change in existing systems. The list is very long and likely to change. A few general patterns have begun to emerge. We limit considerations of permutations and select only described sets of practices (a project) most likely to be used locally. Many practices (e.g., creating windbreaks Ferguson et al. 2003, Francis 1980) can be simulated as a proportional increase in a transition curve (as in Figure 4).
Feedback and Evaluating Project Effectiveness
We engage in feedback, not just monitoring, adjusting conditions of B to achieve B*, to lower risks and costs. It is applied to all aspects of the system, including the scale of work (e.g., the proper region). The clarity of the objective and the personal financial incentives, by design, encourage constructive change and adaptations at all levels.
To assure achievement of objective 1, we shall simulate many scenarios for a working enterprise seeking to maximize ...but sustain ...bounded profits and allocate a high proportion of them to improved land management. These will be reported and demonstrations made. We shall deliver for the Grantor's inspection a document describing the system and an analysis of expressed interest in its development following a public information meeting.
The funding effectiveness will be judged in whether Rural System and other related emerging enterprises become operational and profitable. The important measures beyond profitability are to continue to achieve high B* scores, thus achieving high perceived quality of life of people within the region, and eventually, if the system can be expanded and revised to form "franchises" in other regions of the world.
Feedforward
Feedforward means adjusting the present system to meet projected conditions. Each enterprise conducts this activity but collective work is done on estimating the future (e.g., statistical regression, scenario development, conference reports) and providing enterprise-related guidance. Knowledge of history (Diamond and Giles 1987, Diamond et al. 2000) may help develop projections for the future (Giles, 1998, Giles 1999, Chapter 18). Long term research and sustained programs for research and development are much desired in ecology. If the system described here can be implemented, it may become one way for studies to be sustained, results sustained, and the payoff from the investment assured.
Major Project Personnel
Proposed Budget
| Preliminary budget estimates for October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2007 | |||||
| Major Categories | Participants | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Sub-Totals |
| Administrative Group |
Coordinator- The Partners | 10,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 |
| Business Group Leader | 20,000 | 20,000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | |
| Ecology Group Leader | 20,000 | 20,000 | 30,000 | 70,000 | |
| Secretary | 30,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 110,000 | |
| Programmer | 40,000 | 40,000 | 40,000 | 120,000 | |
| Business Model Group | Graduate Students (2) | 18,000 | 36,000 | 18,000 | 72,000 |
| Research Assistants (part time) | 5,000 | 10,000 | 5,000 | 20,000 | |
| Ecology/Resource Group | Research Associates (parttime) | 10,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 |
| Graduate Students (2) | 36,000 | 36,000 | 5,000 | 85,000 | |
| Programmers | 50,000 | 30,000 | 10,000 | 90,000 | |
| Equipment, Supplies, and Contract GIS Images |
1,000 | 20,000 | 1,000 | 22,000 | |
| Travel | 500 | 1,000 | 500 | 2,000 | |
| Indirect Costs est @ 20% of salaries and wages |
estimates only |
140,000 | |||
| Totals | $881, 000 | ||||
The grant limit is $800,000. Revisions in the plan are underway to achieve this limit. The first estimate for completion was $2.8 million.
Other Funds
Giles is dedicating his parttime equivalent salary of about $300,000 for a 5-year period. Other contracts and grants will be sought for start-up. Hopefully, with demonstrated success, the funding for adaptations, additions, and improvements can be renewed.
Time Table with Monthly Milestones
Purchase first components when the award is announced.
Month 6 - Secure office equipment (not provided in indirect costs for office space); staff and complete planning including plans for final publications and presentations
Month 8 - Secure computer equipment and software
Month 9 - Complete preliminary spread-sheet based simulation of financial status Rural System. Accounting system designed.
Month 12 - Priorities developed for essential software units; first units developed
Month 13 - Graduate study plans complete; transition software design complete and test data assembled
Month 14 - First-cut GIS data bases assembled for the region
Month 15 - Two organizational web sites completed
Month 16 - Analyses complete of insurance, health care, and " benefits" needs of Rural System staff, assistants, and employees; financial system revised in response
Month 17 - Staff training unit (introductory with distance-learning component) complete; links made with existing systems of The Partners
Month 18 - Marketing plan complete, including international relations
Month19 - Preliminary ColdFusion (server software) applications made for the dynamic planning system
Month 20 - Completion of design of security system, consequence system, and summit.
Month 21 - Completion of e-business design including study of contract relations with units similar to Amazon.com, etc.
Month 23 - Complete programs and write up and review of objectives subsystem
Month 26 - Completion of contract designs with Foresters Inc. and private landowners; Sponsor public introductory or " out-reach" program
Month 28 - Complete development of new GIS layers
Month 30- Completion of fishery model
Month 32 - Completion of generalized linear programming unit for natural resource business applications
Month 33 - Complete generalized aids to using " Criterium" and other decision-aiding software within developed guidance system
Month 34 - Review, edit, and present various project reports
Month 36 - Complete system description with lessons learned from preliminary computer applications; submit papers for publication; deliver final project report.
Literature Cited
Alig, R.J., D.M. Adams, and B.A. McCarl. 2002. Projecting impacts of global climate change on the US forest and agricultural sectors and carbon budgets. Forest Ecology and Management 169:3-14.
Altieri, M.A. 2004. Linking ecologists and traditional farmers in the search for sustainable agriculture. Frontiers in ecology and the environment 1: 35-42.
Anderson, D. R. 1981. A climatological information system for natural resource management: temperature. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. vii + 220 pp.
Anderson, S. 1994. Agroforestry and sustainable systems in the Southern Great Plains, p. 127- 145 in Rietveld, W.J. (technical coordinator). 1995. Agroforestry and sustainable systems: symposium proceedings, USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report RM-GTR-261, Rocky Mt. Forest and Range Exp. Station, Ft. Collins, CO. 276p.
Baden, J.A. 1996. An economic perspective on the sustainable use of land, p. 339-330 in Diamond, H.L. and P.F. Noonan. Eds. Land use in America, Island Press, Covelo, CA. 351pp.
Beaton, R. and C. Maser. 1999. Reuniting economy and ecology in sustainable development, Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. 107pp.
Block, W.M., L.A. Brennan, and R.J. Gutierrez. 1986. The use of guilds and guild-indicator species for assessing habitat suitability, pp. 109-113 in J. Verner, M.L. Morrison, and C.J. Ralph. Wildlife 2000: Modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates. U. Wisc. Press, Madison, WI. 470 pp.
Bosworth, Dale. 2004 conversation with Chris Butler of the Idaho Statesman newspaper (1/25/2004).
Burnham, K.P. and D.R. Anderson. 1998. Model selection and inference: a practical information theoretic approach, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY. 353pp.
Boulding, K. 1991. What do we want to sustain? Environmentalism and human evaluations, p. 22-31 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Box, T. 1995. Sustainable systems, agroforestry, and land use. p. 1- 8 in Rietveld, W.J.(technical coordinator). 1995. Agroforestry and sustainable systems: symposium proceedings, USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report RM-GTR-261, Rocky Mt. Forest and Range Exp. Station, Fort Collins, CO. 276p.
Bragg, D.C. 1997. Simulating catastrophic disturbance effects on coarse woody debris production and delivery, p. 148 - 156 in Teck, R., M. Moeur, and J. Adams (compilers) 1997. Proceedings: forest vegetation simulator conference, (Ft. Collins, Feb. 1997), USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station, INT-GTR- 373, Ogden, UT. 222p.
Burhham, K.P. and D. R. Anderson. 1998. Model selection and inference: a practical information-theoretic approach, Springer-Verlag, New Yaork, NY. 353p.
Cairns, J., T.V. Crawford, and H. Salwasser, (eds). Implementing integrated environmental management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA. 137pp.
Cason, T. W., Jr. 1980. Phaedrus: a system for the preliminary environmental evaluation of large physical projects. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly, Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. viii + 305 pp.
Caudill, H. 1962. Night comes to the Cumberlands: a biography of a depressed area, Little Brown and Co., Boston, MA. 394pp.
Caughley, G. and A.R.E. Sinclair. 1984. Wildlife ecology and management. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Boston, MA. 334p.
Clements, F.E. 1916. Plant succession, Carneige Inst., Washington, Publ., 242: 1-512
Costanza, R. 1991. Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Costanza, R., H.E. Daly, and J.A. Bartholomew. 1991. Goals, agenda, and policy recommendations for ecological economics, p. 1-20 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Covington, W.W. and L.F. DeBano (technical coordinators) 1994. Sustainable ecological systems: implementing an ecological approach to land management, 1993 Flagstaff Arizona Conf., USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report, RM-247. Rocky Mt. Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, CO. 363p.
Cowles, C. J., and R. H. Giles, Jr. 1982. A linear programming simulator for optimizing spatial distribution and movements of environmental protection personnel. J. Environ. Manage. 15: 311-322.
Cushman, R.M., S.B. Gough, M.S. Moran, and R.B. Craig. 1980. Sourcebook of hydrologic and ecological features: water resource regions of the coterminous United States, Ann Arbor Science Publishers, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI. 126p.
Dahlberg, K.A. 1991. Sustainable agriculture - fad or harbinger? BioScience 41(5): 337-340.
Decker, D.J. and G.R. Goff. 1987. Valuing wildlife economic and social perspectives, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. 424p.
deSteiguer, J. E. and R. H. Giles, Jr. 1981. Introduction to computerized land-information systems. J. Forestry 79(11): 734-737.
Dykstra, D.P. 1984. Mathematical programming for natural resource management, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, NY. 318p.
Diamond, S. J. and R. H. Giles, Jr. 1987. A vegetational history of Virginia's Ridge and Valley province. Quart. Bul. Arch. Soc. of Virginia. 42(4): 177-187.
Diamond, S.J., R.H. Giles, R.L. Kirkpatrick, and G.J. Griffin. 2000. Hard mast production before and after the chestnut blight. Southern J. Applied For. 24(4) 196-201
Drury, W.H. and I.C.T. Nisbet. 1973. Succession. J. Arnold Arboretum, Harvard Univ., 54: 331-368
Eisenman, E. L.C. Wensel, E.C. Thor, and T.W. Stuart. 1980. Economic data for wildland management in the Western States: a source guide. USDA Forest Service, Gen. Tech. Rpt., Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, PSW-42, Berkeley, CA. 125p.
Emery, M.R. and R.J. McLain (eds) 2001. Non-timber forest products: medicinal herbs, fungi, edible fruits and nuts, and other natural products from the forest. J. of Sustainable Forestry, 13 (3-4): 1- 176.
Fabos, J.G. and S.J. Caswell. 1977. Composite landscape assessment, Massachusetts Agric. Exp. Sta., Res. Bul. 637, Univ. Mass., Amherst, MA. 323p.
Farber, S. 1991. Local and global incentives for sustainability: failures in economic systems, p. 344-354 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Ferguson, S.A., S.J. McKay, D.E. Nagel et al. 2003. Assessing values of air quality and visibility at risk from wildland fires. Res. Paper PNW-RP-550, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR. 59p.
Fies, M. L. 1983. Predicting forest cover types in Southwestern Virginia using topographic information. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. 134 pp.
Findley, S. H. 1994. Hydrologic modeling as a decision-making tool in wildlife management. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA. ix + 164 pp.
Francis, D. L. 1980. A computer-based wind information system for land use planning in Virginia. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, Va., vii + 207 p.
Gaventa, J. 1980. Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian valley, Univ. Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. 267pp.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1978. Wildlife management. W. H. Freeman Co., San Francisco, CA. 416 p.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1979. Modeling decisions or ecological systems? p. 147-159, In J. Carins, Jr., G. P. Patil, and W. E. Waters (Eds.) Environmental biomonitoring, assessment, prediction, and management - certain case studies and related quantitative issues, International Cooperative Pub. House, Fairland, MD. 438 p.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1979. Using computers in evaluating vertebrate pest control procedures, p. 304-312 In J. R. Beck (Ed.) Vertebrate pest control and management materials, ASTM Tech. Pub 680, Amer. Soc. for Testing and Materials, Philadelphia, PA. 323p.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1981. Assessing landowner objectives for wildlife, p. 112-129 in Wildl. Management on Private Lands Symposium, Milwaukee, Wisc., Wisc. Chapter, The Wildlife Society, Madison, WI. 568 pp.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1985. Planning the distribution of watering and similar developments for terrestrial wildlife. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 13:411-415.
Giles, R.H. Jr. 1999. Forest faunal systems (an e-book at http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/forestfauna/index.htm)
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1976. Siting high-voltage powerlines in Virginia. Industrial Vegetation Management. 8(3): 14-19.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1977. A watershed planning and management system: design and synthesis. Virginia Water Resource Research Center, Bul. 102. Blacksburg, VA. 133 p.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1978. WRAP: A woodland resource analysis procedure for TVA landowners. Div. Forestry, Norris, TN. Unpub. Final Report.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1980. Wildlife and integrated pest management. Env. Mgmt. 4(5): 373-374.
Giles, R. H., Jr. 1987. The creation, uses, and demise of a Virginia, USA, Geographic Information System, p. 507-524 in Proc. Internatl. Workshop on Geographic Information System, Beijing '87, 2 vols. 535 pp.
Giles, R.H., Jr. 1998. Natural resource management tomorrow: four currents. Wildl. Society Bulletin 26:51-55.
Giles, R. H., Jr. and T. Cason. 1990. Mapping the primeness of land for residential development. Proc. Conf. on Applications of Geographic Information Systems, Simulation Models, and Knowledge-Based Systems for Landuse Management, Blacksburg, VA. p. 393-404.
Giles, R. H., Jr. and M. S. Fujita. 1989. Computer applications for wildlife management in national parks and protected areas. International Conf. on Parks and Protected Areas, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16 p.
Giles, R. H., Jr., A. B. Jones, III, A. R. Tipton, and T. L. Sharik. 1976. Predicting impacts of proposed facilities in parks, p.1061-1066 in First Conf. on Scientific Res. in the Natl. Parks.
Giles, R. H., Jr., A. Blair Jones, III, and C. W. Smart. 1976. POWER: a computer system for corridor location. Res. Div. Bul. 117, VPI and SU, Blacksburg, VA.
Giles, R. H., Jr. and G. T. Koeln. 1983. Land and cropland primeness: concepts and methods of determination. Env. Manage. 7(2): 129-142.
Giles, R. H., Jr., and Tsui Weihung. 1987. A land use guidance system: releasing the power of the geographic information system, p. 216-267 in Proc. Internatl. Workshop on Geographic Information System, Beijing '87, 2 vols. 535 pp.
Giles, R. H., Jr., and L. A. Nielsen. 1990. A new focus for wildlife resource managers. J. For. 88: 21-26.
Giles, R. H., Jr. and L. A. Nielsen. 1991. The uses of geographic information systems in fisheries in fisheries management: dealing with development in the watershed. Symposium Proceedings American Fisheries Society, Newport, RI.
Giles, R. H., R. G. Oderwald, and A. U. Ezealor. 1993. Toward a rationally robust paradigm for agroforestry systems. Agroforestry Systems 24:21-37.
Giles, R.H. and N. Snyder. 1970. Simulation techniques in wildlife habitat management, p. 637+ in J.A. Bailey, W. Elder, and T.D. McKinney (eds.), Readings in wildlife conservation, The Wildlife Soc., Washington, DC. xiv +722pp.
Giles, R.H., Jr. and Margaret K. Trani. 1999. Key elements of landscape pattern measures. Env. Management 23(4): 477-481.
Gladwin, D. N. 1978. An airport environmental information system for Virginia. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. viii + 307 p.
Grant, W.E. 1986. Systems analysis and simulation in wildlife and fisheries sciences. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY. 338p.
Gray, G. G. 1993. Wildlife and people: the human dimensions of wildlife ecology, Univ. Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. 260pp.
Hamm, C. P. 1978. A soil information algorithm for the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Province of Virginia. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. vi + 75 p.
Hassouna, K. M. 1997. Developing a natural resource data base for geographic information system. M.F. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA. 81 pp.
Hawken, P. 1993. The ecology of commerce: a declaration of sustainability, Harper Business, Harper Collins, Pub. 250p.
Hoar, A. R. 1980. A methodology for mapping probable ranges of endangered terrestrial mammals within selected areas of Virginia. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. xi + 191 p.
Hoar, A. R. and R. H. Giles, Jr. 1979. A system for remapping the ranges of threatened and endangered wildlife species. Southeastern Regional Meeting, Society for General Systems Research. 8 p.
Jones, A. B. III. 1976. POWER: a computer information system for land use decisions. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. vi + 194 p.
Holling, C.S. (ed.) 1978. Adaptive environmental assessment and management, John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY. 377p.
Kendeigh, S.C. 1961. Animal ecology, Prentice -Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 468p.
Kimmins, J.P. 1987. Forest ecology, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, NY. 531p.
Kitching, R.L. 1983. Systems ecology: an introduction to ecological modeling, Univ. Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 280p.
Koeln, G. T. and R. H. Giles, Jr. 1983. Value of geobased information systems to state (natural resource agency) information and education departments. Va. Geographer 15:13-21 (reprinted from J. Environ. Ed. 1982, 13(2): 34-39).
Klopfer, S. D. 1998. Insolation, precipitation, and moisture maps for a Virginia geographic information system. M.S. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA. 184 pp. electronic thesis access: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/public/etd-7197-113632/etd-title.html
Knight, C. B. 1965. Basic concepts of ecology, Macmillan Co., New York, NY. 468p.
Kroll, G. 1982. Computer aids for reclaiming eastern surface mines as rangelands. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. 272 pp.
Landres, Peter B., J. Verner, and J.W. Thomas. 1988. Ecological uses of vertebrate indicator species: a critique. Conservation Biology 2(4): 1-13
Lawrence, G. E., Jr. 1976. A computer-based insolation mapping algorithm for large areas. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA.
Lemons, J. and C. Malone. 1994. Integrated environmental management and assessment of the environmental program at the potential high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, p. 41-59, in Cairns, J., T.V. Crawford, H. Salwasser, (eds). Implementing integrated environmental management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA. 137pp.
Lovejoy, T.E. 1989. Deforestation and extinction of species. Pages 91-98 In: D.B. Botkin, M.E Caswell, J.E. Estes, and A.A. Orio, Eds. Changing the Global Environment - Perspectives on Human Involvement. Academic Press, Inc., Boston, MA.
Lund, H.G., V.J. LaBau, P.F. Ffolliott, and D.W. Robinson. (technical coordinators) 1978. Integrated inventories of renewable natural resources: proceedings of a workshop, [Tuscon, Arizona], USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountian Forest and Range Exp. Station, General Technical Rpt RM-55, Fort Collins, CO. 482p.
Martin, S. M. 1988. Select geomorphological components of wildlife habitat in the Ridge and Valley Province of Virginia. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. 203 pp.
Martinez-Alier, J. 1991. Ecological perception, environmental policy and distributional conflicts: some lessons from history, p. 118- 136 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Maser, C. 1994. Sustainable forestry: philosophy, science, and economics, St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL 373pp.
Mason, N. A. 1994. Floral richness inventory of an eastern US forest. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. 107pp.
McCombs, J. W. 1998. Geographic information system topographic factor maps for wildlife management. M.S. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA. 141 pp.
Moore, C. and A Miller. 1994. Green gold: Japan, Germany, the United States and the race for environmental technology, Beacon Press, Boston, MA. 279pp.
Morton, D. 1998. Landcover map of Virginia. M.S. Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA.
Mower, H.T., R.L. Czaplewski, and R.H. Hamre, (technical coordinators) 1996. Spatial accuracy assessment in natural resources and environmental sciences: second international symposium, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, General Tech. Report RM-GTR-277, Fort Collins, CO. 728p.
Mower, H.T. 1997. Decision support systems for ecosystem management: an evaluation of existing systems, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Gen. Tech Report RM-GTR-296, Fort Collins, CO. 154p.
Murphy, D.D. and B.R. Noon. 1991. Coping with uncertainty in wildlife biology. J. Wildlife Manage. 55:773-782
Norgaard, R.B. and R.B. Howarth. 1991. Sustainability and discounting the future, p.88- 101 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Norton, B.G. 1991. Ecological health and sustainable resource management, p. 102- 117 in R. Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 525 p.
Odum, E.P. 1971. Fundamentals of ecology, 3rd ed., W.B. Saunders, Co., Philadelphia, PA. xiv +574p.
Odum, H.T. 1983. Systems ecology: an introduction, John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY. 644p.
Perry, D.A. 1994. Forest ecosystems. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD. 649p.
Poff, N.L., J.D. Allan, M.A. Palmer, D.D. Hart. B.R. Richter, A.H. Arthington, K.H. Rogers, J.L. Meyers, and J.A. Stanford. 2003. River flows and water wars: emerging science for environmental decision making. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1(6): 298-306
Rapp, V. 2003. New findings about old-growth forests. Science update 4. , USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR. 12p.
Reilly, W.K. 1996. Across the barricades, p. 187-202 in H.L. Diamond and P.F. Noonan, Land use in America, Island Press, Washington, DC. 351p.
Rauscher, M.H., J.E. Spearman, Jr., P.C. Fout, Giles, R.H., Jr., and M.J. Twery. 2001. Talking high-tech turkey [applications of NED system]. Tree Farmer 20: 6-13
Rietveld, W.J. (technical coordinator). 1995. Agroforestry and sustainable systems: symposium proceedings, USDA Forest Service, General Technical Report RM-GTR-261, Rocky Mt. Forest and Range Exp. Station, Ft. Collins, CO. 276p.
Rogers, P., D. Atkins, M. Frank, and D. Parker. 2001. Forest health monitoring in the Interior West: a baseline summary of forest issues, 1996-1999, USDA Forest Service. Rocky Mountain Research Station, General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-75, Ft. Collins, CO. 40p.
Samuel, D.E. et al. (editors) 1978. Surface mining and fish/wildlife needs in the Eastern United States: proceedings of a symposium (Morgantown, WVA) Biological Services Program, US Dept. Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS/OBS 78/81, 386p.
Sauer, C. 1956. The agency of man on Earth in W.L. Thomas, Jr., ed. Man's role in changing the face of the Earth, Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Saunders, E. F. 1977. WATFLOW: A computer system to aid in reclaiming watersheds affected by surface mines. Unpub. M.S. Thesis, Va. Poly. Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA. xii + 296p.
Shaffer, M.