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An Alternative Overview of the R* System: Context of Guidance

The R* System is unique, for it is strongly focused on human objectives and presents a scoring technique, the graphing of the value of R, one that shows a quantitive change in system performance with each decision implemented on the land or in the community (proposed or actual). It is characterized by:

Being holistic and comprehensive

Being dynamic

Composed of subsystems, combining and integrating many existing

Having highly interrelated modules

Having a computer-based objectives development system (public participation)

Having computer models for the map cells of a geographic information system

Providing simulations of ecosystems, both deterministic and stochastic

Using non-linear optimization, achieving objectives at a low cost 50-year planning period (selection of the best action or alternative, given a set of objectives, constraints and probabilities)

Identifying the factor(s) to which the system performance measure, R, is most sensitive (sensitivity analyses)

Being tentative, but with strong corrective and improvement forces

Having an extensive data base and data network

Having appropriate security and limited access for reading and writing to files

Employing multivariate statistical analyses

Using expert system technology and concepts

Automating managerial report preparation

Providing automated public press releases

Having practical and futuristic analyses

Providing description and inventory

Providing monitoring (trend analyses)

Making available expert managerial syntheses, reviews, and summaries

Simulating the consequences of possible actions

Guiding and justifying future studies and research

The entire systems deals with on- and off-site management decision effects in and around communities.

The system attempts to address the array of problems likely encountered in the eastern U.S. The system will be faulted because it will not be big enough (some will want a regional system). It will be too precise for some people; too gross for others. The R* System is designed to treat important current topics of:

The lake and reservoir fisheries
Landscape patterns and corridors (Harris 1984, Forman and Godran 1986)
Old growth and ancient forests
Public participation
Other key, problem, or areas of conflict among objectives include:
- urban energy conservation
- outdoor recreation
- parkland development
- integrated pest damage management
- hunting opportunities
- fishing recreation
- tourism
- community history
- community goals and objectives
- soil erosion control
- street graphics and sign
- shade tree systems
- stabilizing biodiversity
- access
- energy budgets
- water budgets
- urban sprawl
- landscape scores
- rural scenery
- air pollution

Hundreds of papers describe the composite set of conditions and problems besetting community management. These include:

Increasing pressures on land use.
Changing human values and increasing diversity in preference and demand.
Continuing, but unstable demand for community services.
Land use limitations and poorly seen secondary effects of many actions.
Actions in the community influencing off-community sites and resources (visual, fish, etc.).
Legal constraints and demands.
Diverse education and skills of community staff.
Lack of knowledge about total systems.
Rapidly changing technology and changing expectations.
Changing real land value.
Increasing importance of public lands due to limitations and over use of private lands.
Uncertainties in the reality of and consequences of global warming, acid rain, and ozone depletion.
Changing soil, water, and climatic variables.
Changing investment rates.
Changing subsidies and controls.
Changing markets and prices.
Changing regulations (county, state, and international).
Changing public awareness of needs for environmental quality.
Changing needs for energy conservation.
Impending fertilizer shortages.
Changing farm size and ownership.
Fluctuating crop storage needs.
World food supply problems.
Frustrations caused by the gap between the technological power displayed in the moon-walk and by corporations, and current farm practice.
Multiple objectives of landowners, often in conflict with goals and policy of others.
Challenges to alternate use of agricultural land.
Off-site impacts of use of land for agricultural purposes.
The problems of the paired interactions of the above (at least 240).

Most of these problems will not go away, but they can be curtailed or substantially reduced. Of course many are only slightly influenced by farmers, farm policy, or government agencies. Nevertheless, one of the aims of The R* System is to put decisions into their proper context, to help decision makers realistically appraise their potentials for achieving their objectives, and help balance expectations with achievements.

Given that combinations and permutations of the above problems create nearly infinite sets of potential problems, new means are needed to select from among thousands of options to minimize these problems. A fully-developed R* program is expected to be able to provide this decision power.

The general needs appear to be for a system to improve decisions at various levels, to reduce data loss, to improve information retrieval and use, to focus research, to provide criteria for judging the actual status or operation of the overall system, to reduce unexpected occurrences, to reduce damage from catastrophes, and to indicate general future problems. This oppressively complex set of problems can only be addressed simultaneously by The R* System, designed to "get it all together", to reduce some of the chaos, and, by centralization of processing and computational power for these purposes, to provide assistance where it is badly needed--in the on-site decisions of the community decision maker. It is "expensive"; however, this is a relative concept. It will cost less than any 2 court cases, less than 5 miles of road, less than losing one species, less than losing the favor of 20,000 voters by one legislator. In preliminary estimates, expected benefits to expected costs exceed 5 to 1 over the first 10 years of use. The system has been developed by the Project Leader and others based on work over the past 15 years. The system is "non-linear"; it operates with a complex set of thresholds and constraints, uses curvilinear, multidimensional ecological succession and state transition functions, uses information on spatial arrangements (e.g., erosion from uphill sites or influence of private cropland on forest deer concept of zone-of-influence of any action, and allows any forage), uses optional action to be studied (a simulation) and compared to an optimization run (the standard). Not an "energetics model", the system uses energy throughout in parallel with other analyses as a fundamental modeling theme and as a basis for examining "costs." Because the project is large (appropriate for the magnitude of community problems and dodging the piecemeal approaches of the past), it is important to see the sequence of conceptual development . Our unique approach and computer-aided project-managed system allows all of these to proceed simultaneously to a rapid conclusion in 3 years. (We hasten to add again that, as a living, adaptive system, it must be used and maintained for full benefits to be derived.)

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Last revision January 17, 2000.