I have been trying for several years to involve various groups in a systems
approach to problems in ecology and medicine with very little luck and a
lot of resistance to the use of systems thinking, Critical Systems
Heuristics, TSI in either field. While there are many SD examples in
business there appear to be very few in ecosystem health. Two projects with
which I am associated are examples of the need for a whole systems approach
but I am at a lost on how to break the boundaries that are currently in
force. The first project is the Health Care advisory board of San Diego
county which is meeting to define a regional health care plan for the
county. This process is to be based upon the facts that 1) there is no more
money available for health care in the county and 2) there is 9 billion
dollars available in health care in this county(3300 dollars for every man
woman and child according to the county health director) but the
distribution of funds and thier use is very poor(50% extra hospital beds,
etc.) The second is the status of the Salton Sea in Imperial county, the
scene of massive bird deaths due to pollution, salinity increases and
pesticide runoff. There are many different players involved in the Salton
Sea which greatly varying boundaries and goals and a gret deal of money has
been spent of meetings that produce isolated facts and are not
interconnected with other result and are not followed up. There is an
crying need for a "rich picture" of the sea and its stakeholders in order
to understand how to improve the current situation but the resistance or
our lack of ability to structure the problem is preventing a systems
approach. As there are predictions of a significant bird death rate in the
next two months, including the endangered pelicans, the need for an systems
approach is critical.As Imperial county also has the highest asthma
admission rate in the state and the new river is the most polluted river in
the US, it is oblivious that the problem is an ecosystem health problem for
all the members of the community.
It is evident that both of the projects have many common systems
needs and we are beginning to develop the political will for
change(Congressional Task force formed for Salton Sea, Board of Supervisors
mandate for health system) so any suggestions, ideas, NGOs involved in
these areas, would be appreciated.
Fred
Fred Cagle
Tijuana Watershed International MAB Project
3751 Ray st. ,San Diego,Ca 92104 619-297-0931
internet Fred.Cagle@sdsu.edu
SD in ecosystem health
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- Posts: 1
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SD in ecosystem health
Hello Fred,
I was very interested to see the words "ecosystem health" in your title.
I am a Ph.D. student in the Dept. of Geography and Environmental Engineering
at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. The project I am involved in
(funded by the EPA) is to restore and protect the "ecosystem health" of Lake
Erie. We are using systems analysis/modeling techniques to explore the
ecological dynamics of the system, using a largely aggregated model, with
our major indicator (or state) variables of interest being the structure of
the fish community in the lake.
A further step, and the one which might be of more direct interest
vis-a-vis the problem scenario you have described, will be to work with the
stakeholders in the Lake Erie basin (fishery managers, shipping,
municipalities, "recreationalists", basin residents) in order to determine
what people value about the system, in order to arrive at consensus as to
the definition of "ecosystem health" in Lake Erie. In a situation in which
various stakeholders
at first appear to have different objectives for management of Erie basin
resources, it might appear that agreement upon what is valued for the lake,
i.e.
definition of "ecosystem health" might be difficult to come by. However,
there is a lot of work in this field (multi-objective decision-making,
value-focused decision-making, other names), some of the groundbreaking
work having been done, e.g., by Keeney, Raiffa, etc. I am not an expert,
but I could certainly mention several useful references, assuming you are
as yet unaware of them. Either way, my personal interest in your project,
continues.
********************************************************
* Richard M. Anderson (anderson@titan.me.jhu.edu) *
* Johns Hopkins University *
* Dept. of Geography and Environmental Engineering *
* 313 Ames Hall, 3400 North Charles Street *
* Baltimore, MD 21218 *
* voice 410-516-5176, 410-516-7112 fax 410-516-8996 *
********************************************************
I was very interested to see the words "ecosystem health" in your title.
I am a Ph.D. student in the Dept. of Geography and Environmental Engineering
at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. The project I am involved in
(funded by the EPA) is to restore and protect the "ecosystem health" of Lake
Erie. We are using systems analysis/modeling techniques to explore the
ecological dynamics of the system, using a largely aggregated model, with
our major indicator (or state) variables of interest being the structure of
the fish community in the lake.
A further step, and the one which might be of more direct interest
vis-a-vis the problem scenario you have described, will be to work with the
stakeholders in the Lake Erie basin (fishery managers, shipping,
municipalities, "recreationalists", basin residents) in order to determine
what people value about the system, in order to arrive at consensus as to
the definition of "ecosystem health" in Lake Erie. In a situation in which
various stakeholders
at first appear to have different objectives for management of Erie basin
resources, it might appear that agreement upon what is valued for the lake,
i.e.
definition of "ecosystem health" might be difficult to come by. However,
there is a lot of work in this field (multi-objective decision-making,
value-focused decision-making, other names), some of the groundbreaking
work having been done, e.g., by Keeney, Raiffa, etc. I am not an expert,
but I could certainly mention several useful references, assuming you are
as yet unaware of them. Either way, my personal interest in your project,
continues.
********************************************************
* Richard M. Anderson (anderson@titan.me.jhu.edu) *
* Johns Hopkins University *
* Dept. of Geography and Environmental Engineering *
* 313 Ames Hall, 3400 North Charles Street *
* Baltimore, MD 21218 *
* voice 410-516-5176, 410-516-7112 fax 410-516-8996 *
********************************************************