Bücher von Thomas L. Vincent

This vol ume contains the proceedings of the second U. S. -Austral ia workshop on Renewable Resource Management held at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, December 9-12, 1985. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Department of Science and Technology (Austral ia) under the U. S. -Austral ia Cooperative Science Program. The objective of the workshop was to focus on problems associated with the management of renewable resource systems. A particular emphasis was given to methods for handling uncertain elements whieh are present in any real system. Toward this end, the partiei pants were chosen so that the collective expertise included mathematical modeling, dynamical control/game theory, ecology, and practical management of real systems. Each participant was invited to give an informal presentation in his field of expertise as related to the overall theme. The formal papers (contained in this vo 1 ume) were written after the workshop so that the authors coul d util ize the workshop experience in relating their own work to others. To further encourage this exchange, each paper contained in this volume was reviewed by two other participants who then wrote formal comments. These comments (with author's reply in some cases) are attached to the end of each paper.

As society becomes stressed by economic and population pressures, in turn, nature's renewable resources become stressed by harvesting pressures. For our own survival and euphoria, it is paramount that such resources remain as their name implies and not be driven to extinction through short term programs of over exploitation. Consideration of the harvesting of renewable resources leads to a simple question that was the theme of the workshop and is the focus of these proceedings: SUPPoRe you are assigned the role of manager for a specific renewable resource eco- system. How would you decide on harvesting policies so that the system can be exploited economically yet at the same time maintain the integrity of the system? This, of course, is a loaded question. First of all, it is not clear that there is ever anyone single decision maker who is able to set the rules for all of the harvesters in an exploited ecosystem. The political process is complicated and to some extent unpredictable. This aspect of the question is recognized to be important, but could not be addressed here. Assuming then that someone really is in charge, what would be involved in the * decision making process? As Clark points out, "e;there is no alternative but first to model the system. "e; We agree. However, if the original question was loaded, modeling is the adulterate.