Simulation models enable land and watershed managers to make preciseauthoritative determinations about the affects of various changes on theenvironment over tim... » 

Simulation models enable land and watershed managers to make preciseauthoritative determinations about the affects of various changes on theenvironment over time. This book discusses the role of modeling in themanagement process and gives an overview of stateoftheart modelingapplications. The first chapters provide background on the benefits and costsof modeling and on the ecological basis of models using historicalapplications as examples. The second section of the book describes the latestmodels from a wide selection of environmental disciplines. Since managementfrequently requires the integration of knowledge from many different areasboth single discipline and multidiscipline models are discussed in detail. Theauthor emphasizes the importance of understanding the issues and alternativesin choosing applying and evaluating models. Land and watershed managers aswell as students of forestry park management regional planing and agriculturewill find this book a thorough and practical introduction to all aspects ofmodeling. TOCSection I History Theory and Challenges. Characterizingwatershed and landscape management. Challenges of management and modeling.Perspectives in ecological modeling and simulation. Perspectives in hydrologicmodeling and simulation. Section II Choosing Models and ModelingEnvironments. Questions addressed with single discipline simulation models.Questions addressed with multidiscipline simulation models. Creating newmodels. Coordinating largescale interdisciplinary watershed modeling.Analyzing alternatives. Who develops and runs the models? Error and uncertaintyanalysis. Model evaluation guidelines. Section III An Integrated WatershedModeling and Simulation Future. Approaches to future model integration. Designphilosophies. Watershed manager view. Modeler view. Day 2 Establish Subteams.Programmer view. Conclusions. «