Applying Expert Systems Technology to Carrying Capacity Assessment: a Demonstration Prototype

Abstract

When referencing human populations, carrying capacity can be defined as the number of people and the level of their activities that a region can sustain in perpetuity without engendering significant environmental change. While the concept of carrying capacity has long been a focus of interest for environmental managers, how carrying capacity estimates are derived and interpreted has remained a bottleneck in the application of this concept as a basis for planning and land evaluation. Where carrying capacity has been used to assess environmental limitations, decisions regarding population and resource pressures are tempered by uncertainty and inexactness. To provide better estimates of carrying capacity, this uncertainly and inexactness needs to be incorporated into the assessment procedure. The present study introduces an alternative methodology for conducting environmental carrying capacity under conditions of uncertainty using an expert system. After reviewing the general problem of carrying capacity analysis, this paper discusses the issues of knowledge acquisition, uncertainty handling and programming leading to the presentation of a research prototype developed to address carrying capacity issues in Kenya's eastern ecological gradient.