Sustainable range management system

Abstract

AbstractThe U.S. military faces an increasingly diverse array of challenges in meeting its national security objectives in the twenty‐first century. One of the most critical challenges is providing realistic training for our armed forces. To address this challenge, the Department of Defense is pursuing a strategy to achieve range sustainment. This strategy dictates a need for a management structure within which the military can operate and maintain sustainable ranges. Rather than starting with a completely new structure, the Department of Defense should consider management structures currently in use around the world. The management structure described in the international standard for environmental management systems, ISO 14001, provides a very useful framework for addressing the required elements of a sustainable range management system. The ISO 14001 framework helps range managers identify gaps in any proposed management structure and determine the most effective means of integrating existing range management tools into the sustainable range management system. Two examples of existing range management tools that may be used within a sustainable range management system are geographic information systems (GISs) and the ecological model ECOS2T (Ecological Simulations for a Sustainable Tomorrow). ISO 14001 provides a useful road map for the integration of these tools into a sustainable range management system. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.