Alternative Resource Management Research Articles

Ethnoecology as Applied Anthropology in Amazonian Development

Social and ecological devastation in Amazonia necessitates alternative strategies for sustained, ecologically sound development. The study of indigenous ecological knowledge (ethnoecology) is shown to offer the bases for these new strategies. Six categories of folk knowledge are explored: gathered products, game, aquaculture, agriculture, resource units and cosmology. A set of recommendations for systematic ethnoecological research is offered, the application of which will not only identify new categories of resources, but also offer alternative resource management strategies to bring the benefits of development to all residents of Amazonia.

MULTIPLE USE RESERVOIR PLANNING APPROACHES: LAC SEUL, NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO

Preparation of alternative resource management strategies for Lac Seul required a novel planning approach to deal with interdependence and competition among resource uses and users. Competition between regulation for power generation on the one hand, and fisheries, recreation, amenities and wild rice on the other, was of particular concern. Four alternative strategies were developed wich would allow government and public to consider the question, resource development with what broad policy objective and for whose benefit? Problems limiting the effectiveness and acceptability of the planning approach are reviewed, and planning and management directions applicable to multiple use reservoirs as well as to other multiple use land and water areas are suggested.

Bayesian generation of synthetic streamflows

Generation of synthetic streamflow traces has proven to be an extremely useful technique for the evaluation of water resource planning and management alternatives. But existing models do not account for the uncertainty in the streamflow parameters. Past research efforts have focused on obtaining ‘best’ estimates of these parameters which are then used as the ‘true’ values of the process. Bayesian methods are here used to overcome this shortcoming. By incorporating the parameter uncertainties into the generation scheme, alternatives may be evaluated under both the natural and the parameter uncertainties. This is accomplished by integrating over the probability distribution of the parameters to obtain the Bayesian, predictive, or unconditional probability distribution function (pdf) of the streamflows. Use of the Bayesian pdf for synthetic generation is shown to lead, on the average, to better designs under uncertainty conditions.

A SELF‐VERIFYING HYBRID COMPUTER MODEL OF RIVER‐BASIN HYDROLOGY1

ABSTRACT. As demands upon available water supplies increase, there is an accompanying increase in the need to assess the downstream consequences resulting from changes at specific locations within a hydrologic system. The problem is approached in this study by hybrid computer simulation of the hydrologic system. Modeling concepts are based upon the development of basic relationships which describe the various hydrologic processes. Within a system these relationships are linked by the continuity‐of‐mass principle. Spatial resolution is achieved by considering the modeled areas as a series of subbasins. The time increment adopted for the model is one month, so that time varying quantities are expressed in terms of mean monthly values. The model is general in nature and is applied to a particular hydrologic system through a programmed verification procedure whereby model coefficients are evaluated for the particular system. In this study the model is applied to the Bear River basin of western Wyoming, southern Idaho, and northern Utah. Comparisons between observed and computed outflow hydrographs show good agreement. The utility of the model is demonstrated by predicting the effects of various possible water resource management alternatives. The verified hybrid computer program can be digitized for application to the digital computer.

A regional groundwater resource management model

This paper demonstrates the application of a groundwater quantity and quality model to large‐scale groundwater basin management. The model employs a finite difference formulation of groundwater flow to compute the groundwater elevations at the node points of a two‐dimensional homogeneous aquifer. A compatible groundwater quality model uses a control volume or mass balance approach to compute the concentration of a conservative constituent at each node. The model was calibrated to a 1200 mi2 groundwater basin in central California. Over 300 nodes were used in a symmetrical network. Water and waste water management alternatives are input to the model: amounts of pumping, natural infiltration, surface water use, and waste water recharge at selected future dates are specified. The impact of five alternatives on the groundwater basin over a simulated 45 years of operation is shown. Thus the evaluation of alternative water resource management schemes was based, in part, on model performance. This type of groundwater model shows promise as an integral tool in planning and managing the development of groundwater basins.