The U.S. Army's Land-Based Carrying Capacity
Abstract
The objective of this technical note is to conceptually frame the Army's requirement for land based carrying capacity and the capability being developed to address this need. Until recently, research and development (R&D) and technology infusion efforts have approached the carrying capacity need from a logical but individual pieces approach rather than from a programmatic perspective. The Army's interest in land management began with a need to manage and sustain the natural resources in its care. The notion of carrying capacity arose from the significant overlap between the responsibility to maintain natural resources, and the Army trainers' need for well maintained land for use in training exercises. This coincidence of needs has matured the concept of carrying capacity into a comprehensive programmatic approach to land management that yields both environmental and practical benefits. This technical note will document the problem of land management as related to land based carrying capacity, and historical efforts to address the problem. This will include the logical progression from exploratory and qualitative research efforts to bound the problem, to the development of more sophisticated and quantitative efforts to determine cause and effect relationships. Later efforts have focused on capturing these data and relationships within predictive simulation models. We then describe the various pieces that have been developed, evolved, and experimentally applied, how those pieces fit to become the whole, and how the whole or the pieces can be accepted and used. Finally, we identify short and long term knowledge gaps and technical issues that are or will be addressed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA330919
Entities
People
- Alan B. Anderson
- David L. Price
- Patrick J. Guertin
- Terry Mclendon
- W. Michael Childress
Organizations
- Construction Engineering Research Laboratory