An interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of ecological-economic systems in the American West

Abstract

111Increased public awareness of resource management issues and new attitudes toward resource conservation have led to great interest in the subject of the apposite use and management of natural and environmental resources in the American west. This paper analyzes this subject from an interdisciplinary ecological-economic perspective. The paper first identifies and then discusses four salient issues concerning the study of the west's ecological-economic systems that remain inadequately understood. Next, the paper proposes a research agenda that will enable us to shed light on some key questions concerning the functioning, health, and management of the west's ecological-economic systems.JEL classification: Q20, C61, D81

A note on first step analysis and rangeland management under uncertainty

“…1 For a more detailed corroboration of this point, see McCluskey and Rausser (1999), Batabyal (2000) and Batabyal et al (2001a, b).…”

A theoretical inquiry into aspects of the structure and the management of ecological–economic systems

“…We now brie¯y discuss how the analysis of this paper would be affected (i) by the need to partition the state space of an ecological±economic system into more than two subsets of states, and (ii) by the presence of a keystone species in the ecological±economic system. As discussed in Stoddart et al (1975), and Batabyal (2000), rangeland ecological±economic systems in the USA typically exist in three to ®ve``condition classes.'' So, would the analysis of this paper change when it is necessary to partition the state space of an ecological±economic system into more than two subsets of states?…”

Rangeland Management under Uncertainty: A Conceptual Approach

“…This state of affairs is in part due to a lacuna in the range management literature. Although previous studies (Lambert and Harris 1990, Passmore and Brown 1991, McCluskey and Rausser 1999, Batabyal 2000, Batabyal et al 2001) have studied aspects of range management in the presence of uncertainty, there are very few studies that have explicitly modeled the connections between uncertainty, the ecology, and the management of rangelands over time.…”