Colorado River Ecology and Dam Management Proceedings of a Symposium May 24-25, 1990 Santa Fe, New Mexico (1991) / Chapter Skim
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The Role of Science in Natural Resource Management: The Case fr the Colorado River
The Role of Science in Natural Resource Management: The Case fr the Colorado River
Pages 28-39
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From page 28... ...
These surveys were, in fact, an early application of scientific observation to document natural resources for purposes of planning for development; Some of the information that John Wesley Powell developed is recorded in his 1878 report Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States, a trenchant bit of writing that presents a compellingly logical approach to the development of water resources for the "reclamation" of lands for agriculture (Powell, 1878~. This document underpins a report of the National Academy of Sciences that led to the establishment of the U.S.
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From page 29... ...
THE STRENGTH OF SCIENCE If a logically compelling rationale for a long-term interaction between natural science and useful management of the river can be developed here, it will be based on candid understanding of the kinds of knowledge that science can and cannot yield. Science, as the general concept is used here, has several aspects.
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From page 30... ...
Disproof, falsification, or rejection of incorrect hypotheses is more powerful because it is final. Experimental science develops knowledge most rapidly by rejecting what is not true, thus leaving the truth more and more certain with each experiment (Doyle, 1890; Popper, 1965~.
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From page 31... ...
The full extension of applied science is thought by many to define engineering, where human utility is an important criterion. Much problem-oriented research is performed by engineering consulting firms, called in because it is inefficient for agencies to carry research staffs large enough to cover the potentially wide array of research needs.
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From page 32... ...
Understanding and predictive success through scientific inquiry lead to the opportunity for using manipulation to control or to alter events in nature through management. This premise has been the very basis for the development of modern crop and livestock agriculture, of forestry management, and of the management of fisheries and wildlife, i.e., of the development of all renewable natural resources.
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From page 33... ...
Background and more detailed discussion may be found in our report River and Dam Management (National Research Council, 1987~. First point: The construction of Glen Canyon Dam three decades ago imposed substantial changes on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National
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From page 34... ...
achieve management goals in the Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon reaches of the river. There will be, I suspect, considerable disagreement about the third of these suggestions.
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From page 35... ...
Subsequently, the pace of ecosystem responses to management will be similar so that the design of a performance monitoring plan should also match the pace of the change; i.e., our thinking and our actions should be long term. Once a conceptual scheme of the interacting components is established and their relationships to changing flows are understood, then the chance to use the dam to achieve desired states can be considered.
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From page 36... ...
New knowledge acquired in the process will serve management of rivers elsewhere in the world, a major societal benefit of such a program. As water resources approach their limits and thus require greater effort to maintain their quality, this new knowledge will have significant utility.
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From page 37... ...
Furthermore, the very existence of Glen Canyon Dam provides a control structure just upstream from a national park of long standing, a protected reach of river with unusual potential opportunities for science and for management. Thus, when dam operations for management purposes are thought of as manipulative experiments, long-term data collection becomes performance monitoring.
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From page 38... ...
construction of Glen Canyon Dam caused dramatic changes in the Colorado River ecosystem, (2) operational options available at Glen Canyon Dam are greater than those required to meet the purposes for which the dam was built, and (3)
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From page 39... ...
John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Houghton MiMin, Boston.
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