Models for Integrated Natural Resource Management: An Illustration with FLORES, The Forest Land Resource Oriented Resource Envisioning System

Integrated Natural Resource Management, the broad-based management of resources needed to sustain productivity and avert degradation, cannot be addressed within a single field - not in a farmer's field, nor in any single disciplinary field. The issues involved are of a scale and complexity that they cannot be resolved through field-based experiments, or with uni-disciplinary models. Better management requires efficient ways to draw upon many disciplines, to examine interactions at the landscape scale, and communicate results effectively. There are many ways to do this, and FLORES, the Forest Land Oriented Resource Envisioning System, is offered as one modelling approach that may help stakeholders explore options and their implications. The hallmark of FLORES is explicit modelling of the interrelationship between actors and land parcels in a spatial framework, providing a foundation for inter-disciplinary collaboration between researchers, practitioners and clients. Models such as this can empower stakeholders to manage resources better, by helping them to explore consequences of proposed initiatives, allowing informed selections among alternatives, secure in the knowledge that consequences have been thoroughly investigated. Such models also enable experiments with policy and other initiatives without risks to people or to the environment. The challenge is not the software, but rather the provision of a suitable supportive framework within which people can express and experiment with ideas