NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE WESTERN RURAL DEVELOPMENT CENTER

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Predicting the Onset of Cavitation in Nonsymetric Bifurcations

Many existing dams in the United States were built without hydroelectric generating accessories and are now being considered for hydroelectric installations. A bifurcation is regularly used as the method for diverting the water to the new generators. With a bifurcation installed as part of the new piping system, cavitation could become a problem. Although widely used, there are no published data on cavitation characteristics or head loss coefficients for these bifurcations. Dimensional analysis has not been adequate for experimentally quantifying the cavitation potential and full scale testing is prohibitive for many large geometries. Therefore this study utilized Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in conjunction with a physical model to predict conditions that would cause the onset of cavitation. Head loss coefficients were also calculated from the CFD simulations and physical model. Based on these results, the authors have produced recommended operating conditions that will allow bifurcations to operate within safe limits of cavitation. This study was not exhaustive but presents data that has previously been unavailable and will assist designers and operators to better understand the performance of such bifurcations

Review of: Anatomy of a Conflict: Identity, Knowledge, and Emotion in Old Growth Forests

I am very glad this book was written, and equally pleased to have read it. But having done so, I am not sure I would buy it. I will use this review to explore the seeming contradiction between my enthusiasm and ambivalence. The book focuses on the regional conflict over the management of federally-managed forests in the Pacific Northwest Region of the United States. The controversy played out predominantly from 1988–1996, and the book reports the results of research undertaken from 1992–1996. The research is ethnographic, with the major data drawn from participant observation of events and from a series of unstructured interviews of various players in what was locally referred to as the ‘‘spotted owl wars.’

Searching for effective natural-resources policy: The special challenges of ecosystem management

No matter how elegant ecosystem management is scientifically, it will not reach its potential in western U.S., with its abundant public lands, unless it is effective public policy. Such policy is (1) an adaptive process, (2) utilizes the most appropriate science and technology, (3) is implementable, and (4) has low transaction cost. This paper focuses on the latter two characteristics which are shaped by social legitimacy, and proposes a procedure termed Collaborative Learning as a promising decision-making process for ecosystem management. Two defining criteria of social legitimacy in contemporary American public policy are (1) policy solutions must be recognized as technically sound; and (2) if people\u27s lives are affected, they must have a voice in policy process. The increasing sophistication of science and technology makes them less understood by the general public, and creates a dilemma between the narrow politics of expertise and a broad politics of public inclusion. Land management of any form in western U.S., with its mixed land ownership, is complicated and constrained by deeply held public values; multiple world views, parties and issues; legal constraints; and an entrenched conflict industry. Ecosystem management compounds these difficulties by adding more technical complexity and uncertainty, a systems view, increased focus on mixed-ownership solutions, and the importance of institutional continuity. Collaborative Learning (CL) is a framework for natural-resources policy making with public involvement. It is a hybrid between soft-systems methodology, which promotes learning and systems thinking, and alternative dispute resolution, which deals with value differences and strategic behaviors. CL stresses improvement rather than solution, situation over problem or conflict, concerns and interests rather than positions, progress over success, desirable and feasible change rather than desired future condition. Evaluations of CL conclude that the process broadens participants\u27 understanding, improves communication between diverse communities, and implements improvements. And while strategic behaviors persist, there is increased rapport, respect, and trust among participants. It is well-suited to ecosystem management

From the Forest to the River: Citizens\u27 Views of Stakeholder Engagement

Since the early 1990s collaboration and consensus processes have become associated with success in the environmental policy and natural resource policy arenas. Interest in collaboration and consensus processes have emerged, in part, out of a frustration with more conventional efforts used to involve stakeholders, to work though conflicts, and to make decisions in the environmental and natural resource policy arenas. Collaboration and consensus processes, when designed well and applied appropriately, provide opportunities for meaningful stakeholder engagement. This essay features aspects of two government-led or agency-based (Koontz et al. 2004; Moore and Koontz 2003) planning efforts that consider collaboration and citizens/stakeholder engagement. Both projects, a forest management plan revision on the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, and a regional sediment management planning effort at the mouth of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, have considered a Collaborative Learning (CL) approach (Daniels and Walker 2001) for stakeholder involvement. As part of these CL applications, citizens/stakeholders have been asked for their views of the kind of participation processes they value and how they prefer to be involved. This essay presents a summary of citizens\u27 ideas. In doing so, it addresses the question: How do stakeholders want to be engaged in agency-led planning efforts? Data reveal that stakeholders prefer active engagement, access to information and events, and clearly defined decision space. Prior to presenting the project data germane to this question, the paper highlights the trinity of voice and Collaborative Learning

Distributive Effects of Forest Service Attempts to Maintain Community Stability

Community stability is an objective of USDA Forest Service timber sales. This paper examines that objective, and the success the Forest Service can have in attaining it, through its intended maintenance of a constant volume timber harvest schedule. We apply a three-factor, two-sector modified general equilibrium model with empirical evidence from the timber-based counties of western Montana. Departure from a market responsive timber policy can have positive impacts on the wood products sector, but the net effects on the local community are very small. The costs to the public treasury of pursuing such a policy dwarf these small community benefits

When Talk is Not Cheap: Substantive Penance and Expressions of Intent in Rebuilding Cooperation

Interpersonal relationships can be fragile. The mere perception of opportunistic behavior can lead to a breakdown in cooperation. Once damaged, the question then arises as to whether and how cooperation might be restored. Noncooperative game theory raises serious doubts about the possibilities, although interactional justice and impression management research have shown that verbal explanations can dampen reactions to aversive behavior. Philosophical, anthropological, and ethological research all suggest that genuine forgiveness may require something more tangible and substantive than an explanation. Thus, the current experiment investigated the effects of explanations and varying forms of substantive amends on the restoration of mutual cooperation. The results confirm that rebuilding cooperation is feasible. Apologies and simple explanations can be effective to a degree, though substantive amends have significantly more positive effects than explanations alone. In contrast to prior findings on interactional justice, acknowledgments were more effective than denials in repairing short interactions. This research demonstrates that, once breached, cooperation can be reestablished and that actions as well as explanations and apologies can augment the process in important and sometimes subtle ways

Collaboration in Environmental Conflict Management and Decision-Making: Comparing Best Practices With Insights From Collaborative Learning Work

For much of the past three decades, when environmental or natural resource conflicts have emerged, diverse parties (government agencies, stakeholder organizations, and citizens) have often sought an alternative to adversarial battles. They have turned to collaboration, and in so doing, have attempted to work through conflicts to find common ground and make sound decisions. And in so doing their experiences have given rise to the development of “best practices” for conducting collaborative work. This essay considers three sets of best practices for collaboration and compares those practices with the “best practices” that the authors have determined from their 27 years of Collaborative Learning fieldwork. When insights from Collaborative Learning projects are combined with a collective set of best practices, 18 areas emerge to guide collaborative efforts

Interacting damage models mapped onto Ising and percolation models

We introduce a class of damage models on regular lattices with isotropic interactions, as e.g. quasistatic fiber bundles. The system starts intact with a surface-energy threshold required to break any cell sampled from an uncorrelated quenched-disorder distribution. The evolution of this heterogeneous system is ruled by Griffith's principle which states that a cell breaks when the release in elastic energy in the system exceeds the surface-energy barrier necessary to break the cell. By direct integration over all possible realizations of the quenched disorder, we obtain the probability distribution of each damage configuration at any level of the imposed external deformation. We demonstrate an isomorphism between the distributions so obtained and standard generalized Ising models, in which the coupling constants and effective temperature in the Ising model are functions of the nature of the quenched-disorder distribution and the extent of accumulated damage. In particular, we show that damage models with global load sharing are isomorphic to standard percolation theory, that damage models with local load sharing rule are isomorphic to the standard Ising model, and draw consequences thereof for the universality class and behavior of the autocorrelation length of the breakdown transitions corresponding to these models. We also treat damage models having more general power-law interactions, and classify the breakdown process as a function of the power-law interaction exponent. Last, we also show that the probability distribution over configurations is a maximum of Shannon's entropy under some specific constraints related to the energetic balance of the fracture process, which firmly relates this type of quenched-disorder based damage model to standard statistical mechanics.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure