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<br />.. <br /> <br />We face a number of puzzles. How should we assess impacts on individual receptor organisms, <br />say elk, when these same organisms are receptors of impacts from other human actions so large <br />that they overwhelm the precipitation-related impacts we are seeking to study? We have to ask <br />the same question with respect to impacts of the same nature, and on the same organism, from <br />other natural sources. Heretofore, we have proceeded mostly by subjecting the target organisms <br />to greatly magnified impacts; for instance, building snow fences to accumulate snow to depths of <br />several hundred percent of normal in an effort to make the responses more evident. But we lack <br />even good justification for assuming that the response being produced by nature, or by this <br />magnified stimulus, is linearly related to snowpack in the range of magnitudes that precipitation <br />management may cause. Do most organisms have hormonal shock absorbers that smooth the <br />bumps of the natural climatic road but bottom lOut when we drive them over a 400- <br />percent-of-normal rock? <br />When we progress from the study of individual organisms to whole ecosystems and whole <br />environments as the receptors of precipitation management, we face questions of potentially <br />greater importance, since these larger entities are the matrix of a far greater and more important <br />transactional network for both human and natural economics. And yet, for the same reason, the <br />direct workings of precipitation-management stimuli on those networks are the more complex <br />and obscure. What priority should be accorded whole-system impacts, and how should their <br />study proceed? <br /> <br />Abiotic Compartment <br /> <br />It is not at issue that snowpack mass, duration of snow cover, amount and intensity of rainfall, <br />erosion, ground water, and probably some other members of the abiotic compartment are <br />important components of the environment and. are: subject to impact from precipitation <br />management. What we see as at issue is the manner and extent to which precipitation impinges on <br />the other components, the proportion of variance due to precipitation, and the linkages that are <br />important within the abiotic compartment in transmitting impacts from one component to <br />another. <br />Also, since abiotic components act as important links between the direct effect of <br />precipitation management on the precipitation and its subsequent effects in the vegetational, <br />animal, and socioeconomic compartments, an important issue is how to characterize the relevant <br />abiotic factors efficiently for application to other studies. <br />Erosion appears destined to be a substantial, enduring issue. Is there a certain rainfall climate <br />that corresponds to maximum erosion of natural landscapes, with more rainfall encouraging <br />protective vegetation and less rainfall having less ability to carry material? If erosion is affected <br />greatly by land use, or by land abuse as suggested by Ackermann in the October 1976 issue of <br />EOS [14], should we attempt to treat each impact upon this common receptor as if it were <br />independent of the other, or can we do better than that? What about the other side of the <br />erosional coin, namely, the buildup of valuable alluvial land? <br /> <br />", <br /> <br />21 <br />