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<br />Environmental Overview <br /> <br />Within the vegetative study, there has been a clear methodology of considering first the most <br />fundamental processes affecting particular species of plants in particular sites, followed by some <br />drawing of more general conclusions concerning the probable effect of precipitation management <br />on larger communities of plants and ecosystems such as grasslands or forests. One can see in this <br />an ascent through one or two hierarchial steps from individual organisms to associations of <br />organisms and onward to ecosystems. Eugene Odum [9] has pointed out as an important <br />consequence of hierarchial organization that, as components or subsets are combined to produce <br />larger functional wholes, new properties emerge that were not evident at the next level below. <br />This observation leads to the question: Are there properties of environmental effect on the whole <br />environment of a precipitation-management operation that are not evident as properties of the <br />abiotic, vegetational, animal, and socioeconomic components viewed separately? To put the <br />question in the pragmatic phraseology of William James, what difference will it make to the <br />environment as a whole, in the long run, whether precipitation management is practiced or not? <br />We did not find in the deliberations of the overview section anything that led strongly toward <br />answers to that question. Nevertheless, we do believe some tentative answers can be stated. <br />First, the total environment will be a little more robust than it is now in the face of climatic <br />shocks, especially the shock of drought, and a little more versatile and efficient in the overall <br />application and utilization of water resources. We base this proposition on the expectation that <br />precipitation management will not be consistently applied, over a long period, unless the <br />expectations of this sort of benefit do indeed become manifest. Second, as the price of having <br />these beneficial options available, the total environment will become just a little more complex, <br />and its components just a little more interdependent than they are now. It seems inevitable that <br />optimal decisions for implementation of precipitation cannot be made without making some new <br />connections within the body of society. Third, although there will be manifest changes in some <br />components or subsets of the total environment, especially those directly dependent on the use <br />of water, the changes in the total environment will be weak, unorganized, indirect, complex, and <br />unidentifiable. In the face of such powerful disturbances to the total environment as those arising <br />. from vast cultural forces such as the population explosion, the energy crisis, the green revolution, <br />the electronic era, the automative age, and the enormous changes in the whole fabric of society <br />and the organization of livelihoods consequent upon them, we have no present grounds for <br />supposing that precipitation management will be more than a streamlet losing itself in the river. <br /> <br />30 <br /> <br />g <br /> <br />J <br />