brand new Scottish testers!

[Matthew Hare]

hello out there! 
first Switzerland & Germany, now Scotland! Where next will swarm go I wonder?
Here, in the land use & environmental modelling group at MLURI, we're trying to 
model (& understand) the complex processes underlying rural land use change. 
How do environmental, social and economic factors interact to affect this 
change?  How can employment, community and local ecosystems be conserved 
harmoniously?   (feel free to email me back on that one, if there are any 
answers out there...)
Anyway, the project we're currently working on revolves around the alarming     
decline in numbers of red grouse in this country. The management of these wild  
birds has a large economic, environmental and social impact on rural areas over 
here, something that their obstinate dive towards extinction is threatening. 
So, we've been tasked with finding out more about how their population dynamics 
are affected by enivironment and management changes. Unfortunately, the grouse  
   domain is very knowledge and data- poor (are all complex systems?). Also, 
alot  of the knowledge we have about it is diverse and conflicting. One of the 
reasons for the conflicts, we believe, is that the knowledge gained from 
different     experts and empirical analysis is valid only in its own 
particular ecological   and management contexts. 
For example, one of the many unsolved puzzles in this domain is what causes     
grouse populations to cycle.  There are two competing theories - parasites or   
intrinsic factors based on kinship selection - both studied in isolation, both  
claiming a degree of mutual exclusivity. Many research years have gone into 
proving one or other invalid. But  both of these can be effected by a whole 
gamut of other factors  (management options, predation, climate, etc.) as well 
as each  other. 
What we want to try is integrating the A-Life simulation component of swarm 
with a range of individual 'expert' knowledge bases to create a test bed for 
investigating the conditions that may favour one particular theory or heuristic 
over another. Different knowledge sources (e.g. expert 'Bob's encoded beliefs) 
can have turns at defining how the simulation runs and results can be compared 
against  assumptions and hypotheses from other knowledge sources.
Hopefully swarm will give us the simulation flexibilty to investigate the 
applicability of such ecological theories and heuristics not just in isolation 
but    also in the context of one or more interacting and possibly confounding 
factors,including socio-economic considerations: How might the ecosystem and 
management system feedback on each other?  
Finally, the long term aim is to build a methodology for testing and augmenting 
knowledge bases in a wide range of socio-economic/ecological domains.

Well, we're glad to be a part of it all and can't wait to get it up and running 
to really understand all those problem reports people have been mailing in!

good luck everyone,

Matt Hare
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (MLURI)
Craigiebuckler,
Aberdeen,
Scotland
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