Chapteer 4. Use of Systems Theory, Directed Graphs, and Pulse Process Models in an Adaptive Approach to Agroecosystem Health and Sustainability

Attempts to understand the interrelationships between, on the one hand, goals and objectives of communities living in an agroecosystem and, on the other hand, their planned actions, stated needs, and concerns require the understanding of a complex system. Such a system involves many variables interacting with each other in a dynamic process. Furthermore, the definition of these variables and their relationships depend on how the communities perceive their world. In attempting to model such a complex system, one faces a trade-off between the accuracy of the model’s predictions and the ability to obtain the detailed information needed to build the model (Roberts and Brown, 1975).