NELUP: An Introduction

The NERC-ESRC Land Use Programme (NELUP) uses a general systems framework for organizing the large amounts of information that are relevant to decision making in land use. The first level is that of empirical information which contains the descriptive data from which more sophisticated levels may be constructed, ranging from physically based models, through biosystems to the individual and political levels. An holistic and structured way is proposed for organizing information at the different levels and making it easily accessible to users in a decision support system. The level of the open systems of living organisms and ecosystems is where socio-economic demands impact on the environment and where ideas of sustainability and environmental carrying capacity have operational meaning for planners and managers.