Jean-Louis Sasseville

Environmental management cognitive strategies: Acid rain in the Yamaska watershed, Quebec, Canada

Systematic budgetary restrictions foreseen for the next few years will require greater organizational effectiveness in public management systems, particularly in environmental management, in which costs are seen as a burden to the national economy Environmental management efficiency could be increased, among other means, by the adoption of knowledge acquisition strategies that take into account the multiple facets of environmental management, these cognitive strategies involve the development and use of methods to establish facts and to analyze complex environmental situations It is the purpose of this paper to show that an efficient approach is possible in establishing facts from existing data. The method involves a heuristic use of advanced statistical tools to integrate multiple data into the description of environmental phenomena An example is given in which the method has been applied to a data base obtained from the inventory of Yamaska watershed; it revealed 16 facts of potential interest to environmental managers The case study suggests that management system efficiency could be improved by a more comprehensive understanding of the environmental situation that takes into account the structure of biophysical processes and the elements involved in information processing