Ecological Planning Method - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 235

Goal-oriented planning has long been advocated by many community planners. Such an
approach has been summarized by Herbert Gans:
The basic idea behind goal-oriented planning is simple; that planners must begin with
the goals of the community—and of its people—and then develop those programs which
constitute the best means for achieving the community's goals, taking care that the conse-
quences of these programs do not result in undesirable behavioral or cost consequences. 20
There are some good examples of goal-oriented planning, such as Oregon's mandatory
land-use law.* However, although locally generated goals are the ideal, too often goals are
established by a higher level of government. Many federal and state laws have mandated
planning goals for local government, often resulting in the creation of new administra-
tive regions to respond to a particular federal program. These regional agencies must
respond to wide-ranging issues that generate specific goals for water and air quality,
resource management, energy conservation, transportation, and housing. No matter at
what level of government goals are established, information must be collected to help
elected representatives resolve underlying issues. Many goals require an understanding
of biophysical processes.
13.2.3 Step 3: Landscape Analysis, Regional Level
This step and the next one involve interrelated scale levels. The method addresses three
scale levels: region, locality, and specific site, with an emphasis on the local. The use of
different scales is consistent with the concept of levels-of-organization used by ecologists.
According to this concept, each level of organization has special properties. Novikoff
observed, “What were wholes on one level become parts on a higher one.” † Watersheds
have been identified as one level of organization to provide boundaries for landscape
and ecosystem analysis. Drainage basins and watersheds have often been advocated as
useful levels of analysis for landscape planning and natural resource management. 26-34
Dunne and Leopold provide a useful explanation of watersheds and drainage basins for
ecological planning. They state that drainage basin
is synonymous with watershed in American usage and with catchment in most other
countries. The boundary of a drainage basin is known as the drainage divide in the
United States and as the watershed in other countries. Thus the term watershed can
mean an area or a line. The drainage basin can vary in size from that of the Amazon
River to one of a few square meters drainage into the head of a gully. Any number of
drainage basins can be defined in a landscape depending on the location of the drain-
age outlet on some watercourse. 35
Essentially, drainage basins and watersheds are the same thing (catchment areas),
but in practical use, especially in the United States, drainage basins generally are used
to refer to larger regions and watersheds to more specific areas. Lowrance et al., 36 who
have developed a hierarchical approach for agricultural planning, refer to watersheds
as the landscape system, or ecologic level, and the larger unit as the regional system, or
macroeconomic level. In the Lowrance et al. hierarchy, the two smallest units are the farm
system, or microeconomic level, and field system, or agronomic level. The analysis at the
* See, for instance, Pease, 21 Eber, 22 DeGrove, 23 a nd Ke l ly. 24
† Novikoff, 1945, as quoted in Quinby. 25