Applying Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving Methods to Trumpeter Swan Management

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We are developing a decision support system in an effort to assist biologists who are managing habitats for the Rocky Mountain population of trumpeter swans. Swan management is a domain that is ecologically complex and compounded by spatial and temporal issues. We are focused on providing decision support that allows managers to develop habitat management plans for local sites while recognizing that such decisions have ramifications not only at other sites but in the flyway as a whole. Because swan management is an inherently distributed problem, our system utilizes artificial intelligence methods including cooperative distributed problem solving, blackboards, and expert systems. The system will be made available to swan managers through the world wide web, using commercially available software that provides a common gateway interface between the web server software and an inference engine.