Hi Bryan / Jonathan
Actually Bryan's example was *not* that contrived.
This is a very common problem in environmental inventories - every time we measure the world we do it different ways (changes in policy, technological development, changes in scientific thinking, etc).
For instance, there are various definitions of 'forest' - see
http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/DEFpaper.htm <
http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/DEFpaper.htm> for some >500 definitions of this very familiar term. Which version of forest may or may not be acknowledged in, for example, climate models which take a 'land use/cover' parameter.
One of the important issues is that many of these versions of forest exist in parallel rather than one being sequentially replaced by another.
Best wishes, Lex Comber
Received on Fri Sep 22 2006 - 01:39:44 BST
