Environmental conflict situations are complex.  Environmental conflict situations are also dynamic: fluid, evolving, changing.  In this paper, you will present the "dynamic complexity" of an environmental conflict situation.  You should do so by writing an environmental conflict "systems analysis" paper.  Your paper should include both visual and narrative components.  Here are the paper guidelines.

Step the First: Select an environmental conflict situation for study.  This situation could be local (e.g., the Corvallis Riverfront), state (e.g., Lower Willamette River Superfund site designation, the Steens Mountains ecosystem), regional (e.g., Missouri River water quality), national (e.g., the Clinton Administration's public lands roadless initiative), or international (e.g., Canada-US transboundary issues, wildlife protection negotiations).

Step the Second: Research the environmental conflict situation.  Find a set of articles on the situation.  Your research needs to be rerasonably comprehensive but should not be extensive or exhaustive.   Stated differently, four or five different sources (e.g., magazine articles, internet sites, newsletters, journal essays, book chapters) may be adequate.

Step the Third: Describe the environmental conflict situation systemically, that is, as a system and/or set of subsystems.  Your description should be both visual and narrative.

• The visual description - Based on your understanding of the environmental conflict situation and your understanding of human activity systems, create a "rich picture" of the situation.  Your rich picture can be a situation map, a systems diagram, a cartoon, a mind map, or some other systems visualization technique.  Your visual description may emphasize some or all of the components of a system, such as elements, inputs, outputs, relationships, and emergent properties.

• The narrative description - In addition to a visual description of the environmental conflict situation you have selected, provide a narrative (written text) description of the situation.  Your written description, like your visual description, could feature some or all system components. You may want to think of your narrative description as a written explanation of your visual description.

• What, if anything, did you learn from attempting to understand the specific environmental conflict situation systemically?
• Did the systems analysis reveal anything that was not obvious in the situation?
• Did the systems analysis suggest any possible directions for conflict resolution, such as points of intervention or resolution methods?
• Did the systems analysis process help you think systemically?