ECECMOD: an interdisciplinary modelling system for analyzing nutrient and soil losses from agriculture

This article discusses a set of principles for policy analysis of environme ntal problems. The main focus is on integrating economic and ecological ana lyses through a mathematical modelling framework. The paper starts by devel oping a general model for the study of environmental issues. Principles for operationalizing the model are discussed, and ECECMOD (a new modelling sys tem constructed to analyze pollution from agricultural systems on the basis of these principles) is introduced. Some of the results obtained by ECECMO D are presented to facilitate a discussion about the gains to be obtained b y this kind of analysis. The study shows that it is of great importance to combine economic and ecological analyses at a fairly high level of resoluti on when studying environmental effects of complex systems. (C) 1999 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.