as United Nations University Agroforestry Expert System (UNU-AES),
with a focus on alley cropping. The prototype is under evaluation now. It
offers great hope for improvement and wide applicability of this technique
for decision making in the design and management of agroforestry systems
world-wide.
Acknowledgements
The project was financed by the United Nations University, Tokyo. Mr.
Michael Bannister of the Department of Forestry, University of Florida,
and Dr. Dennis V. Johnson of the USDA Forestry Support program,
Washington, D.C., worked with the domain expert (Nair) and provided
substantial inputs to develop the system. The knowledge engineers (Warkentin,
Ruth, and Sprague) were assisted by several of their colleagues at
George Mason University, notably Dr. Ken DeJong and Mr. Michael
Wollowski of the Computer Science Department.