T

Glossary of terms for managing wholes

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testing questions - A set of questions used in Holistic Management to test whether an action takes people toward or way from their holistic goal.

Related pages: "Holistic Management testing questions"

tools - Everything that gives humans the ability -- which most organisms lack -- to alter the ecosystem in order to achieve predetermined goals. The tools recognized by Holistic Management are:

Human creativity -- used whenever we use any other tool.
Money and labor -- ditto.
Technology -- everything from stone axes to genetic engineering.
Fire -- fire is a tool whenever humans light or manage it.
Rest -- resting landscapes from major physical disturbances such as grazing, trampling, fire, and plowing. Prolonged rest as a tool of the same order as fire or a plow is a new concept. People considered it natural until we noticed that brittle and nonbrittle environments react very differently to it, and realized that the major grazing areas of the world, in their pristine natural state, never experienced it at all.
Grazing -- ranks with fire and rest as tools because humans can manipulate it.
Animal impact -- everything large grazing animals do except graze: dunging, trampling, rubbing, salivating, etc. As these have effects very different from grazing, and can be managed independently to some degree, we consider them separately.
Living organisms -- The whole complex of life present in an environment, including plants, animals, soil organisms, microbes, etc.

total rest - The prolonged lack of any physical disturbance (such as grazing, trampling, or fire) to land, soils, and plant or animal communities. Rest heals nonbrittle landscapes but damages and desertifies brittle land. Compare partial rest.

Related terms: rest, partial rest, overrest

transect - A sample area, usually in the form of a long, continuous strip. Land health monitoring is generally done along transects in order to get a representative sample while keeping work to a minimum.

Triple Bottom Line - Measuring corporate performance by profits, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility. Conventional accounting ignores (and where possible externalizes) social and environmental costs, giving a false picture of "profit" when in fact humans are rapidly depleting the natural resource base on which we all depend. See economics.

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Posted 23 April 2003
URL: managingwholes.com/glossary/t.htm