Good CARMA for the High Plains

CARMA is a decision-support system for grasshopper infestations that has been successfully used since 1996. Rising treatment costs coupled with shrinking rangeland profit margins increasingly demand accurate selection of the most cost-effective responses to grasshopper infestations, and CARMA fills that need. In the process CARMA provides advice regarding grasshopper population management options in an environmentally and economically sound fashion, and is the only pest management software that includes the more environmentally-friendly Reduced Agent-Area Treatments (RAATs) as a treatment option and an open-ended capacity for user-based treatment updates. This paper describes the most recent changes to CARMA with particular attention to the new architecture which demonstrates an approach to integrating an artificially intelligent LISP reasoner with a Java graphical user interface (GUI) in a way which combines the strengths of the two languages (i.e., LISP for artificial intelligence and Java for graphical user interfaces) in order to provide a strong reasoner while at the same time producing an appealing user interface which is platform independent and web capable.