1 additional studies in canyon-head areas and in canyons themselves was 



2 brought up. 



3 I'm not going to go into the gory details of all of this 



4 discussion, but the bottom line for all of us was, well, certainly there 



5 are people who would be interested in additional information on canyon 



6 areas, but, in fact, is that really what the problem is, or is there 



7 something more fundamental that we have to work on? 



8 Would a new field biological or chemical study really address the 



9 issue, would it resolve anything? Our conclusion was, basically, that 



10 it was unlikely to change our conclusion, if we had more field data, and 



11 that in many cases we didn't think it was going to really change anyone 



12 else's. 



13 So, then the question became what could we do that would further 



14 the discussions on this topic if we didn't do field research. What we 



15 came up with was this workshop. 



16 There's a couple of other things that bear on this, one of them is 



17 the recent GAO audit of the Environmental Studies Program, which, quite 



18 favorable to the Studies Program, did highlight that one of the things 



19 that we had the most difficulty with was information transfer and 



20 dissemination, and, in fact, suggested that there were some areas where 



21 that could be improved. 



22 Some of the comments on the questionnaire that the GAO sent out 



23 were fairly convinced that we had not done as good a job as we could 



24 have done. 



25 I know that is probably true, because I'm not even sure we do as 



26 good a job as we should internally disseminating the information. It's 



27 difficult to read 300- and 400-page technical reports on all of the 



28 issues that the Studies Program gets involved in, and then distill that 



29 information down to something you could use if you are involved in 



30 making decisions about the program. 



31 In addition to wanting a mechanism to further the discussions on 



32 canyons, we are also looking for mechanisms to further the exchange and 



33 dissemination of information that already exists in the Studies Program. 



