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CARMA produces advice about the most economical responses to rangeland grasshopper infestations in the western U.S.. CARMA also includes a prototype cropland advising module. States specifically handled are Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
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You may run CARMA either by downloading and installing it, or by running the executable jar. Either method requires that you install Java 1.4.2_04 or higher. CARMA is bundled with and internally uses Armed Bear Common Lisp.
- Download: CARMA 5.051 (Jan 18, 2010) Windows (2.5M) Executable JAR (2.3M)
All commercial rights to CARMA are retained by John Hastings through the University of Wyoming. CARMA is available free of charge to researchers, ranchers, and employees of government agencies. CARMA may be copied free of charge provided that each copy bears this license and copyright notice © 1996-2023 John Hastings through the University of Wyoming.
Because CARMA is licensed free of charge, there is no warranty for the program. CARMA is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
Due to the highly variable and unpredictable nature of weather and its effect on grasshopper infestations over an entire growing season and beyond, predictions from any source, including CARMA, cannot be expected to be 100% accurate.
Because our goal is to provide a piece of software that is so intuitive and accessible that it can be used with this following brief set of instructions, there is no cumbersome and alienating "User's Manual". To begin your first consultation, simply click on "Consultation" and then "New" and answer the questions as they appear. The other buttons are intended to be self-explanatory and intuitive. We believe that you will quickly become familiar and fluent in the simple processes of using this software, but should you encounter difficulties please feel free to contact us.
For questions regarding the performance of CARMA or about grasshopper management contact:
Scott Schell
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management
University of Wyoming
P.O. Box 3354
Laramie, WY 82071-3354
Tel: (307) 766-2508
Email: sschell@uwyo.edu
For questions regarding the performance of CARMA contact:
Professor John D. Hastings
The Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences
Dakota State University
Madison, SD 57042
Email:
Program development: John D. Hastings and L. Karl Branting
Concept & design: John D. Hastings, L. Karl Branting, Jeffrey A. Lockwood
Entomological & pest management expertise: Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Alexandre V. Latchininsky, Scott P. Schell
Development of the most recent version of CARMA was supported by a grant from USDA/APHIS/PPQ. The development of prior versions was funded by grants from the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture, a Faculty Grant-in-Aid from the University of Wyoming Office of Research, NSF Career Grant IRI-9502152, and Uniroyal, Inc., the USDA, the University of Nebraska-Kearney Research Services Council, the University of Nebraska-Kearney College of Natural and Social Sciences, and USDA/APHIS/PPQ.
Artwork is adapted from J. L. Capinera and T. S. Sechrist, Grasshoppers (Acrididae) of Colorado: Identification, Biology, and Management, Colorado State University Experiment Station Fort Collins Bulletin No. 584S, 1M, June 1982.
CARMA provides advice about both rangeland and cropland grasshopper infestations.
Rangeland:
CARMA's rangeland module uses case-based reasoning to produce advice about the most economical responses to grasshopper infestations based on roughly 140 combined years of entomologist expertise shared among eight experts. CARMA does this by predicting the proportion of available forage that will be consumed by grasshoppers and estimating the economic returns of various treatment options. Tests have shown that CARMA's grasshopper forage consumption predictions, which are the core of determining the best course of action, very closely approximate the median predictions of the experts. CARMA gives advice by comparing the current infestation to previous infestations (i.e., cases) and adapting the recommendations of the experts to fit the current infestation. The information required to make the forage loss prediction includes the date, the infestation location, the range value and infestation history of the location, the number of grasshoppers per square yard, the grasshopper type and age distribution, the relative recent precipitation and temperatures, and the total area infested (including adjacent neighbors' lands). Infestation probabilities for your location and the effectiveness of each treatment type are used to predict the future probabilities of re-infestation for each treatment type, and statistical methods are used to predict the range of economic benefits for each treatment option. Finally, a set of rules are used to select the possible treatments.
Cropland:
CARMA also includes a prototype crop protection module that gives advice about cropland grasshopper infestations using accepted cropland protection rules.
Further information about CARMA is contained in the following sources:
- John D. Hastings, Alexandre V. Latchininsky, and Scott Schell, Sustainability of Grasshopper Management and Support through CARMA, Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42), Waikoloa Village, Big Island, HI, January 5-8, 2009, recipient of a Best Paper Award.
- Alexandre Latchininsky, John Hastings, and Scott Schell, Good CARMA for the High Plains, Proceedings of the 2007 Americas' Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2007), Keystone, Colorado, August 9-12, 2007.
- John Hastings, Karl Branting, Jeffrey Lockwood, and Scott Schell, CARMA+: A General Architecture for Pest Management, Proceedings of the Workshop on Environmental Decision Support Systems, Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-2003), Acapulco, Mexico, August 9-15, 2003.
- John Hastings, Karl Branting, and Jeffrey Lockwood, CARMA: A Case-Based Rangeland Management Adviser, AI Magazine, 23(2): 49-62 (2002).
- Karl Branting, John Hastings, and Jeffrey Lockwood, CARMA: A Case-Based Range Management Advisor, Proceedings of The Thirteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-2001), Seattle, Washington, August 7-9, 2001.
- L. Karl Branting, John D. Hastings, and Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Integrating Cases and Models for Prediction in Biological Systems, AI Applications, 11(1):29-48 (1997).
- John Hastings, Karl Branting, and Jeff Lockwood, A Multi-Paradigm Reasoning System for Rangeland Management, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 16(1):47-67 (1996).
- John D. Hastings, L. Karl Branting, and Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Case Adaptation Using an Incomplete Causal Model, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR-95), Sesimbra, Portugal, October 23-26, 1995.
- John D. Hastings and L. Karl Branting, Global and Case-Specific Model-based Adaptation, Proceedings of the AAAI 1995 Fall Symposium on Adaptation of Knowledge for Reuse, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 10-12, 1995.
- L. Karl Branting and John D. Hastings, An Empirical Evaluation of Model-Based Case Matching and Adaptation, Proceedings of the Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-94), Seattle, Washington, July 31-August 4, 1994.