There are three types of variables and relationships: numerical, linguistic and pictorial. Traditional system dynamics models are defined by a set of numerical equations which are defined from causal diagrams. Expert systems modeling has shown that one could also develop and use linguistic dynamic models. IDEAS is an integrated simulation approach that considers state of the art numerical and linguistic formulations and introduces pictorial models.Pictorial models consider pictographs, symbols and signs defined by their color, shape, size and position. Operations in these models include reproduction, mutation and fertile and sterile encounters, following a biological analogy.IDEAS may be applied to variety of problems. Two simple natural resource management models are presented to illustrate its potential applications.