Integrating research, monitoring and management into an adaptive management framework to achieve effective conservation outcomes

Walsh, Jessica C.; Wilson, Kerrie A.; Benshemesh, Joe; Possingham, Hugh P.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-1795.2012.00579.x

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Despite the criticism raised against evidence‐based practice the benefits are clear (Gilbert et al. , Howick , Walsh et al , ). Rating the strength of evidence matters as it clarifies the reliability of research results and, thus, the strength of conclusions, decisions, or recommendations drawn from that research (Lohr ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An evidence assessment tool for ecosystem services and conservation studies

Mupepele

Walsh

Sutherland

et al. 2016

Ecological Applications

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Reliability of scientific findings is important, especially if they directly impact decision making, such as in environmental management. In the 1990s, assessments of reliability in the medical field resulted in the development of evidence-based practice. Ten years later, evidence-based practice was translated into conservation, but so far no guidelines exist on how to assess the evidence of individual studies. Assessing the evidence of individual studies is essential to appropriately identify and synthesize the confidence in research findings. We develop a tool to assess the strength of evidence of ecosystem services and conservation studies. This tool consists of (1) a hierarchy of evidence, based on the experimental design of studies and (2) a critical-appraisal checklist that identifies the quality of research implementation. The application is illustrated with 13 examples and we suggest further steps to move towards more evidence-based environmental management.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An evidence assessment tool for ecosystem services and conservation studies

Mupepele

Walsh

Sutherland

et al. 2016

Ecological Applications

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“…Consistent results like those obtained for the PPM in Aspromonte mean that the method is able to provide a robust indication to managers. Nevertheless, management programmes are often vulnerable to naively using mathematical and simulation models inappropriately (Walsh et al, 2012;Peck and Bouyer, 2012). Testing the metapopulation hypothesis and verifying the goodness of fit of the selected model (the IFM) are fundamental steps of the decision process we propose here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metapopulation modelling and area-wide pest management strategies evaluation. An application to the Pine processionary moth

Gilioli

Bodini

Baumgärtner³

2013

Ecological Modelling

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a b s t r a c tForecasting pest population abundance is a time and resource consuming task, and in particular for areawide pest management is complicated by demographic and environmental stochasticity. These factors make difficult the development of quantitative tools to design and evaluate different management strategies performances by taking into account various form of variability and uncertainty. Pest management could benefit from methods supporting decision making based on models ease of development under scarce data and high uncertainty. Host plants for many agricultural and forest pests are often patchily distributed, therefore population dynamics can be suitably described in terms of metapopulations. Despite the fact that metapopulation models were originally proposed for pests, they remain a widely used tool in conservation biology but receive little attention in large scale pest management.The aim of this paper is to propose a framework allowing the ranking of the efficacy of area-wide pest control strategies, taking into account population spatial distribution in discrete patches. The Kullback-Leibler divergence, well known in Information Theory, Probability and Statistics, is used to measure how far the state of the metapopulation as predicted by a spatially explicit metapopulation model is from a suitable reference state.The method is applied to compare the efficacy of different types of predefined control strategies of the Pine processionary moth (Traumatocampa pityocampa (Den. and Schiff)). The analysis of a dataset on metapopulation dynamics of this moth from a fragmented Mediterranean pine forest allows to derive some rules of thumb for the rational allocation of control effort, in terms of spatial and temporal distribution of the interventions.

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“…Culling animals to reduce numbers in the long term may prove ineffective (Walsh et al. ), especially if the level of killing is insufficient to manage recruitment when a species is mobile or prolific or if other factors (habitat, food availability) are not addressed (e.g., Pennycuik et al. ).…”

Section: Clear and Achievable Outcome‐based Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%