Decision Making in Natural Resource Management is intended for use by natural resource managers and scientists, and students in the fields of natural resource management, ecology, and conservation biology, who are confronted with complex and difficult decision making problems. The book takes readers through the process of developing a structured approach to decision making, by firstly deconstructing decisions into component parts, which are each fully analyzed and then reassembled to form a working decision model. Decision Making in Natural Resource Management integrates common-sense ideas about problem definitions, such as the need for decisions to be driven by explicit objectives, with sophisticated approaches for modeling decision influence and incorporating feedback from monitoring programs into decision making via adaptive management. Numerous worked examples are provided for illustration, along with detailed case studies illustrating the authors' experience in applying structured approaches. There is also a series of detailed technical appendices. An accompanying website provides computer code and data used in the worked examples. Additional resources for Decision Making in Natural Resource Management can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/conroy/naturalresourcemanagement .
List of boxes xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xiv
Guide to using this book xv
Companion website xvii
PART I. INTRODUCTION TO DECISION MAKING
1 1 Introduction: Why a Structured Approach in Natural Resources? 3
2 Elements of Structured Decision Making 13
3 Identifying and Quantifying Objectives in Natural Resource Management 24
4 Working with Stakeholders in Natural Resource Management 57
PART II. TOOLS FOR DECISION MAKING AND ANALYSIS 77
5 Statistics and Decision Making 79
6 Modeling the Infl uence of Decisions 147
7 Identifying and Reducing Uncertainty in Decision Making 192
8 Methods for Obtaining Optimal Decisions 232
PART III. APPLICATIONS 261
9 Case Studies 263
10 Summary, Lessons Learned, and Recommendations 294
PART IV. APPENDICES 307
Appendix A Probability and Distributional Relationships 309
Appendix B Common Statistical Distributions 317
Appendix C Methods for Statistical Estimation 339
Appendix D Parsimony, Prediction, and Multi-Model Inference 373
Appendix E Mathematical Approaches to Optimization 384
Appendix F Guide to Software 430
Appendix G Electronic Companion to Book 432
Glossary 433
Index 449
Michael J. Conroy is a Senior Research Scientist in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. He has overthirty years experience in applications of quantitative approaches to solving problems in natural resource management and is the author ofthree previous books. He teaches and runs workshops in modeling, statistical estimation, and structured decision making for undergraduate andgraduate studentsand professionals both in the US and internationally.
James T. Peterson is the Assistant Unit Leader and Associate Professor for the USGS Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Oregon State University. He has been developing and teaching courses in applied quantitative decision making to undergraduate andgraduate students and professionals in natural resource and related disciplines for more than a decade.