Decision making in natural resource management: a structured, adaptive approach / Michael J. Conroy, James T. Peterson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : why a structured approach? -- Elements of structured decision making -- Defining and achieving objectives in natural resource management -- Working with stakeholders in natural resource management -- Tools for decision making and analysis -- Statistics and decision making -- Modeling the influence of decisions -- Uncertainty in decision making -- Methods for obtaining optimal decisions -- Applications -- Case studies -- Summary and recommendations.

This book 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. The book 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 this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/conroy/naturalresourcemanagement

eng.