Jun 29
Warmer temperatures mean more ice-free areas and increasing terrestrial habitat in Antarctica, but that’s not necessarily good news for Antarctic natives.
Source: The changing life of Antarctica’s ice-free ‘islands’ – ECOS
Urgent decision making can’t wait for big data!
In this week Nature’s correspondence, Iadine and Sam raise that the shift of private and public funding towards big data problems could impact our ability to solve some of our most urgent decision problems – for which we have no or very little amount of data available: biodiversity, health and biosecurity issues to cite a few. Sam and Iadine also provide some solutions and call for big ideas. It’s free for all to read.
Chades, I. & Nicol, S. (2016) Information: Small data call for big ideas. Nature, 539, 31-31.
Iadine and Sam wrote a bigger piece on the topic. We welcome your comments: Chades, I. & Nicol, S. (2016, November 2). Small data, big ideas. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.164443
I was fortunate to be a co-author on the paper recently published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment led by Viv and Ayesha Tulloch, “Why do we map threats? Linking threat mapping with actions to make better conservation decisions.” (see media release PDF).
This is a great thinking piece about why we should probably not use threat maps “as is” to inform conservation decisions and how threat maps should be included as part of the decision process. I would recommend reading this paper if you are new to structured decision making and would like an easy read. The authors have done a fantastic job at explaining the risk of not following a transparent decision making process.
As a side note, our priority threat management work in the Pilbara was highlighted as a good example of making transparent decisions (No doubts they are other good examples in the literature!). It’s always a privilege to be acknowledged by our peers, it’s even better when these are esteemed close collaborators. Thanks for your support!
The paper:
Vivitskaia JD Tulloch, Ayesha IT Tulloch, Piero Visconti, Benjamin S Halpern, James EM Watson, Megan C Evans, Nancy A Auerbach, Megan Barnes, Maria Beger, Iadine Chadès, Sylvaine Giakoumi, Eve McDonald-Madden, Nicholas J Murray, Jeremy Ringma, and Hugh P Possingham 2015. Why do we map threats? Linking threat mapping with actions to make better conservation decisions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 13: 91–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/140022
We are pleased to announce the release of our report on ‘Prioritising threat management for Pilbara species of conservation significance’ (PDF, 10Mo)(The Conversation). This was a very rewarding collaborative project with scientists from CSIRO, QUT, UQ, and WA Dept Parks and Wildlife, with input from 49 experts across land management, policy, industrial, agricultural, indigenous and academic sectors, and was funded by Atlas Iron through the Dept of Environment Pilbara Taskforce.
The work comes at an important time in the Pilbara’s history and we hopeful that it will have a positive impact.
Jennifer Firn was on Radio National speaking (Bush Telegraph) about our priority threat management work targeting weeds in the Lake Eyre Basin. You can check our previous blog post on the subject and the report (PDF). Well done Jennifer!
The Conservation Decisions Team 