Posts tagged ‘Prairie Pothole Region; waterfowl; Markov decision process; optimal management; conservation; Dakota; climate change; National Wildlife Refuge’

Apr 8

Optimizing wetland habitats for waterfowl in a changing climate

Not all ducks are the same. Some like shallow water for dabbling, others like the deep stuff for diving, and some like something in-between. So how do you manage a wetland wildlife refuge to maintain the best mix of all three options? And what happens if the climate changes the amount of water that you have to work with? Those are the questions that we answered in our latest paper that has just come out in Climatic Change: Optimal water depth management on river-fed National Wildlife Refuges in a changing climate. Read more

About

The Conservation Decisions team (CSIRO Land and Water) is a multi-disciplinary group with expertise in ecological modelling, systematic conservation planning, ecosystem services, applied mathematics, artificial intelligence, and decision theory. We’re pioneering techniques in optimal resource allocation, cost-effectiveness analysis, expert elicitation, value of information, multi-objective optimisation and adaptive management. We apply our expertise to diverse problems to inform the recovery of endangered species, management of pests, invasive species and diseases, design of conservation reserves, medical decision making, freshwater resource management and the prioritization of threat management to conserve biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. We solve pressing global decision problems. We do this by connecting big and small data with decision science to determine what actions to take, when and where to get the best outcomes for our bucks, while taking into account the many other competing needs of society.