vi
Preface
protocols to support conservation management. Chapter 17 outlines the strategies
that might be used to design a conservation reserve network.
This book is intended for graduate students, working conservation biologists,
and others interested in broadening their knowledge of the opportunities available
for using numerical and mathematical tools to solve conservation problems. The
methods described here are oriented to solving problems for the management and
conservation of single species, rather than multiple-species systems or ecosystems. Some are more or less well established (e.g., matrix populations models,
structured stochastic simulation models, and regression-based habitat models). In
these cases, the authors outline the strengths and limitations of the methods,
bringing to the task a broad range of experience and suggestions for applications
and improvement. Other methods are perhaps not as widespread. In these, the
authors illustrate the utility and potential applications with descriptions of details
and example applications. The broadest of these chapters describes methods for
designing conservation reserves that use the presence of individual species as the
currency for decision making.
The methods cover a broad range from inferences based on simple statistical
models, through individual-based dynamic models, to laboratory-based procedures for evaluating genetic considerations. However, the list of methods is not
comprehensive. The book does not cover, for instance, the incidence function
approach to modeling metapopulation dynamics, management for multiple species, landscape process models, predator prey or host-parasitoid dynamics, physiological models, geographical information systems applications, gap analysis,
formal decision theory, or other quantitative methods that have useful applications
in conservation biology. Many of these deserve (and have) entire books devoted to
them.
We hope this book is of some use in bringing together a relatively broad set of
possibilities for the management of individual species, from which a conservation
biologist might select the right tool to solve a problem.
We wish to thank Claire Drill for proofreading the document and making the
index, Heather Anderson for creating and editing the figures, Anne Findlay for
additional proofreading, and Jane Elith for her editorial work. We are grateful to
Robin Smith from Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., for seeing this book through to
publication.
Scott Ferson
Mark Burgman
Setauket, New York, USA
Victoria, Australia
Preface
protocols to support conservation management. Chapter 17 outlines the strategies
that might be used to design a conservation reserve network.
This book is intended for graduate students, working conservation biologists,
and others interested in broadening their knowledge of the opportunities available
for using numerical and mathematical tools to solve conservation problems. The
methods described here are oriented to solving problems for the management and
conservation of single species, rather than multiple-species systems or ecosystems. Some are more or less well established (e.g., matrix populations models,
structured stochastic simulation models, and regression-based habitat models). In
these cases, the authors outline the strengths and limitations of the methods,
bringing to the task a broad range of experience and suggestions for applications
and improvement. Other methods are perhaps not as widespread. In these, the
authors illustrate the utility and potential applications with descriptions of details
and example applications. The broadest of these chapters describes methods for
designing conservation reserves that use the presence of individual species as the
currency for decision making.
The methods cover a broad range from inferences based on simple statistical
models, through individual-based dynamic models, to laboratory-based procedures for evaluating genetic considerations. However, the list of methods is not
comprehensive. The book does not cover, for instance, the incidence function
approach to modeling metapopulation dynamics, management for multiple species, landscape process models, predator prey or host-parasitoid dynamics, physiological models, geographical information systems applications, gap analysis,
formal decision theory, or other quantitative methods that have useful applications
in conservation biology. Many of these deserve (and have) entire books devoted to
them.
We hope this book is of some use in bringing together a relatively broad set of
possibilities for the management of individual species, from which a conservation
biologist might select the right tool to solve a problem.
We wish to thank Claire Drill for proofreading the document and making the
index, Heather Anderson for creating and editing the figures, Anne Findlay for
additional proofreading, and Jane Elith for her editorial work. We are grateful to
Robin Smith from Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., for seeing this book through to
publication.
Scott Ferson
Mark Burgman
Setauket, New York, USA
Victoria, Australia