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Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management

As many ecosystems worldwide are in peril, efforts to manage them sustainably require scientific advice. While numerous researchers around the world use a great variety of models to understand ecological dynamics and their responses to disturbances, only a small fraction of these models are ever use...

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Autores principales: DeAngelis, Donald L., Franco, Daniel, Hastings, Alan, Hilker, Frank M., Lenhart, Suzanne, Lutscher, Frithjof, Petrovskaya, Natalia, Petrovskii, Sergei, Tyson, Rebecca C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8418459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34482488
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11538-021-00927-y
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author DeAngelis, Donald L.
Franco, Daniel
Hastings, Alan
Hilker, Frank M.
Lenhart, Suzanne
Lutscher, Frithjof
Petrovskaya, Natalia
Petrovskii, Sergei
Tyson, Rebecca C.
author_facet DeAngelis, Donald L.
Franco, Daniel
Hastings, Alan
Hilker, Frank M.
Lenhart, Suzanne
Lutscher, Frithjof
Petrovskaya, Natalia
Petrovskii, Sergei
Tyson, Rebecca C.
author_sort DeAngelis, Donald L.
collection PubMed
description As many ecosystems worldwide are in peril, efforts to manage them sustainably require scientific advice. While numerous researchers around the world use a great variety of models to understand ecological dynamics and their responses to disturbances, only a small fraction of these models are ever used to inform ecosystem management. There seems to be a perception that ecological models are not useful for management, even though mathematical models are indispensable in many other fields. We were curious about this mismatch, its roots, and potential ways to overcome it. We searched the literature on recommendations and best practices for how to make ecological models useful to the management of ecosystems and we searched for ‘success stories’ from the past. We selected and examined several cases where models were instrumental in ecosystem management. We documented their success and asked whether and to what extent they followed recommended best practices. We found that there is not a unique way to conduct a research project that is useful in management decisions. While research is more likely to have impact when conducted with many stakeholders involved and specific to a situation for which data are available, there are great examples of small groups or individuals conducting highly influential research even in the absence of detailed data. We put the question of modelling for ecosystem management into a socio-economic and national context and give our perspectives on how the discipline could move forward.
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spelling pubmed-84184592021-09-07 Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management DeAngelis, Donald L. Franco, Daniel Hastings, Alan Hilker, Frank M. Lenhart, Suzanne Lutscher, Frithjof Petrovskaya, Natalia Petrovskii, Sergei Tyson, Rebecca C. Bull Math Biol Perspectives As many ecosystems worldwide are in peril, efforts to manage them sustainably require scientific advice. While numerous researchers around the world use a great variety of models to understand ecological dynamics and their responses to disturbances, only a small fraction of these models are ever used to inform ecosystem management. There seems to be a perception that ecological models are not useful for management, even though mathematical models are indispensable in many other fields. We were curious about this mismatch, its roots, and potential ways to overcome it. We searched the literature on recommendations and best practices for how to make ecological models useful to the management of ecosystems and we searched for ‘success stories’ from the past. We selected and examined several cases where models were instrumental in ecosystem management. We documented their success and asked whether and to what extent they followed recommended best practices. We found that there is not a unique way to conduct a research project that is useful in management decisions. While research is more likely to have impact when conducted with many stakeholders involved and specific to a situation for which data are available, there are great examples of small groups or individuals conducting highly influential research even in the absence of detailed data. We put the question of modelling for ecosystem management into a socio-economic and national context and give our perspectives on how the discipline could move forward. Springer US 2021-09-04 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8418459/ /pubmed/34482488 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11538-021-00927-y Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Society for Mathematical Biology 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Perspectives
DeAngelis, Donald L.
Franco, Daniel
Hastings, Alan
Hilker, Frank M.
Lenhart, Suzanne
Lutscher, Frithjof
Petrovskaya, Natalia
Petrovskii, Sergei
Tyson, Rebecca C.
Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title_full Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title_fullStr Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title_full_unstemmed Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title_short Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management
title_sort towards building a sustainable future: positioning ecological modelling for impact in ecosystems management
topic Perspectives
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8418459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34482488
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11538-021-00927-y
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