Decision Making in Natural Resource Management: A Structured, Adaptive Approach

List of boxes xi Preface xiii Acknowledgements xiv Guide to using this book xv Companion website xvii PART I. INTRODUCTION TO DECISION MAKING 1 1 Introduction: Why a Structured Approach in Natural Resources? 3 2 Elements of Structured Decision Making 13 3 Identifying and Quantifying Objectives in Natural Resource Management 24 4 Working with Stakeholders in Natural Resource Management 57 PART II. TOOLS FOR DECISION MAKING AND ANALYSIS 77 5 Statistics and Decision Making 79 6 Modeling the Infl uence of Decisions 147 7 Identifying and Reducing Uncertainty in Decision Making 192 8 Methods for Obtaining Optimal Decisions 232 PART III. APPLICATIONS 261 9 Case Studies 263 10 Summary, Lessons Learned, and Recommendations 294 PART IV. APPENDICES 307 Appendix A Probability and Distributional Relationships 309 Appendix B Common Statistical Distributions 317 Appendix C Methods for Statistical Estimation 339 Appendix D Parsimony, Prediction, and Multi-Model Inference 373 Appendix E Mathematical Approaches to Optimization 384 Appendix F Guide to Software 430 Appendix G Electronic Companion to Book 432 Glossary 433 Index 449