For the SDM OBJECTIVE portion (5 page minimum) you will base it on these references only! : References:
1) Dahal, N. K., Harada, K., Adhikari, S., Sapkota, R. P., & Kandel, S. (2021). Impact of wildlife on food crops and approaches to reducing human wildlife conflict in the protected landscapes of eastern Nepal. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601
(Links to an external site.)
2) Hill, C. M. (2017). Crop raiding. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109
(Links to an external site.)
3) Pokharel, M., & Aryal, C. (2020). Human-wildlife conflict and its implication for conservation at Sundarpur, Udayapur, Eastern Nepal. International Journal of Environment, 9(2), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750
For this assignment, you will develop the objective definitions that you will use for the remainder of your structured decision-making case study. So far you have seen the problem definition, stakeholders, and discussed the potential fundamental objective , you will develop a document that details the:
1. Fundamental objectives you will use in your SDM, 2. Enabling objectives associated with these fundamental objectives, and 3. Measurable attributes by which an alternatives ability to meet the enabling
objective will be measured.
Remember that fundamental objectives are identified by repeatedly asking ‘Why’. The goal is to identify the end result of the decision (‘the ends’). For this example, you should have at least three fundamental objectives identified. The goal will be to identify an action or suite of actions that will best achieve all of these ends. You should rely on your research and the class discussion as to what the three objectives for your SDM will be.
The enabling objectives are ‘the means’ by which you will know that a fundamental objective has been achieved. Note that these are not the actions that will be taken (at least not directly). For example, in Runge et al (2011) Runge, M.C., E. Bean, D.R. Smith, and S. Kokos. 2011. Non-native fish control below Glen Canyon Dam — report from a structured decision-making project. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Reporthttps://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
2
2011-1-12., PDF involving fish management in the Grand Canyon, a fundamental objective was identified as “Preserve and enhance recreational values and uses.” Two of the enabling objectives that fell under this fundamental objective where:
1. Maintain and enhance the rainbow trout fishery, and 2. Minimize disturbance of the wilderness experience in Grand Canyon National
Park.
For this assignment, you should focus on having a minimum of five (total) enabling objectives by which to measure achievement of your fundamental objectives.
Lastly, you need to establish the measurable attributes (or performance measures) against which a particular alternative will evaluated. Measurable attributes come in three forms. Natural measures direct measures of the feature, and are quantitative. For example, an objective of ‘maximize population of _____’ can be directly quantified by estimating the population size of the particular species. Natural measures are preferred when they exist (some things have no obvious ‘natural’ way to evaluate them) and are operational (i.e., they can realistically be measured given agency/time/budget constraints). Another form of measure is a proxy measure. Proxy measures are assumed to relate directly to an unmeasurable objective. For example, above in the Grand Canyon SDM, ‘minimize disturbance of the wilderness experience’ does not have a clear natural measure as it depends on definitions of both wilderness experience and disturbance. In this case, the choice to measure this was how many user-days a given alternative would prevent from occurring. This is not a direct measure, but it is assumed that the more user-days on the Colorado River are lost due to a given alternative, the more disturbance must be occurring. This would be a proxy measure. A key issue with proxy measures is the assumption that they are correlated with what we are trying to measure. A last form of measure is a constructed measure. These are useful when there is no clear natural measure, and the use of any proxy measure might be questioned. Constructed measures are very common. The well-known Likert Scale used on surveys is a constructed measure, as are habitat suitability indexes. For example, in the Grand Canyon example, one of the enabling objectives was framed as ‘be respectful of non-human life’. This was evaluated using a 10-point scale in which stakeholders evaluated each action as to how respectful the action was with a 10 being very respectful and a 1 being very not respectful.
For this assignment, prepare a document (5 page minimum) that identifies and justifies three or more fundamental objectives for this class’s assigned case study. In addition, you should identify and defend your choice of five or more enablinghttp://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
3
objectives. Lastly, you will need to develop the performance measures by which these are evaluated. Section 4 of http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012 PDF provides a good example of what you might produce.http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
4
For the SDM ALTERNATIVES AND DECISIONS Portion (5 page minimum) you will base it on these references only! : References:
1) Dahal, N. K., Harada, K., Adhikari, S., Sapkota, R. P., & Kandel, S. (2021). Impact of wildlife on food crops and approaches to reducing human wildlife conflict in the protected landscapes of eastern Nepal. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601
(Links to an external site.)
2) Hill, C. M. (2017). Crop raiding. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109
(Links to an external site.)
3) Pokharel, M., & Aryal, C. (2020). Human-wildlife conflict and its implication for conservation at Sundarpur, Udayapur, Eastern Nepal. International Journal of Environment, 9(2), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750
In this assignment, you will build on the SDM case study that you previously worked on in the SDM Objectives assignment. You will use the objectives identified in that assignment and develop alternative actions that might be used to achieve these fundamental objectives. You will then identify the potential consequences of these actions on each enabling objective, as well as the uncertainty involved in evaluating consequences. For an example of the information being presented in this assignment, see Sections 5 and 6 of Runge et al (2011) PDF http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012 .
For this assignment, your submitted document should detail:
1. Alternatives being considered in your SDM, 2. A discussion of the consequences of each action on each enabling
objective, 3. How consequences might be evaluated in a full SDM, and 4. Sources of uncertainty in evaluating consequences.
When you generate the alternatives, you should consider simulating a ‘bookending’ process. Think about each fundamental objective independently – what is the action that would best achieve this particular objective? Write each of these down. The result will likely be a list of actions that conflict substantially with each other. Evaluate eachhttps://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
5
of these actions to see if they can be broken into individual actions that might be separated. If so, separate these actions. Now brainstorm about any actions that are not already in consideration. Lastly, try to create some ‘hybrid’ actions that combine aspects of the already specified actions. You should now have a fairly extensive and variable list of actions. Also, remember that the status quo of ‘no change in current management’ should be one of your actions. Section 5 of Runge et al PDF (2011)http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012 illustrates this process for the non-native fish issue in the Grand Canyon.
Once you have identified your actions, you need to evaluate the probable consequences of your actions on each of the enabling objectives. The end result should be a consequence table. The first step will be to determine how you will evaluate the consequences. For example, can the probable consequence be predicted from data and modelling? Will the evaluation be made by using expert opinion or scoring by stakeholder groups? See Section 6 of Runge et al PDF (2011) http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012 for possible approaches to evaluating consequences based on the non-native fish issue in the Grand Canyon. You will probably not be able to realistically evaluate the consequences, but I want you to think through and discuss how you would complete this aspect of SDM in a real situation. You will need to estimate consequences, most likely by acting as an expert by ranking how well an alternative will achieve each objective, relative to the other alternatives. For example, if you have three alternatives, you would rank them 1-3 as to which was best, worst, or in-between. You would do this for each objective. The end result will produce your consequence table.
Lastly, based on your discussion of evaluating the consequences, you should have a feel for where uncertainty is in predicting the consequences of each action. Discuss the sources of this uncertainty and how it might influence your decision-making.
The submission for this assignment should be approximately 5 pages in length (not including any information from your Objectives assignment). It should identify a minimum of 5 actions or alternatives, discussion of how their consequences will be evaluated, as well as uncertainty in this process, and produce a consequence table based on your ‘expert’ evaluation.http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
6
For the SDM Decision-Modelling Portion (4-5 page minimum) you will base it on these references only! : References:
1) Dahal, N. K., Harada, K., Adhikari, S., Sapkota, R. P., & Kandel, S. (2021). Impact of wildlife on food crops and approaches to reducing human wildlife conflict in the protected landscapes of eastern Nepal. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601
(Links to an external site.)
2) Hill, C. M. (2017). Crop raiding. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109
(Links to an external site.)
3) Pokharel, M., & Aryal, C. (2020). Human-wildlife conflict and its implication for conservation at Sundarpur, Udayapur, Eastern Nepal. International Journal of Environment, 9(2), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750
4) Sells, S. N., M. S. Mitchell, J. J. Nowak, P. M. Lukacs, N. J. Anderson, J. M. Ramsey, J. A. Gude, and P. R. Krausman. 2015. Modeling risk of pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep. Journal of Wildlife Management 79(2):195-210.
5) Sells, S. N., M. S. Mitchell, V. L. Edwards, J. A. Gude, and N. J. Anderson. 2016. Structured decision making for managing pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep. Journal of Wildlife Management 80(6):957-969.
6) http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012 PDF DOCUMENT
Your decision analysis should build on your consequence table from the previous assignment. In this case, you should describe a means of conducting the decision analysis and perform a basic decision analysis. You will then specify the chosen action for this scenario.
Instructions
You encountered a basic form of decision analysis in the SMART (Single Multi-attribute Rating Technique) table. You might recall that this was drawn from Sells et al (2016) work on managing pneumonia epizootics in bighorn sheep. This technique illustrates the use of a basic linear value model in which the overall score or ranking for anhttps://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.1926601https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0109https://doi.org/10.3126/ije.v9i2.32750http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
7
alternative is the composite of the ranking (usually normalized from 0-1 so all objectives are ranked on the same scale for all actions) of the alternative’s performance on each enabling objective (your consequence table from the alternatives assignment) weighted by the importance of the objective. These weights are commonly assigned by swing-weighting, but you will generate them according to your own expert opinion (as was the case in Sells et al 2016).
For example, for the following simple 3 objective / 3 action case you have the following consequence table:
Objectives
#1 #2 #3
Actions #1
3 3 2
#2 1 2 1
#3 2 1 3
In this example, the numbers in the cells are the ranking of each alternative, on a scale of 1 (worst) to 3 (best), in achieving each objective. Because all objectives are measured on an equal ranking scale (1-3) we do not need to normalize the scales. If you consider all objectives equal in importance, they all are weighted 0.33 (1/3). The value model for action #3 is then 0.33(2)+0.33(1)+0.33(3)=2.
Value models and consequence tables are used to evaluate trade-offs inherent in deciding between alternatives. It is often useful to color code the best and worst performing alternatives for each action. This helps identify patterns of good and poor performance of a given action on all objectives. In addition, we can evaluate objectives. If a given alternative always performs better than another – on all objectives – then it dominates the poorer alternative. The poorer alternative is a ‘Dominated
8
alternative’ and can be removed from the decision analysis. In addition, you may find that some objectives do not help distinguish between alternatives, i.e., you would evaluate the alternatives the same regardless of whether the objective was included or not.
Once you have evaluated trade-offs with your decision analysis, you should conclude this assignment by explaining the trade-offs of each action and making a decision for this case study. Sections 7 and 8 of Runge et al (2011) PDF http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
provide an example of decision analysis involving the non-native fish SDMhttp://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012
WE HAVE DONE THIS QUESTION BEFORE, WE CAN ALSO DO IT FOR YOU
GET SOLUTION FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT, Get Impressive Scores in Your Class
CLICK HERE TO MAKE YOUR ORDER on Impact of wildlife on food crops and approaches to reducing human wildlife conflict in the protected landscapes of eastern Nepal. Human Dimensions of Wildlife
TO BE RE-WRITTEN FROM THE SCRATCH
