Abstract
Species’ movements affect their response to environmental change but movement knowledge is often highly uncertain. We now have well‐established methods to integrate movement knowledge into conservation practice but still lack a framework to deal with uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions. We provide a framework that distinguishes two dimensions of species’ movement that are heavily influenced by uncertainty: knowledge about movement and relevance of movement to environmental decisions. Management decisions can be informed by their position in this knowledge‐relevance space. We then outline a framework to support decisions around (1) increasing understanding of the relevance of movement knowledge, (2) increasing robustness of decisions to uncertainties and (3) improving knowledge on species’ movement. Our decision‐support framework provides guidance for managing movement‐related uncertainty in systematic conservation planning, agri‐environment schemes, habitat restoration and international biodiversity policy. It caters to different resource levels (time and funding) so that species’ movement knowledge can be more effectively integrated into environmental decisions.
Highlights
Movement of organisms profoundly influences population and community dynamics (Nathan et al, 2008) and plays a critical role in how species and ecosystems respond to land-use and climate change (Schloss, Nuñez, & Lawler, 2012)
Our decision-support framework (Figure 2) can assist environmental management decisions depending on movement knowledge and its relevance for decision-making
Rather than providing strict prescriptions, our framework provides a set of flexible options for ascertaining the relevance of movement knowledge and managing uncertainty when making environmental decisions
Summary
Movement of organisms profoundly influences population and community dynamics (Nathan et al, 2008) and plays a critical role in how species and ecosystems respond to land-use and climate change (Schloss, Nuñez, & Lawler, 2012). We have clear guidelines on linking movement attributes to management actions (Allen & Singh, 2016; McGowan et al, 2017), linking movement types (home range movement, dispersal, nomadic movement, and migration) to relevant policy domains (Barton et al, 2015) and using value of movement information in structured decision-making (McGowan & Possingham, 2016). Despite these developments, environmental decisions are still being made with limited movement knowledge because information on target organisms is unavailable, inaccessible or uncertain. We present a framework to manage uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions and illustrate the framework using a real-world case study
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