Concept for science based management

1. Concept for science based management Peter Borgen Sørensen, Bioscience, Faculty of Natural Science, Aarhus University Peter Borgen Sørensen

2. What is science-based management? • Testing hypotheses • What is important to consider? • Quantifying relations • What shall we do?

3. The three critical steps No scientific method exists for formulating the most relevant questions What are the questions ? No scientific method exists for finding the most relevant hypothesis to test Which hypothesis should be tested? No scientific method exists to select the most relevant models for quantification How to quantify important relations?

4. What are the questions • Case from:

5. Society to ecosystem Ecosystem to society Question decomposition Inside ecosystem How can we ensure adequate prioritization, sufficient action and implementation? What is the economic value of pollination services? 81 What essential modifications in land use management and practices are needed to halt and reverse plant and pollinator declines? To what extent are local plant communities dependent upon pollinators? 69 80 What is the relative importance of the various drivers of pollinator decline? 62 42 How do we quantify drivers of decline experimentally and at the landscape scale? 1 44 59 50 65 What factors influence the composition of pollinator species at the community level? 3 Why are some plant species capable of autonomous pollination – and what are the consequences on viability? Which pollinator taxa and functional groups are in decline? What is the relative contribution of abiotic versus biotic factors in shaping the evolution of flowers? What is the relationship between pollinator diversity and plant diversity?

6. What hypothesis shall be tested ? Question decomposition: Only a sub set of sub questions may be covered! The set of hypotheses needs to cover all sub questions !

7. What hypothesis shall be tested ? Flower density per plant is higher in hedge rows along organic fields than along conventional farmed fields ! Sub question ? “How is flowering affected by pesticides?” In lab conditions: Fluroxypyr inhibits the flowering of red clover ! Many other hypotheses !!! Collecting evidences !

8. The pool of knowledge Which evidence to pick ?

9. How to quantify relations • “No decision” is not possible: • Poor quantification is better than no quantification • Quantification can take place in many ways: • Relative/absolute assessment • Indicators (pressure/state) • Benchmarking • Modeling (scenarios) • But the uncertainty always needs to be assessed in the same way ! Combinations

10. Dealing with uncertainty • Structural uncertainty • How valid is the assumption in the quantification as analogy to the “real system” • Theoretical validity of understanding of the cause and effect chains • The completeness of the relations included in the quantification to cover all important aspects • Data uncertainty • How certain is the empirical information as input to the quantification Difficult to deal with, depends on scientific traditions (pedigree) and often limited by personal scientific carrier planning and, thus, “marketing” of approach and loosing science “Easy” to deal with, many mathematical methods

11. We need to challenge traditions and cultures in science and management