Institute of BioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

Concept for science based management

Peter Borgen Sørensen

Peter Borgen Sørensen, Bioscience, Faculty of Natural Science, Aarhus University

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

What is science-based management?

Testing hypotheses• What is important to consider?

Quantifying relations• What shall we do?

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

The three critical steps

What are the questions ?

Which hypothesis should be tested?

How to quantify important relations?

No scientific method exists forformulating the most relevantquestions

No scientific method exists for finding the most relevant hypothesis to test

No scientific method exists to select the most relevant models for quantification

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

What are the questions› Case from:

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

Question decomposition

81

69

How can we ensure adequate prioritization, sufficient action and implementation?What is the economic value of

pollination services?

42

To what extent are local plant communities dependent upon pollinators?

1

Why are some plant species capable of autonomous pollination – and what are the consequences on viability?

3

What is the relative contribution of abiotic versus biotic factors in shaping the evolution of flowers?

80

What essential modifications in land use management and practices are needed to halt and reverse plant and pollinator declines?

62

65505944

What is the relative importance of the various drivers of pollinator decline?

How do we quantify drivers of decline experimentally and at the landscape scale?

What factors influence the composition of pollinator species at the community level?Which pollinator taxa and functional groups are in decline?

What is the relationship between pollinator diversity and plant diversity?

Society to ecosystem

Ecosystem to society

Inside ecosystem

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

What hypothesis shall be tested ?Question decomposition:

The set of hypotheses needs to cover all sub questions !

Only a sub set of sub questions may be covered!

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

What hypothesis shall be tested ?

Sub question ?“How is flowering affected by pesticides?”

Flower density per plant is higher inhedge rows along organic fields than alongconventional farmed fields !

In lab conditions: Fluroxypyr inhibits the flowering of red clover !

Many other hypotheses !!!

Collecting evidences !

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

The pool of knowledge

Which evidence to pick ?

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

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

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITY

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

Institute of bioscienceAARHUS UNIVERSITYWe need to challenge traditions and

cultures in science and management