School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic. 3010, Australia.
Ecol Lett. 2010 Oct;13(10):1280-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01522.x. Epub 2010 Aug 17.
Environmental managers must decide how to invest available resources. Researchers have previously determined how to allocate conservation resources among regions, design nature reserves, allocate funding to species conservation programs, design biodiversity surveys and monitoring programs, manage species and invest in greenhouse gas mitigation schemes. However, these issues have not been addressed with a unified theory. Furthermore, uncertainty is prevalent in environmental management, and needs to be considered to manage risks. We present a theory for optimal environmental management, synthesizing previous approaches to the topic and incorporating uncertainty. We show that the theory solves a diverse range of important problems of resource allocation, including distributing conservation resources among the world's biodiversity hotspots; surveillance to detect the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus in Thailand; and choosing survey methods for the insect order Hemiptera. Environmental management decisions are similar to decisions about financial investments, with trade-offs between risk and reward.
环境管理者必须决定如何投资现有资源。研究人员先前已经确定了如何在区域之间分配保护资源，设计自然保护区，为物种保护计划分配资金，设计生物多样性调查和监测计划，管理物种和投资于温室气体减排计划。然而，这些问题尚未通过统一的理论来解决。此外，环境管理中普遍存在不确定性，需要加以考虑以管理风险。我们提出了一种最优环境管理理论，综合了以前的研究方法，并纳入了不确定性。我们表明，该理论解决了资源分配的一系列重要问题，包括在世界生物多样性热点地区分配保护资源；在泰国监测高致病性禽流感 H5N1 病毒；以及选择昆虫目半翅目调查方法。环境管理决策类似于金融投资决策，风险与回报之间存在权衡。
