Bode Michael, Sanchirico James N, Armsworth Paul R
School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2016 Mar 16;283(1826):20152828. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2828.
When managing heterogeneous socioecological systems, decision-makers must choose a spatial resolution at which to define management policies. Complex spatial policies allow managers to better reflect underlying ecological and economic heterogeneity, but incur higher compliance and enforcement costs. To choose the most appropriate management resolution, we need to characterize the relationship between management resolution and performance. We parameterize a model of the commercial coral trout fishery in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, which is currently managed by a single, spatially homogeneous management policy. We use this model to estimate how the spatial resolution of management policies affect the amount of revenue generated, and assess whether a more spatially complex policy can be justified. Our results suggest that economic variation is likely to be a more important source of heterogeneity than ecological differences, and that the majority of this variation can be captured by a relatively simple spatial management policy. Moreover, while an increase in policy resolution can improve performance, the location of policy changes also needs to align with ecological and socioeconomic variation. Interestingly, the highly complex process of larval dispersal, which plays a critical ecological role in coral reef ecosystem dynamics, may not demand equally complex management policies.
在管理异质社会生态系统时，决策者必须选择一个空间分辨率来定义管理政策。复杂的空间政策使管理者能够更好地反映潜在的生态和经济异质性，但会带来更高的合规和执行成本。为了选择最合适的管理分辨率，我们需要刻画管理分辨率与绩效之间的关系。我们对澳大利亚大堡礁商业珊瑚鳟渔业的一个模型进行参数化，该渔业目前由单一的、空间同质化的管理政策进行管理。我们使用这个模型来估计管理政策的空间分辨率如何影响产生的收入量，并评估是否可以证明采用更具空间复杂性的政策是合理的。我们的结果表明，经济差异可能是比生态差异更重要的异质性来源，并且这种差异的大部分可以通过相对简单的空间管理政策来捕捉。此外，虽然政策分辨率的提高可以改善绩效，但政策变化的位置也需要与生态和社会经济差异相匹配。有趣的是，在珊瑚礁生态系统动态中发挥关键生态作用的高度复杂的幼体扩散过程，可能并不需要同样复杂的管理政策。
