Eliciting and integrating expert knowledge for wildlife habitat modelling

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Abstract

Expert knowledge regarding the distribution of sambar deer (Cervis unicolor) in Lake Eildon National Park (LENP), Victoria was used to build a wildlife habitat model to assist with park management. The paper presents two methods for eliciting expert knowledge. These were a quantitative geographical information system (GIS)-based approach using a customised graphical user interface, and a qualitative approach that uses semi-structured interviews. The GIS approach is valuable as it is objective, repeatable and provides a spatial context for knowledge elicitation. Experts were asked to provide estimates of sambar sightings and predicted densities with the assistance of contextual environmental data including terrain, roads, hydrology and rainfall surfaces. The quantitative knowledge elicitation process did not identify any sambar environmental niches in the Park, and the experts disagreed about the location of likely habitat. On the other hand, the qualitative assessment showed very strong expert agreement and a combination of this information and published literature was used to build a habitat map. The results of the analysis indicate that sambar deer occur throughout the entire Park. It is envisaged that the results can be used as baseline information for population modelling and natural resource management in the Park. Elicitation of knowledge is complicated by a number of factors including computer proficiency and study site familiarity. The relatively large cohort used in this study and the inherent inconsistencies that were encountered indicate that wildlife managers should interpret results carefully from habitat models that use only a relatively small cohort of experts.

Introduction

Wildlife habitat managers require detailed information pertaining to the distribution and abundance of species to help understand their ecology. Such information also may be used to develop spatially-explicit wildlife habitat models. These models can be used to determine habitat preservation priorities, identify potential risks to the species, understand the implications of different land management practices, or identify sites for the reintroduction of an endangered species (Stoms et al., 1992). Wildlife habitat models are commonly developed with the assistance of a geographical information system (GIS). This allows managers to examine spatially the interactions and distributions of a species and its environment.

Habitat may be characterised by a description of the environmental features that are important in determining the distribution and abundance of a species (Burgman and Lindenmayer, 1998). Burgman and Lindenmayer (1998) add that such descriptions are often based on field experience and non-quantifiable human perceptions. One widely used method for these descriptions is habitat suitability index (HSI) modelling. HSIs are based on the habitat evaluation procedure first developed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in the early 1980s (USFWS, 1980). The HSI for a given species and area of land represents a conceptual model that relates each measurable variable of the environment to the suitability of a site for the species (USFWS, 1996, Burgman et al., 2001). The indices are scaled from 0 (for unsuitable habitat) to 1 (for optimum conditions). Each environmental variable is represented by a single suitability index (SI), and when combined, these constitute a HSI that expresses the suitability of particular habitat for the species.

The SIs are generally linked either by multiplicative or additive functions. When the value of land as habitat depends on the presence of all variables (i.e. they do not compensate for one another), the geometric mean of their values may represent site suitability best. If the environmental variables are compensatory (one component may substitute for another), an arithmetic mean may be more appropriate (Burgman et al., 2001). Furthermore, factors may be assigned weights reflecting the relative importance of different components of the habitat (Burgman and Lindenmayer, 1998). The construction of HSIs is essentially a process for making a descriptive synthesis of information of the biology and life history of a species. This is based on a combination of the available data together with expert opinion on the species’ biology (Burgman and Lindenmayer, 1998).

Expert knowledge is an important resource that may improve the reliability of modelling (Dzeroski et al., 1997, Venterink and Wassen, 1997, Hackett and Vamnclay, 1998, Horst et al., 1998, Moltgen et al., 1999). It is particularly valuable where no systematic field investigations have been conducted. However, there remains uncertainty regarding its reliability (Fraser and Hodgson, 1995, Horst et al., 1998, Maddock and Samways, 2000). Radeloff et al. (1999) comment that the incorporation of location-specific knowledge of field biologists is a key step to improving GIS wildlife models, and thus improving wildlife management. A GIS may be used to achieve this and help obtain spatially-explicit habitat information from experts (Alonso and Norman, 1998, Haslett et al., 1990). This can often be achieved in real-time, which minimises the amount of data entry that is required with a large cohort of experts. In addition, the GIS provides experts with a spatial context when providing data through the inclusion of other data layers such as digital elevation models, road networks or vegetation distributions. The GIS effectively provides a virtual environment for experts that are already very familiar with what exists in the realm of the study area. The advantages of using interactive computer-based techniques such as GIS for acquiring, archiving and analysing expert knowledge are discussed in detail in Wightmann (1995) and Zhu (1999).

Sambar deer (Cervis unicolor), commonly referred to as sambar, were introduced to Australia in the mid 19th century. The distribution of the species in the state of Victoria is poorly understood. Boyle (1998) suggested that at least 40,000 individuals occur in Victoria, and that the range of sambar is still expanding despite an increase in hunting pressure. The impacts of sambar on indigenous flora and fauna are largely unknown, and information pertaining to the basic biological, ecological and behavioural aspects of sambar in Australia is lacking. Furthermore, management decisions pertaining to sambar are complicated by several factors including the uncertainty about the current abundance of the species, and to the difficulty of balancing hunting objectives with the broader community needs such as plant and animal conservation. Because park managers need to develop deer management policies, there remains an urgent need to collect ecological information on this species.

This paper introduces a methodology that utilises GIS and qualitative interviews to elicit information on the distribution and abundance of sambar from a group of experts with detailed knowledge of the study site. The aim is to use this information to build an accurate wildlife habitat model to assist with the management of the species. First, the paper presents a methodology for structured elicitation of knowledge that combines both quantitative (GIS) and qualitative interview techniques. The paper then examines the agreement between experts regarding the distribution and abundance of the species. This information is synthesised and combined with other data layers in the GIS to develop the habitat model. The research was conducted under conditions that are common to many management scenarios where there is little documented information on the biology of the species or its habitat.

Section snippets

Study site and species management

Lake Eildon National Park (LENP) is situated in the northern foothills of Victoria’s Central Highlands, 90 km northeast of Melbourne (Fig. 1). The Park has a total area of 27,750 ha, consisting of open country, woodland and rugged forested ridges (Parks Victoria, 1997) with an extensive creek system running through the Park. The Park supports a range of rare and endangered fauna, and is managed primarily for ecosystem conservation and appropriate recreation (Parks Victoria, 1997). LENP is valued

Spatial database development

Because spatial context is critical for building habitat models, GIS data layers for LENP were obtained or developed. Multi-scale data layers were used for the study including 1:100,000 scale hydrology (rivers, creeks and lake boundaries) and climate surfaces from the

Species–environment relationships

There was substantial variation in the number of observations provided by each expert, ranging from 13 to 323. This variation may be a function of differential familiarity with the study site or with GIS technology.

For the variables examined, the box-plots did not identify any particular environmental niche for sambar within the Park. Representative results are shown in Fig. 3. For several variables, including elevation and distance to lakes and major rivers, there were some inconsistencies

The habitat suitability model

Sambar is a species that can utilise habitats where some environmental conditions are sub-optional (Moore, 1994). Therefore, the arithmetic mean of suitability indices of the three variables is appropriate for development of the final HSI. Column 4 in Table 1 shows the SI functions, which transform each environmental variable to an index ranging from 0 to 1. The importance of gullies was emphasised by all the experts in addition to the supporting literature, so a weight was assigned to this

Knowledge elicitation from experts-observations from GIS interaction

The sambar experts participated in the knowledge elicitation process with a great deal of interest and enthusiasm. This interest and enthusiasm was particularly evident when they provided responses to the qualitative questions. Some limitations hindered the information elicitation process in the quantitative phase of the study. Experts were commonly unfamiliar with computers or GIS software, and hence there was some reluctance when inputting deer observations. For instance, a number of experts

Conclusions and recommendations

This research has presented and evaluated a quantitative GIS-based and a qualitative interview-based technique for eliciting knowledge from wildlife experts. The aim was to identify suitable sambar habitat to build a habitat map to assist with the management of the species in the Park. The research also sought to answer questions of knowledge reliability as expert knowledge is being increasingly used for natural resource management. This was achieved by analysing the degree of inter-expert

Acknowledgements

We are greatly indebted to Sally Troy and John Wright of Parks Victoria for providing the resources that made the research possible. Special thanks goes to Brian Boyle from Parks Victoria and the anonymous interview participants for sharing their time, knowledge and enthusiasm. We would also like to thank Mark Burgman, Prema Lucas and Kimberly Mueller for their support of this research.

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