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Expert Elicitation of Population-Level Effects of Disturbance

  • Conference paper
The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life II

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 875))

Abstract

Expert elicitation is a rigorous method for synthesizing expert knowledge to inform decision making and is reliable and practical when field data are limited. We evaluated the feasibility of applying expert elicitation to estimate population-level effects of disturbance on marine mammals. Diverse experts estimated parameters related to mortality and sublethal injury of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). We are now eliciting expert knowledge on the movement of right whales among geographic regions to parameterize a spatial model of health. Expert elicitation complements methods such as simulation models or extrapolations from other species, sometimes with greater accuracy and less uncertainty.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-09-1-0896 (University of California, Santa Barbara) and N00014-12-1-0274 (University of California, Davis) to Erica Fleishman.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John Muir Institute of the Environment, The Barn, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Erica Fleishman

  2. School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Mark Burgman

  3. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, US Geological Survey, Laurel, MD, 20708, USA

    Michael C. Runge

  4. Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9LZ, UK

    Robert S. Schick

  5. John H. Prescott Marine Laboratory, New England Aquarium, Boston, MA, 02110, USA

    Scott Kraus

Authors
  1. Erica Fleishman
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  2. Mark Burgman
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  3. Michael C. Runge
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  4. Robert S. Schick
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  5. Scott Kraus
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erica Fleishman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Arthur N. Popper

  2. Aberdeen, United Kingdom

    Anthony Hawkins

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Fleishman, E., Burgman, M., Runge, M.C., Schick, R.S., Kraus, S. (2016). Expert Elicitation of Population-Level Effects of Disturbance. In: Popper, A., Hawkins, A. (eds) The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life II. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 875. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2981-8_35

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