OPUS: Synthesizing Recent Developments in Sensitivity Analysis for Use in Population Ecology

通过综合促进理解的机会方案(OPUS)支持由单个人或一组合作研究人员在较长时间内产生的研究成果的综合。这一业务方案项目将出版一本书，综合首席调查员关于人口模型敏感性分析的一系列期刊出版物。敏感度分析是本项目的重点，它回答了一个基本问题：“如果系统的某些特定方面发生变化，会发生什么？”敏感性分析对于开发用于研究自然环境变化、人为影响、管理策略的益处和对进化变化的响应等生态学中的稳健模型至关重要。尽管我们模拟生态现象的能力很好，但它永远不会完美；即使它是完美的，也是不够的。事情总是有可能不同的，而且在某个时候它们肯定会不同。只有通过对模型敏感性的分析，我们才能判断不确定性的重要性。这一OPUS项目将扩大用于敏感性分析的强大的新数学方法的传播，应用于线性、非线性、随机、确定性、空间和补贴人口模型。这本关于这个项目的书将使学生、研究人员和关心物种保护、人口学和种群动态的管理人员能够接触到这些新方法，极大地扩大了可以解决的模型和问题的范围及其应用价值。该项目还将通过在大学课程中使用这本书，以及通过为生态学家、保护生物学家和人类人口学家举办讲习班，在教育领域产生更广泛的影响。

The Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis program (OPUS) supports the synthesis of research results produced over an extended period by a single individual or a group of collaborating researchers. This OPUS project will produce a book integrating a series of journal publications by the Principal Investigator on the sensitivity analysis of population models. Sensitivity analysis, the focus of this project, answers the fundamental question, "what would happen if some specified aspect of a system was to change"? Sensitivity analysis is essential to the development of robust models in ecology used to study e.g., natural environmental changes, anthropogenic impacts, the benefits of management strategies, and the response to evolutionary modifications. Although our ability to model ecological phenomena is good, it will never be perfect; even if it was, it would not be sufficient. There is always the possibility that things could be different, and the certainty that at some point they will be different. It is only through an analysis of model sensitivity that we judge the significance of our uncertainty. This OPUS project will increase the dissemination of powerful new mathematical methods for sensitivity analysis, with applications to linear, nonlinear, stochastic, deterministic, spatial, and subsidized population models. The book to be produced on this project will make these new methods accessible to students, researchers, and managers concerned with the conservation, demography and population dynamics of species, greatly extending the range of models and questions that can be addressed and their value in application. This project also will have broader impacts in the area of education, both through the use of the book in university courses, and through the presentation of workshops to ecologists, conservation biologists, and human demographers.