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

通过综合促进理解的机会计划（OPUS）支持由单个或一组合作研究人员在较长时期内产生的研究成果的综合。该OPUS项目将出版一本书，综合了首席研究员关于人口模型敏感性分析的一系列期刊出版物。敏感性分析是这个项目的重点，它回答了一个基本问题，“如果系统的某些特定方面发生了变化，将会发生什么”？敏感性分析对于建立可靠的生态学模型至关重要，这些模型用于研究自然环境变化、人为影响、管理策略的益处以及对进化变化的反应。虽然我们模拟生态现象的能力很好，但它永远不会完美；即使是这样，这也是不够的。事情总是有可能变得不同，而且在某些时候它们肯定会变得不同。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。该OPUS项目将增加传播用于敏感性分析的强大的新数学方法，并将其应用于线性、非线性、随机、确定性、空间和补贴人口模型。关于这个项目的书将使这些新方法对关心物种保护、人口统计学和种群动态的学生、研究人员和管理人员可用，极大地扩展了可以解决的模型和问题的范围及其应用价值。该项目还将在教育领域产生更广泛的影响，通过在大学课程中使用这本书，以及通过向生态学家、保护生物学家和人口统计学家介绍讲习班。

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.