A structured approach for building multi‐community State and Transition Models to support conservation planning

Abstract

Abstract Global declines in ecosystem extent and condition mean there is an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time‐bound objectives. Efficient and structured processes that facilitate timely and comparable conservation plans are essential, especially where resources are constrained. We describe a process to streamline the development of conservation plans by combining functionally similar community sub‐types into a multi‐community State and Transition Model that can be used to guide conservation planning. We demonstrate this approach in a case study using eucalypt dominated woodlands of southern Australia—an ecosystem which occupies a vast geographical range across temperate Australia and includes many distinct vegetation communities, a growing number of which are endangered or threatened. Australian woodland ecologists (grouped according to their knowledge of three broad woodland sub‐types) were asked to develop causal chains to describe all factors associated with transitions among woodland condition states, and estimate the likelihoods associated with each transition at two time‐scales. The resultant State and Transition Model includes a set of eight general condition states that are common to eucalypt dominated woodlands, and 364 unique causal chains describing the drivers of all plausible transitions. We include an example of how the same information can be presented as a series of decision trees aimed at supporting on‐ground management decisions. The case study demonstrates that it is possible to construct a detailed State and Transition Model that synthesizes knowledge across multiple similar vegetation communities. To date, State and Transition Models focused on single communities or a smaller spatial scale, and this is the first attempt to construct a nationally relevant multi‐community State and Transition Model via a structured and participatory process. Synthesis and applications. This approach can be applied at multiple spatial scales to improve and streamline the development of robust conservation plans to improve how we plan for, implement and measure global biodiversity outcomes.