The research to be conducted by the Centre between 2011 & 2017 will tackle the key gaps in environmental decision-making, monitoring and adaptive management. This is being done through an integrated research program with three major themes that represent leading-edge research on allocating resources to, and monitoring the benefits of, threat abatement. Each theme will be underpinned by two or more methods.

Theme A: Spatial Planning for Landscape Restoration and Management

(Leaders: Richard Hobbs, UWA; Anthony Richardson, UQ; Peter Vesk, UoM; Tara Martin, CSIRO; Salit Kark, HUJ)
Addressing how to optimally restore landscapes, key foci will be:

1. The implications of landscape-scale restoration on biodiversity, water and carbon balances;
2. The interplay between within-site management and landscape management;
3. Managing ecosystem and landscape resilience, particularly in the face of climate change; and
4. Socio-economic aspects of landscape restoration.

Theme B: Biodiversity Decisions in Dynamic Systems 

(Leaders: Brendan Wintle, UoM; Jonathan Rhodes, UQ; E-J MilnerGulland, Imperial)
This theme will answer the question: How should managers deal with uncertainty, and most effectively adapt to rapid ecosystem changes and dynamic threats, to ensure the persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem processes? Key foci will be:

1. The first active adaptive management strategy for broad-scale spatial prioritization; and
2. The first multi-objective trade-off analysis of broad-scale prioritization under uncertainty.

Theme C: Rapidly-transforming Landscapes 

(Leaders: Sarah Bekessy, RMIT; Yvonne Buckley, UQ/CSIRO; Tara Martin, CSIRO)
Rapidly-transforming, human-dominated landscapes are a microcosm of the threats facing the environment. They provide a unique opportunity to develop and evaluate decision-making methods developed in CEED. This theme will provide innovation in:

1. New approaches for prioritising multiple conservation actions and policy options; and
2. Decision making in the context of multiple stake-holders.

METHODS

CEED will underpin its three research themes by developing innovative methods and approaches based on advanced decision-making parameters in fields such as stochastic optimisation and Bayesian decision-making. These methods and approaches fall into one of the following:

♦ Optimal Management of Multiple Threats

♦ Decision-making Tools for Complex Environmental Problems.