A dynamical approach to evaluate risk in resource management.

With the depletion of many natural resources, we are growing aware of the need to understand the risks that stem from different management decisions. Here, we outline an approach to test the ability of different dynamical signatures to characterize time-series data: how likely is it that a natural population is declining, sustainable, or increasing, and at what rates are these temporal changes likely occurring? These dynamical signatures can serve as a robust foundation on which to formulate alternative scenarios in a decision analysis. They take account of much of the uncertainty in model parameters and have precise mathematical underpinnings with associated risks. We present methods to evaluate the likelihood of these scenarios, and ways that the analysis can be graphically represented. We discuss different ecological factors such as climate variability, life history, ecosystem interactions, and a changing population age structure, all of which impact the dynamics of natural populations. Considering the types of dynamical signatures that emerge from these factors can change our understanding of risk and the decisions that we make.