Count or control? Optimal monitoring for invasive species management

Mary Woodcock Kroble
Thursday 9 November 2006
Date: 13 June 2007
Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Speaker: Alana Moore (University of Melbourne)

Abstract

An extensive body of research exists on mathematical models for the optimal control of biological populations. To apply these models to real world situations, population monitoring is required to track population size. However, the cost of monitoring is rarely included when assessing management regimes. We consider finding a combined optimal management strategy for an invasive fox population which specifies when to monitor as well as when to control. In our model, the monitoring data are binomial observations of an index associated with the population size. We use bayesian updating to track the population index and embed this in a Markov decision process to investigate the value of monitoring.

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