Research Document - 2003/087

Incorporating Uncertainty in Population Assessments

By Richard, P.R.

Abstract

The best approach to minimize the risk of management or conservation failure is to incorporate uncertainty in assessments and use that to guide low risk management and conservation decisions. There is a wide array of methods for incorporating uncertainty and it is not always clear to the analyst which method should be used for a particular assessment. This paper looks at various methods that are used or could be used to incorporating uncertainty in assessments of marine mammal populations. It attempts to order those methods according to similarity and to give a short description of each of them. It presents examples of uncertainty methods used on marine mammal assessments and relevant methods used in other disciplines concerned with risk assessment. Pros and cons of each method are discussed. The paper concludes by addressing the question of whether there should be a limited set of methods used for DFO marine mammal stock assessments or whether methods should be chosen according to the circumstances. It concludes that the appropriateness of the various methods for incorporating uncertainty varies depending on the type of uncertainty and the information available.

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