No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

there is a high risk that management goals may not be achieved. This is the case at Toolibin 15 Lake, an internationally recognised wetland, where changed hydrology as a result of 16 agricultural development has detrimentally affected the quality and quantity of water entering 17 the lake. Although management actions have slowed or halted degradation of the lake's 18 biological assets, goals have not been fully achieved and management is under review. To rank 19 the hydrological risk factors threatening the lake's biota as a foundation for more detailed 20 planning, a structured elicitation process was used with an expert, cross-disciplinary group. 21Techniques used were explicitly aimed at minimising and documenting uncertainty. These 22 included calibration questions to assess the accuracy of experts, and tightly specified goals and 23 terms to minimise vagueness, ambiguity and redundancy. Surface water salinity, groundwater 24 salinity and drought were the only factors identified as having a high probability of causing 25 goal failure. Importantly, the majority of risk factors were evaluated as having a low probability 26 of causing goal failure, enabling these factors to be rapidly eliminated from short-term 27 consideration. The experts, acting anonymously when estimating probabilities, varied 28 considerably in the assessment of one risk. This underlines the importance of rigorous 29 processes to identify knowledge gaps and assess the likelihood that proposed management 30 will be successful. The elicitation process provided low cost, rapid assessment of large 31 numbers of risk factors with explicit assessment of uncertainty. 32 33