Appendix 3- Noosa restoration assessment report- Including Expert Elicitation Minutes

Assessment approach
To provide a rapid and efficient assessment of restoration and management options for
Noosa Estuary, TNC used an expert driven approach. The assessment was centred around a
two day workshop (October 30 & 31, 2014) facilitated by TNC Senior Scientist Dr Eddie
Game and based on the process of Structured Decision Making. Structured Decision Making
is a process that emphasizes the rapid and effective generation and evaluation of options,
while trying to minimize the numerous psychological traps and biases that commonly
present in assessments based on expert judgement4. Ten expert participants were chosen
based on their substantive knowledge of topics related to the ecology of Noosa Estuary, the
management and restoration of estuary habitats, and the ability to apply this knowledge to
the case of Noosa Estuary. The full list and bios of experts who participated in the workshop
is provided in Appendix 1. A number of additional experts were also consulted prior to the
workshop as part of preparing the background material contained in Appendix 2. These
additional experts are also identified at the bottom of Appendix 1.


Restoration and management objectives and indicators
Identifying a set of restoration and management options depends on having clear objectives
that the options are desired to work towards. The objective provided to the experts at the
workshop were:


     1. To increase fish abundance in Noosa Estuary.
     2. To increase aquatic biodiversity in Noosa Estuary.
     3. To ensure the estuary's biodiversity and ecological health match that of the
        terrestrial biosphere


When using multiple experts to evaluate the consequence that any restoration or
management option is likely to have for these objectives, it is essential that all experts are
judging the same thing. In the case of objective #1 above for example, one expert might be
evaluating the consequence of mangrove restoration for bream whereas another might be
thinking of whiting; this will lead them to evaluate the consequence differently. This
problem is known in expert elicitation as underspecification. To address this issue, the
experts were asked to come up with a set of indicators that would reflect the intention of
the objectives, and for which consequences would be evaluated separately. A large number
of possible indicators were considered with those selected being considered representative
of different aspects of Noosa’s aquatic biodiversity and ecology, and the range of ways that
the people interact with this biodiversity. Table 1 provides the list of chosen indicators along
with the rationale behind their selection.



4
 Gregory, R., L. Failing, M. Harstone, G. Long, T. McDaniels, and D. Ohlson. 2012. Structured Decision Making: A Practical Guide to
Environmental Management Choices. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.



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