Special Session
16th Biennial Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM05)
Melbourne, 12-15 December 2005

Description   Population ecology drives a number of important economic and conservation issues, including the management of fisheries, weed and pest management, and the conservation of threatened species. For example, weed growth has many adverse effects and, in Australia alone, it is estimated that the annual cost to agriculture exceeds $3.5 billion; many species of native fauna have a negative impact on their habitat, or upon other species, when their numbers become large. The development of tools to improve the management and control of these systems, and to improve decision making in the area, is therefore of vital importance.

This session, sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (MASCOS), brought together practitioners and mathematicians to examine recent developments in modelling that are applicable to the management and control of ecological systems. There were 10 contributed papers covering a broad range of methods and approaches to population control, optimal management and harvesting of native fauna, and the management of threatened species.

Organizers   Phil Pollett (pkp at maths.uq.edu.au) and Joshua Ross (jvr at maths.uq.edu.au)

Papers   All papers were refereed by two reviewers. All are available online in the Electronic Proceedings.

A selection of papers from this session appeared as a special issue of Ecological Modelling [Vol. 201 No.1, 2007]

Submitting author	Affiliation	Title of paper
Régis Sabbadin	INRA-BIA-Toulouse	Dynamic reserve site selection under contagion risk of deforestation
Phil Pollett	The University of Queensland	Costs and decisions in population management: koalas on Kangaroo Island
Cindy Hauser	University of Queensland	Optimal control of Atlantic population Canada Geese
Roger Cropp	Griffith University	Simulating the impacts of climate change on ecosystems: the importance of mortality
Michael Bode	University of Queensland	Optimal management of cycling predator-prey systems
Benjamin Cairns	The University of Queensland	Models for predicting extinction times: shall we dance (or walk or jump)?
Roger Webby	The University of Adelaide	The Mekong – Applications of Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) simulation to the benefits, costs and consequences of water resources development in a large river basin
Carmel Pollino	Water Studies Centre, Monash University	Development and application of a Bayesian decision support tool to assist in the management of an endangered species
Tracy Rout	University of Queensland	Optimal translocation strategies for threatened species
Mr Liam Wagner	University of Queensland	Inter-reserve spacing of marine reserves for catastrophe management
Mr Valerio Bisignanesi	Monash University	Integrated models for chemical signals in surface layers