Special Session
18th Biennial Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM09)
Cairns Convention Centre, Cairns, Australia, 13-17 July 2009

MODSIM09 Website   http://mssanz.org.au/modsim09/

Description   A metapopulation is a population that is confined to a network of geographically separated habitat patches. Although the individual patches may suffer local extinction, recolonization may occur through dispersal of individuals from other patches. Empirical evidence suggests that a balance between migration and extinction is reached that enables metapopulations to persist for long periods, and there has been considerable interest in developing models which account for the persistence of the population network. These models have been used as a basis for decision making in the management of ecological systems, and optimization techniques are being developed to answer questions such as whether it is best to protect habitat or to create new habitat under budgetary constraints.

This session, sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (MASCOS), brought together researchers and practitioners working in modelling and control of populations.

Organizers   Fionnuala Buckley, Sam Nicol and Phil Pollett

Papers   All papers were refereed by two anonymous reviewers and one of three session editors. All are available online in the Electronic Proceedings.

A selection of papers from this session appeared in Ecological Modelling [Vol. 221 No.21, 2010]

Authors	Paper
(submitting author in bold)	(final versions)
F.M. Buckley and P.K. Pollett	Analytical methods for a stochastic mainland-island metapopulation model
S. Nicol, I. Chadès, S. Linke and H.P. Possingham	Conservation decision-making in large state spaces
D.E. Pagendam and P.K. Pollett	Robust optimal observation of a metapopulation
J.V. Ross and P.K. Pollett	Rules of thumb for metapopulation management
W.J.M. Probert, E. McDonald-Madden, C.E. Hauser, P.W.J. Baxter and H.P. Possingham	Knowledge gain or management benefit in environmental decision making?
C.W. Stewart and R. van der Ree	Modelling spatial substructure in wildlife populations using an approximation to the Shortest Path Voronoi Diagram
J.A. Webb and M. Padgham	Patterns of dispersal through stream networks respond simply to multiple structural modifications