Criteria Analysis Shell to Natural Resource Management Decision Making

Natural resource management decision making generally requires the analysis of a variety of environmental, social and economic information, incorporating value judgement and policy and management goals. Justifiable decisions depend on the logical and transparent combination and analysis of information. This chapter describes the application of spatial multi-criteria analysis to natural resource assessment and priority setting at regional and national scales using a newly developed spatial multi-criteria analysis tool — the Multi-Criteria Analysis Shell for Spatial Decision Support (MCAS-S). MCAS-S is designed for use in participatory processes and workshop situations where a clear understanding of different approaches to spatial data management and information arrangement is necessary. The MCAS-S work environment provides for multiple map display, combination and manipulation, live update of changes, and development of spider/radar plots important in ecosystem service assessments. These and other capabilities promote clear visualisation of the relationships among the decision, the science, other constraints and the spatial data. The regional scale example illustrates the analysis of biodiversity and salinity mitigation trade-offs in revegetation in a participatory process. The national scale application illustrates reporting to policy clients on the tensions between resources use and conservation in Australian rangelands — essentially an expert analysis. 74 RG Lesslie, MJ Hill, P Hill, HP Cresswell and S Dawson