When to monitor and when to act: value of information theory for multiple management units and limited budgets

1.The question of when to monitor and when to act is fundamental to applied ecology, and notoriously difficult to answer. Value of information (VOI) theory holds great promise to help answer this question for many management problems. However, VOI theory in applied ecology has only been demonstrated in single-decision problems, and has lacked explicit links between monitoring and management costs. 2.Here, we present an extension of VOI theory for solving multi-unit decisions of whether to monitor before managing, while explicitly accounting for monitoring costs. Our formulation helps to choose the optimal monitoring/management strategy among groups of management units (e.g. species, habitat patches), and can be used to examine the benefits of partial and repeat monitoring. 3.To demonstrate our approach, we use case simulated studies of single-species protection that must choose among potential habitat areas, and classification and management of multiple species threatened with ext...1. 何时开展监测、何时采取行动，是应用生态学的核心议题，且众所周知难以解答。信息价值（Value of Information, VOI）理论为诸多管理类问题的解答展现出巨大应用潜力。然而，当前应用生态学领域的VOI理论仅在单一决策问题中得到验证，且尚未明确建立监测成本与管理成本之间的关联。 2. 本研究提出了VOI理论的扩展框架，用于解决"先开展监测再实施管理"的多单元决策问题，并明确将监测成本纳入考量。该建模方法可在多个管理单元（如物种、栖息地斑块）的集合中筛选最优监测与管理策略，同时可用于评估局部监测与重复监测的收益。 3. 为验证所提方法的有效性，我们采用了需在潜在栖息地范围内进行选择的单一物种保护模拟案例研究，以及针对受灭绝威胁的多物种种群的分类与管理相关研究……