Experiment 2 data files

Artificial vegetation descriptions were used to explore the value of additional contextual information and to examine expert judgements of restoration and conservation thresholds. Experts were each provided with descriptions of 25 vegetation patches (10 in common) drawn from a total pool of 90. These descriptions were all artificially modified from a set of five reference plots that had previously been allocated to the Monaro Tableland CTGW community through numeric analysis. Descriptions were systematically modified to generate examples with and without trees, to remove characteristic groundlayer native species and add non-native species. These modifications replicated the range of degradation that result from agricultural land use including tree clearing, livestock grazing, application of fertiliser, cultivation and pasture sowing. In addition, we supplemented plots with additional information: (1) distance from the sampled vegetation patch to the nearest Snow gum<i> </i>in the same landscape position (0m - 2000m); (2) the presence or absence of stumps and; (3) the number of trees with a diameter at breast height &gt;0.5m (large trees, range from 0 - 4) (<i>Supporting Information S2</i>). Each of these were also systematically varied. The final set of 90 patches spanned the potential range of condition states from diverse woodland with old trees through to isolated species poor and weed dominated pastures.<br>Experts were asked to provide their judgement of the probability that each sample belonged to the CTGW (Experiment 1 and 2), had crossed a low condition threshold and should not be protected as the CTGW (Experiment 2), or could be successfully restored given reasonable management inputs (Experiment 2). Judgements were elicited using a three-point probability scale (Soll and Klayman, 2004; Burgman, 2016). In each case experts were asked to assign their lowest, highest and most likely probabilities, with questions structured following the guidelines recommended by Burgman (2016).