"Using Systematic Review and Evidence Banking to Increase Uptake and Use of Aquatic Science in Decision-Making"
Citation:
Bennett, M., S. Lee, Katharine Schofield, C. Ridley, S. Norton, A. Webb, S. Nichols, R. Ogden, AND A. Collins. "Using Systematic Review and Evidence Banking to Increase Uptake and Use of Aquatic Science in Decision-Making". Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 25 - March 01, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation will inform academic and non-academic researchers about how systematic review and evidence banking can improve the process of scientific syntheses and delivering information to environmental managers for decision-making. Information overload is a huge challenge for environmental decision-makers.
Description:
To support sound decision-making in environmental management, we need rigorous, defensible, and transparent synthesis of scientific evidence. The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) and associated aquatic science societies are leaders in applying science to decision-making, and yet many environmental decisions are still at risk of having to be made without a comprehensive, well-synthesized evidence base to support them. In this presentation, we discuss two synergistic approaches that can help science inform decision-making: systematic review and evidence banking. Our aim is to promote the use of these approaches, and to enlist support and action from the aquatic science community. We propose that scientists can improve the use and uptake of science in decision-making by making their research more compatible with synthesis efforts by: considering risk of bias when designing studies and reporting results; reporting all relevant contextual information; analyzing data using standard effect size approaches; and publishing raw data. Awareness of how primary research feeds into informing decisions can help broaden the impact of scientific research, making it more directly relevant to decision-making and more likely to contribute to the protection of aquatic ecosystems.