Page 89 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

Effectiveness of scientific tools in decision making processes
During interactive sessions with managers and stakeholders the animation tool helped us as scientists to explain the main processes simulated by the tool. Stakeholders reflected on what the tool showed, described the process from their own perspective, and specified their values, concerns, and way of thinking. This added valuable knowledge to the development of the tool, e.g., the effect of crowding was left out because stakeholders indicated that in the New Forest this had a minor effect on visitors’ use of the area. As we started to discuss the main processes and parameters in the scientific tools with managers and stakeholders, they started to give feedback on how they perceived the processes underlying the conflict. In this process, all actors learned each other's values and began to understand more about the world on the other side of the table. This increased the credibility and legitimacy of the tools (Cash et al. 2003, Lynam et al. 2002, Fry et al. 2007). As an illustration, recreation stakeholders learned that seeing birds still present in the area is not a guarantee they are not being disturbed and biodiversity stakeholders learned why visitors like to follow some specific routes, such as a former railroad.
5.3.3 Adaptation to local data and knowledge
Adapting existing scientific tools in the light of local data will increase the reliability
of their output as well as their credibility (Irvine et al. 2009), especially if the data
were gathered in collaborative monitoring projects (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008),
because stakeholders can see how a tool deals with their local data. They can then 5 respond to the output, improve it, and incorporate the tool into their mindset. However,
most scientific tools are developed for specific case studies, which makes it difficult to
apply them elsewhere (Sturtevant et al. 2007). It saves costs and developing time if
tools are developed with modular architecture (Maxwell and Costanza 1997, Scheller
et al. 2007) and with a separate database. Modular architecture allows new processes
to be incorporated by making minor additions or adjustments to the tool. A separate
database for each parameter makes it possible to change settings during interactive
sessions, without making changes to the tool itself. Because both the MASOOR and
LARCH tool have this modular structure, they are flexible in incorporating specific local
conditions.
In the New Forest the LARCH tool was adapted by adding the slope of the land as extra input for determining the habitat of wader species. One of the adaptations made to the MASOOR tool was to remove the effect of crowding (e.g., Arnberger and Mann 2008) because stakeholders and managers expected this to have a minor effect on visitors’
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