Is there a “sweet spot” of model complexity for qualitative models used in Ecosystem-Based Management?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ecosystem models have been developed to help support Ecosystem-Based Management and to help provide better management advice that can account for ecosystem impacts (e.g., climate, species interactions, fishing behaviour). Quantitative end-to-end models have proven to be very useful strategically for exploring future scenarios, but are data intensive, time consuming, and require considerable expertise and training. Conversely, qualitative models have different benefits: they are less dependent on data, relatively faster to develop, can incorporate different types of information that are difficult to measure or combine, and can be co-developed with a variety of audiences. There has been an increase in the use of qualitative models for marine management, however questions have arisen about how well qualitative models perform in comparison to quantitative models, and how they can be used to inform management. Here we compare results from quantitative and qualitative ecosystem models for the same region at differing levels of model complexity to explore their relative utility for EBM. We conclude that the number of linkages between model elements and trophic position of the perturbed model were influential factors in the qualitative model behaviour. When perturbing lower trophic level groups, higher complexity models performed closer to the quantitative model. Lower complexity models were recommended when estimating scenarios with perturbations to mid-trophic groups. Careful consideration among these issues is required to develop the "sweet spot" of model complexity for qualitative ecosystem models to reflect similar results to quantitative models. In addition, utilizing multiple models to determine the strongest impacts from perturbations is recommended to avoid spurious conclusions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.034 | 0.117 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.025 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".