Best Available Scientific Information (BASI)
What is Best Available Scientific Information (BASI)?
Best available science is intended to be the platform for well-informed decision making in natural resource and land use planning, policy, and management. Scientific inquiry provides a pathway for understanding natural systems and for tracking changes in order to better understand causative factors and potential future conditions.
Federal land management policies direct agencies to use the best available science to inform agency decisions. Managers must evaluate and select scientific information that is defensible and supportive of management policies and decisions as well as environmental assessments.
As pressures from climate change, large-scale disturbance, and land use change increase, synthesizing BASI is crucial for planning and managing public lands and resources at large spatial and temporal scales.
BASI is useful to solve conflicts in management scenarios such as:
- Conflict of peer-reviewed science
- Planning documentation and project implementation
- Conflict of stakeholder interests
- Agency learning
- Adaptive management
- Effectiveness monitoring
- Gap assessment
Tools for BASI include:
Evidence Based Conservation, Systematic review, Literature review (all literature types), Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Local Knowledge, expert opinion, field trips, presentations, and citizen science.
What is Evidence-Based Conservation?
Evidence-based conservation (EBC) uses systematic reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of specific restoration treatments and present the likely outcomes of using such treatments.
EBC is especially useful when there is conflict in the peer-reviewed science on a particular subject, there is a risk to the resource and/or implementation of a treatment, or there is a high risk of litigation.
The tool commonly applied is the systematic review, which provides an independent, unbiased, and objective assessment of available data and presents the likely outcomes of various management alternatives. The steps of EBC include:
- Formulate the management question with the relevant stakeholders.
- Assess the available literature- assess the quality of the data, and objectively synthesize and present the results. This can be done via systematic review, meta-analysis, and literature review.
- Communicate the results in accessible forms to the relevant stakeholders, present management alternatives and recommendations as well as directions for future research.
- Reconvene the stakeholders to select a course of action based on the systematic review, and then monitor and evaluate the outcomes. Can highlight areas where additional research is needed.
Evidence-Based Conservation Projects
ERI library on systematic reviews and evidence based conservation
Some recently published systematic reviews:
Restoration applications of resource objective wildfires in western US forests: a status of knowledge review. 2020. Fire Ecology. Huffman, D.W., J.P. Roccaforte, J.D. Springer, and J.E. Crouse.
Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests. 2021. Ecological Applications. Hagmann, R.K. … A.J. Sanchez Meador, A.E.M. Waltz, et al.
Natural regeneration responses to thinning and burning treatments in ponderosa pine forests and implications for restoration. 2021. Journal of Forestry Research. Wasserman, T.N., A.E.M. Waltz, J.P. Roccaforte, J.D. Springer, J.E. Crouse.