Quantitative methods are needed in conservation biology more than ever as an increasing number of threatened species find their way onto international and national red lists. Objective evaluation of population decline and extinction probability are required for sound decision making. Yet, as our colleague Selina Heppell points out, population viability analysis and other forms of formal risk assessment are underused in policy formation because of data uncertainty and a lack of standardized methodologies and unambiguous criteria (i. e., rules of thumb ). Models used in conservation biology...

This book is a cohesive guide to the available methods that can be used in population viability analysis. It is therefore extremely valuable to both the practitioner of conservation biology and the theoretical population biologist.

The authors give an overview of the current process of ecological risk assessment for toxic chemicals and of how modeling of populations, ec osystems, and landscapes could improve the status quo. They present a classification of ecological models and explain the differences betwee n population, ecosystem, landscape, and toxicity-extrapolation models. The authors describe the model evaluation process and define evaluati on criteria. Finally, the results of the model evaluations are present ed in a concise format with recommendations on modeling approaches to use now and develop further.