Stresses & Sources

The Search for Critical Threats

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Key Points to Introduce This Step

• Why it’s not just “threats”

• Stresses = the inverse of key ecological attributes. An observable change in the “health” of the target

• Sources are tangible, direct causes

• Keep your source names consistent

• Scoring algorithm - Stress rank is both ceiling and driver

• Iterative approach - continue to refine

• “Sins of the past” = lower viability

“Sins of the future” = threats

Sources Stresses Systems

Critical Questions

• Have they considered all key attributes?

• Probe for over-rankings

– Especially stress ranks and any “Very High” stresses

• Look for “double-counting” of High-ranked stresses

– e.g. altered fire regime + lack of fire

• Probe for specificity of High-ranked sources -- sooner or later the devil will be in the details

Common Issues & Recommendations

• What about the 10 year guideline for ranking threats?– Works for everything except some invasive species &

long-term/persistent/insidious sources like climate change

• Lumping vs. splitting threats?– If in doubt, better to split initially – And then use “common threat taxonomy to give the

perspective that lumping can provide • What about catastrophic threats of unknown odds?

– “User Override” works here -- team’s best guess

Common Issues & Recommendations

(cont.)• Are natural disturbances (e.g. hurricanes) stresses?

– No, unless they’ve been exacerbated by a known source

• What about cumulative impacts?– The Workbook scoring algorithm addresses a source that causes

multiple stresses, but not multiple sources to multiple stresses that may have a cumulative impact

• Generally don’t spend much time on Medium threats, unless you think one is under-ranked or it is something that will be very difficult to deal with if it left unattended (i.e. invasive exotic plant.)

Helpful Hints

• Teams often over-rank future threat by letting current condition creep into their consciousness; this is already accounted for in a “Poor” or “Fair” Viability rank

• Another test to consider for threat rankings...– A “Very High” stress should reduce a key attribute to

“Poor”– A “High” stress should reduce a key attribute to “Fair”

Helpful Hints (continued…)

• Consider using maps (even hand drawn “cartoon” maps) to get a sense of the scope of the threat.

• As much as possible, pose threats related to global climate change in terms that explicitly describe how climate change might impact the targets.

• Roll up threats by targets, not by sites, to get useful information for multi-area strategies