About

The Eco Evidence product encompasses two tools - 1) a database and 2) analysis software - which can be used independently or as an integrated package. The database and the analysis software are used for analyzing scientific evidence and assessing its strength and quality.

The evidence database provides a list of studies and metadata concerning associations between a cause (X) and an effect (Y), while the analysis software provides a mechanism to evaluate the strength of evidence supporting a causal link between X and Y, strengthening inferential ability.

The on-line evidence database makes it possible to bank knowledge for reuse, providing information to build evidence-based conceptual models of human impacts on the environment. The database will be particularly useful if it is adopted widely by agencies across Australia and overseas, and also when integrated with the analysis software.

How often have you written in a report or paper that X affects Y, and then spent hours scratching around your literature collection or the Internet trying to find exactly where you saw the detailed evidence! This is a common problem for managers and policy-makers who must often make decisions in a highly-contested space. With eWater’s new on-line database we can more easily produce evidence-based conceptual models to support the management of river ecosystems. Such models are the primary pathway that connects scientific knowledge with decision support for managers, and so conceptual models are the bread-and-butter of knowledge transfer for organizations such as eWater.

The database provides a mechanism to catalogue and share the knowledge contained within the many studies that examine human impacts on river ecosystems. If we are interested in the effect of some stressor (e.g. riparian clearing) on an ecological response (such as macroinvertebrate richness) we can search the database for evidence of a causal link. The database will output a list of all the studies it contains that deal with the effects of riparian clearing on macroinvertebrate richness, along with meta-data for each study (where this has been entered previously). The meta-data describes the study's (i) location, (ii) methods, and (iii) results.

As the database grows, it will facilitate rigor in the development of conceptual models of human impacts on river ecosystems. Those in the front line dealing with competing interests of stakeholders will be able to quickly access the knowledge within scientific studies that deal with contentious issues at hand. For organizations engaged in natural resources management (NRM), use of the evidence database will improve corporate memory and enhance staff development through better understanding of the science underpinning decisions. For research organizations, these tools provide an effective pathway for delivering knowledge to industry, and also for reviewing information relevant to further research being undertaken. For the industry as a whole, it will facilitate the wide dissemination of research outcomes.

The EcoEvidence tools are tje result of collaboration between the eWater Project B1 (Modelling multiple drivers) team and the Program M1 (Water education and e-learning) team, who are simultaneously developing the Eco Evidence tools and associated education and adoption modules.

The Eco Evidence analysis software (formerly known as MLLE) involves an 8-step schema that is packaged to help us draw together information from the scientific literature, and other data sources, to strengthen conclusions on how a particular human activity, or natural event, may influence the environment. Scientists and managers commonly face a situation where the information from the various sources provides conflicting results or advice. Therefore, it is important to have a transparent, consistent and defensibly logical framework to critically evaluate all the information and provide confidence for a strong conclusion.

Most studies will involve answering some specific questions regarding cause and effect and require you to review existing literature on a specific topic. We all draw conclusions from our data and support these with the literature. This raises some issues:

• How do we know when we have reviewed enough literature or have enough support for our hypothesis?
• Is it valid to stop searching the literature once we have found one, or a few, references that support our argument?
• If we had looked further, would we have found other scientific papers that didn’t support the argument?
• How do we resolve the possibly conflicting evidence from the literature related to the questions being asked?
• How can we determine the strength of this evidence?

There are some well established methods to help resolve these issues, which the eWater researchers have used to develop the causal criteria method and software program.

The causal criteria framework requires the details from the reviewed literature to be evaluated in a standardized and overt fashion. The software program facilitates the method by guiding the user through the framework and helping you to evaluate and weight the evidence, which is based on the quality of the evidence and strength of support for the hypothesis of interest. The software also summarizes the evidence by generating a catalogue of evidence and report. This logical and transparent approach to reviewing the literature can reduce an individual’s bias and subjectivity, can provide an indication of whether there is sufficient evidence, and focuses on the quality of studies reviewed.