Using Systematic Review and Evidence Banking to Increase Uptake and Use of Aquatic Science in Decision-Making
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To support sound decision-making in environmental management, we need rigorous, defensible, and transparent synthesis of scientific evidence. The Society for Freshwater Science is among the leaders in applying science to decision-making, and yet many environmental decisions are still at risk of having to be made without a comprehensive, well-synthesized evidence base to support them. In this presentation, we discuss two synergistic approaches that can help science inform decision-making: systematic review and evidence banking. Our aim is to promote the use of these approaches, and to enlist support and action from the aquatic science community. We propose that scientists can improve the use and uptake of science in decision-making by making their research more compatible with synthesis efforts by: considering risk of bias when designing studies and reporting results; reporting all relevant contextual information; analyzing data using standard effect size approaches; and “banking” publishing raw data. Awareness of how primary research feeds into informing decisions can help broaden the impact of scientific research, making it more directly relevant to decision-making and more likely to contribute to the protection of aquatic ecosystems.