Shorebird researchers and land managers recognize human disturbance as a serious threat facing shorebirds. Yet, a common understanding of what defines human disturbance is lacking. To address this issue, we employed the Delphi technique, an iterative consensus-building social science method, to bring scientists and managers together to develop a shared definition of human disturbance and a list of priority human activities that could affect migratory shorebirds. During four iterative rounds, participants with extensive knowledge on human disturbance to shorebirds from varying geographic locations within the Northeastern U.S. worked together to produce a shared understanding. Through analyzing participants’ open-ended responses, we identified important themes for the definition. The participants then refined and ranked these themes through surveys, and the top-ranked themes were used to draft a final definition also reviewed by the participants. Participants provided 94 human activities in response to our request to list and describe all potential human disturbances that affect shorebirds during fall migration. From there, we grouped the activities into 23 categories. Through rating and ranking tasks, participants reduced this list to 12 priority disturbance categories that represent the perceived most significant human disturbances in the Northeastern United States. We also compared responses among the different participant groups (i.e., managers, scientists, and manager/scientists), finding that groups’ responses generally did not significantly differ. While nearly all participants were satisfied with the process, we provide some suggestions to improve it. The outputs of the Delphi technique have informed a best practices guidance document for shorebird management.

中文翻译：

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使用经理和科学家输入定义人类对水鸟的干扰

滨鸟研究人员和土地管理者认识到人为干扰是滨鸟面临的严重威胁。然而，缺乏对人为干扰的定义的共同理解。为了解决这个问题，我们采用了德尔菲技术，一种迭代的建立共识的社会科学方法，将科学家和管理者聚集在一起，共同制定人为干扰的定义和可能影响迁徙滨鸟的优先人类活动清单。在四轮迭代中，来自美国东北部不同地理位置的对人类对鸻鹬的干扰具有广泛知识的参与者共同努力产生了共同的理解。通过分析参与者的开放式回答，我们确定了定义的重要主题。然后，参与者通过调查对这些主题进行了提炼和排名，排名靠前的主题被用来起草最终定义，也由参与者审查。参与者提供了 94 项人类活动，以响应我们列出和描述秋季迁徙期间影响滨鸟的所有潜在人为干扰的要求。从那里，我们将活动分为 23 个类别。通过评级和排名任务，参与者将此列表简化为 12 个优先干扰类别，这些类别代表了美国东北部感知到的最严重的人为干扰。我们还比较了不同参与者群体（即经理、科学家和经理/科学家）的反应，发现群体的反应通常没有显着差异。虽然几乎所有参与者都对这个过程感到满意，但我们提供了一些改进它的建议。