Scientific evidence should inform environmental policy, but rapid environmental change brings high ecological uncertainty and associated barriers to the science-management dialogue. Biological invasions of aquatic plants are a worldwide problem with uncertain ecological and economic consequences. We demonstrate that the discrete choice method (DCM) can serve as a structured expert elicitation alternative to quantify expert opinion across a range of possible but uncertain environmental outcomes. DCM is widely applied in the social sciences to better understand and predict human preferences and trade-offs. Here we apply it to Alaska's first submersed invasive aquatic freshwater plant, Elodea spp. (elodea), and its unknown effects on salmonids. While little is known about interactions between elodea and salmonids, ecological research suggests that aquatic plant invasions can have positive and negative, as well as direct and indirect, effects on fish. We use DCM to design hypothetical salmonid habitat scenarios describing elodea's possible effect on critical environmental conditions for salmonids: prey abundance, dissolved oxygen, and vegetation cover. We then observe how experts choose between scenarios that they believe could support persistent salmonid populations in elodea-invaded salmonid habitat. We quantify the relative importance of habitat characteristics that influence expert choice and investigate how experts trade off between habitat characteristics. We take advantage of Bayesian techniques to estimate discrete choice models for individual experts and to simulate expert opinion for specific environmental management situations. We discuss possible applications and advantages of the DCM approach for expert elicitation in the ecological context. We end with methodological questions for future research.

科学证据应该为环境政策提供依据，但是快速的环境变化给科学管理对话带来了极大的生态不确定性和相关障碍。水生植物的生物入侵是一个全球性问题，其生态和经济后果尚不确定。我们证明了离散选择方法（DCM）可以作为结构化的专家启发替代方法，用于量化一系列可能但不确定的环境结果中的专家意见。DCM在社会科学中得到了广泛的应用，以更好地理解和预测人类的偏好和权衡。在这里，我们将其应用于阿拉斯加的第一家浸入式入侵水生淡水植物Elodea spp。（elodea）及其对鲑鱼的未知影响。尽管对伊乐藻与鲑鱼之间的相互作用知之甚少，但生态研究表明，水生植物的入侵会对鱼类产生积极和消极的影响，以及直接和间接的影响。我们使用DCM来设计假设的鲑鱼栖息地场景，这些场景描述了伊乐藻对鲑鱼关键环境条件的可能影响：猎物丰富，溶解氧和植被覆盖。然后，我们观察专家如何在他们认为可以支持遭受伊乐藻入侵的鲑鱼栖息地中持续存在的鲑鱼种群的场景之间进行选择。我们量化了影响专家选择的栖息地特征的相对重要性，并研究了专家如何在栖息地特征之间进行权衡。我们利用贝叶斯技术来估计单个专家的离散选择模型，并模拟针对特定环境管理情况的专家意见。我们讨论了DCM方法在生态环境中进行专家启发的可能应用和优势。我们以方法论问题结尾，以供将来研究之用。