Adaptive management - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

What is Adaptive Management ?

Adaptive management (AM), also known as adaptive resource management (ARM), is a structured, iterative

Iteration

Iteration means the act of repeating a process usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an "iteration," and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.-Mathematics:Iteration in...

process of optimal decision making

Decision making

Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...

in the face of uncertainty

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a number of fields, including physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science...

, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring

System Monitoring

A system monitor in systems engineering is a process within a distributed system for collecting and storing state data.- Overview :The configuration for the system monitor takes two forms:# configuration data for the monitor application itself, and...

. In this way, decision making simultaneously maximizes one or more resource objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. Adaptive management is a tool which should be used not only to change a system, but also to learn about the system (Holling 1978). Because adaptive management is based on a learning process, it improves long - run management outcomes. The challenge in using adaptive management approach lies in finding the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short - term outcome based on current knowledge (Stankey & Allan 2009).

There are a number of scientific and social processes which are vital components of adaptive management these are:

Management is linked to appropriate temporal and spatial scales
Management retains a focus on statistical power and controls
Use of computer models to build synthesis and an embodied ecological consensus
Use of embodied ecological consensus to evaluate strategic alternatives
Communication of alternatives to political arena for negotiation of a selection

The achievement of these objectives requires an open management process which seeks to include past, present and future stakeholders. Adaptive management needs to at least maintain political openness, but usually aims to create it. Adaptive management must therefore be a scientific and social process. It must focus on the development of new institutions and institutional strategies in balance with scientific hypothesis and experimental frameworks (resilliance.org).

Adaptive management can proceed as either passive adaptive management or active adaptive management, depending on how learning takes place. Passive adaptive management values learning only insofar as it improves decision outcomes (i.e. passively), as measured by the specified utility function. In contrast, active adaptive management explicitly incorporates learning as part of the objective function, and hence, decisions which improve learning are valued over those which do not(Holling 1978; Walters 1986). In both cases, as new knowledge is gained, the models are updated and optimal management strategies are derived accordingly. Thus, while learning occurs in both cases, it is treated differently. Often, deriving actively adaptive policies is technically very difficult, which prevents it being more commonly applied.

Key features of both passive and active adaptive management are:

Iterative decision-making (evaluating results and adjusting actions on the basis of what has been learned)
Feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...

between monitoring and decisions (learning)
Explicit characterization of system uncertainty through multi-model inference
Bayesian inference
Bayesian inference
In statistics, Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference. It is often used in science and engineering to determine model parameters, make predictions about unknown variables, and to perform model selection...
Embracing risk
Risk
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...

and uncertainty as a way of building understanding

Adaptive management is particularly applicable for systems in which learning via experimentation is impractical. However, any one of five process failures can seriously compromise effective adaptive management decision making (Elzinga et al. 1998; Alana & Michael, 2009):

The monitoring is never completed.
The monitoring data are not analyzed and cannot ensure it's definitely accurate.
The analyzed results are not conclusive.
The analyzed results (Boormann et al. 1999).

History

The use of adaptive management techniques can be traced back to peoples from ancient civilisations. For example, the Yap people of Micronesia have been using adaptive management techniques to sustain high population densities in the face of resource scarcity for thousands of years (Falanruw 1984). In using these techniques, the Yap people have altered their environment creating, for example, coastal mangrove depressions and seagrass meadows to support fishing and termite resistant wood (Stankey and Shinder 1997).

The origin of the adaptive management concept can be traced back to ideas of scientific management pioneered by Frederick Taylor in the early 1900s (Haber 1964). While the term ‘adaptive management’ evolved in natural resource management workshops through decision makers, managers and scientists focussing on building simulation models to uncover key assumptions and uncertainties (Bormann et al. 1999).

Two ecologists at The University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

, C.S Holling (1978) and C.J Walters (1986) further developed the adaptive management approach as they distinguished between passive and adaptive management practice. Kai Lee, notable Princeton physicist, expanded upon the approach in the late 1970s and early 1980s while pursuing a post-doctorate degree at UC Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

. The approach was further developed at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, while C.S. Holling was director of the Institute. In 1992, Hilbourne described three learning models for federal land managers, around which adaptive management approaches could be developed, these are reactive, passive and active.

Adaptive management has probably been most frequently applied in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

and North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, initially applied in fishery

Fishery

Generally, a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats,...

management, but received more broad application in the 1990s and 2000s. One of the most successful applications of adaptive management has been in the area of waterfowl harvest management in North America, most notably for the mallard

Mallard

The Mallard , or Wild Duck , is a dabbling duck which breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand and Australia....

(Johnson et al., 1993; Nichols et al., 2007).

Adaptive management in a conservation project and program context can trace its roots back to at last the early 1990s, with the establishment of the Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) in 1989. BSP was a USAID-funded consortium of WWF, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and World Resources Institute (WRI). Its Analysis and Adaptive Management Program sought to understand the conditions under which certain conservation strategies were most effective and to identify lessons learned across conservation projects. When BSP ended in 2001, TNC and Foundations of Success (FOS, a non-profit which grew out of BSP) continued to actively work in promoting adaptive management for conservation projects and programs. The approaches used included Conservation by Design (TNC) and Measures of Success (FOS).

In 2004, the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) – which includes several former BSP members – developed a common set of standards and guidelines for applying adaptive management to conservation projects and programs.

Adaptive Management in Environmental Practices

Applying adaptive management in a conservation project or program involves the integration of project/program design, management, and monitoring to systematically test assumptions in order to adapt and learn. The three components of adaptive management in environmental practice are:

Testing Assumptions is about systematically trying different actions to achieve a desired outcome. It is not, however, a random trial-and-error process. Rather, it involves using knowledge about the specific site to pick the best known strategy, laying out the assumptions behind how that strategy will work, and then collecting monitoring data to determine if the assumptions hold true.

Adaptation involves changing assumptions and interventions to respond to new or different information obtained through monitoring and project experience.

Learning is about explicitly documenting a team’s planning and implementation processes and its successes and failures for internal learning as well as learning across the conservation community. This learning enables conservation practitioners to design and manage projects better and avoid some of the perils others have encountered (Stankey et al. 2005).Learning about a managed system is only useful in ccases where management decisions are repeated (Rout et al. 2009).

Application of Adaptive Management to Environmental Projects and Programs

Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation lay out 5 main steps to an adaptive management project cycle (see Figure 1). The Open Standards represent a compilation and adaptation of best practices and guidelines across several fields and across several organizations within the conservation community. Since the release of the initial Open Standards (updated in 2007), thousands of project teams from conservation organizations (e.g., TNC, Rare, and WWF), local conservation groups, and donors alike have begun applying these Open Standards to their work. In addition, several CMP members have developed training materials and courses to help apply the Standards.

Some recent write-ups of adaptive management in conservation include: wildlife protection (SWAP, 2008), forests ecosystem protection (CMER, 2010), coastal protection and restoration (LACPR, 2009), natural resource management (water, land and soil), species conservation especially, fish conservation from overfishing (FOS, 2007) and climate change (DFG, 2010). In addition, some other examples follow:

In 2006-2007, FOS worked with The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to develop an evaluation system help NFWF gauge impact across the various coral reef habitat and species conservation projects;
In 2007, FOS worked with the Ocean Conservancy (OC) to evaluate the effectiveness of this Scorecard in helping to end overfishing in domestic fisheries.
Between1999-2004, FOS worked for WWF’s Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy (AREAS) Program to ensure that Asian elephants and rhinos thrive in secure habitats within their historical range and in harmony with people.
The Department of Fish and Game (DFG) is developing and implementing adaptation strategies to help protect, restore and manage fish and wildlife, with the understanding that some level of climate change will occur and that it will have profound effects on Massachusetts habitats.
The Adaptive Management program was created by CMR to provide science-based recommendations and technical information to assist the Forest Practices Board. In April 2010, the Forest Practices Adaptive Management Annual Science Conference was held in Washington.
In 2009, The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration (LACPR) Technical Report has been developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) according to adaptive management process.

Tools and Guidance for Conservation Practitioners

The following resources offer guidance on designing and planning conservation projects (Steps 1 and 2 of the Open Standards), as well as more general guidance on the adaptive management process.

Step 1 Conceptualize (Describing the Project’s Context)

IUCN-CMP Unified Classifications of Direct Threats and Conservation Actions: A standardized taxonomy of direct threats to biodiversity and conservation actions that helps conservation teams speak a common language across projects to facilitate learning.
Using Conceptual Models to Document a Situation Analysis: A guide that explains how to build a conceptual model to clearly portray what drives threats to biodiversity within a project site.
Instruction Manual for completing Step 1 of the WWF Standards – Define: An online course manual to walk users through the conceptualization phase of the adaptive management project cycle.

Step 2 Plan Actions and Monitoring

Using Results Chains to Improve Strategy Effectiveness: A guide that explains how to build results chains – a tool for clarifying a project team’s assumptions about how their actions will contribute to reducing threats and conserving biodiversity.
Instruction Manual for completing Step 2 of the WWF Standards – Design: An online course manual used by WWF’s Online Campus to walk users through the actions and monitoring plan phase of the adaptive management project cycle.

Adaptive Management in other Practices as a Tool for Sustainability

Adaptive management as a systematic process for improving environmental management policies and practices is the traditional application however, the adaptive management framework can also be applied to other sectors seeking sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

solutions such as business and community development.Adaptive management as a strategy emphasizes the need to change with the environment and to learn from doing. Adaptive management applied to ecosystems makes overt sense when considering ever changing environmental conditions. The flexibility and constant learning of an adaptive management approach is also a logical application for organizations seeking sustainability methodologies.
Businesses pursuing sustainability strategies would employ an adaptive management framework to ensure that the organization is prepared for the unexpected and geared for change. By applying an adaptive management approach the business begins to function as an integrated system adjusting and learning from a multi-faceted network of influences not just environmental but also, economic and social (Dunphy, Griffths, & Benn, 2007). The goal of any sustainable organization guided by adaptive management principals must be to engage in active learning to direct change towards sustainability (Verine, 2008). This “learning to manage by managing to learn”(Bormann BT, 1993) will be at the core of a sustainable business strategy.

Sustainable community development requires recognition of the relationship between environment, economics and social instruments within the community. An adaptive management approach tocreating sustainable community policy and practicealso emphasizes the connection and confluence of those elements. Looking into the cultural mechanisms which contribute to a community value system often highlights the parallel to adaptive management practices, “with [an] emphasis on feedback learning, and its treatment of uncertainty and unpredictability”(Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2000).Often this is the result of indigenous knowledge and historical decisions ofsocieties deeply rooted in ecological practices. (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2000). By applying an adaptive management approach to community development the resulting sysems can develop built in sustainable practice as explained by the Environmental Advisory Council (2002), “active adaptive management views policy as a set of experiments designed to reveal processes that build or sustain resilience. It requires, and facilitates, a social context with flexible and open institutions and multi-level governance systems that allow forlearning and increase adaptive capacity without foreclosing future development options” ( p. 1121).

In an ever changing world, adaptive management appeals to many practices seeking sustainable solutions by offering a framework for decision making that proposes to support a sustainable future which, “conserves and nurtures the diversity — of species, of human opportunity, of learning institutions and of economic options”(The Environmental Advisory Council, 2002, p. 1121).

General Resources

Information and guidance on the entire adaptive management process is available from CMP members’ websites and other online sources:

The Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation provide general guidance and principles for good adaptive management in conservation.
Miradi Adaptive Management Software for Conservation Projects is user friendly software developed through a joint venture between CMP and Benetech. The software walks conservation teams through each step of the Open Standards.
Foundations of Success (FOS) Resources and Training web pages list reference materials on adaptive management and monitoring and evaluation, as well as information about online or in-person courses in adaptive management.
The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Action Planning (CAP) Resources page includes detailed guidance and tools for implementing the CAP adaptive management process. See also TNC’s CAP Standards.
The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Living Landscapes page contains extensive guidance materials on WCS’s approach to adaptive management.
WWF's web page on the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management contains detailed guidance, resources, and tools for the steps in WWF's adaptive management process.
Measures of Success: Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects, written in 1998 by Richard Margoluis and Nick Salafsky, was one of the first detailed manuals about applying adaptive management to conservation projects. Also available in Spanish.
Foundations of Success (FOS) http://www.fosonline.org/projects/areas-evaluation web pages list Asian Rhino and Elephant Program Evaluation in 2004.
Foundations of Success (FOS) http://www.fosonline.org/projects/nfwf-coral-fund web pages list National Fish & Wildlife Foundation’s Coral Fund in 2007.
Foundations of Success (FOS)http://www.fosonline.org/projects/ocean-conservancy-scorecard web pages list Ocean Conservancy’s Overfishing Scorecard in 2007.
The Department of Fish and Game(DFG)http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/climatechange.htm web pages list Adapting to Climate Change programme.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers http://lacpr.usace.army.mil/%5CFinalReport%5CVol%20IV%5CAdaptive%20Management.pdf web pages list Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Final Technical Report in 2009.
Washington State Department of Natural Resource(CMR) http://www.dnr.wa.gov/BusinessPermits/Topics/FPAdaptiveManagementProgram/Pages/fp_am_program.aspx web pages list Forest Practices Adaptive Management Program in 2010.