Adaptive management

I've repeatedly pointed out that as conservation biologists we often have to make management choices before we're sure that they will have the effect. This is especially true when where trying to manage something as complex and dynamic as a large ecosystem. I've also pointed out that the means we have to be prepared to make mistakes. But let's think about the logic here for a moment, using south Florida as an example.

• Those involved in developing the plan for south Florida clearly think that, for example, encouraging flooded agriculture (e.g., rice farming) in areas south of Lake Okeechobee will reduce soil subsidence and improve sheet flow and water storage capacity.

• Suppose they are wrong. Suppose that their incentive plans work and lead to substantial amounts of those areas being used for rice cultivation, but soil subsidence continues and sheet flow and water storage capacity are not improved. What then?

• Our hypothesis was wrong. Let me say that again. Our hypothesis was wrong.

• So we've learned something about the system. We can now use our improved understanding to try a different approach to reducing soil subsidence.

What I've just described is an example of adaptive management. It's a simple idea, really. Adaptive management is simply the idea that management actions are like experiments. They are tests of hypotheses about how the system we're managing works. So if we monitor the results of those tests, we can confirm or reject our hypotheses and improve our understanding of the system while we manage it. We don't have to wait until all of the answers are in. We can gather some of them while we proceed (Figure 4).

Figure 4: A conceptual diagram of the process of adaptive management (from [2]).