Adaptive management is a concept that encourages ecosystem decision makers to move forward with available information and learn from the results of their choices. It was developed to address the problems of natural resource managers, who typically face a myriad of variables as they make decisions affecting the environment. Gathering and digesting huge amounts of information to eliminate uncertainty often leads only to more questions, which lead to more information gathering, more questions…and, ultimately, deferred decisions.

 
In contrast, adaptive management mobilizes action instead of deferring decisions to collect more data. “We’ll learn more from doing something and monitoring what we do than from collecting more generic data,” said Rick Skaggs, senior program manager for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Battelle-managed Department of Energy facility. The approach is like an experiment. Users analyze available information, decide, act, monitor their actions and, finally, evaluate the results. There is some risk, but Skaggs believes there’s greater risk in delaying decisions and getting caught in an endless cycle of information gathering. “Whether the actions succeed or fail, the information gained is valuable to the decision maker because it’s targeted toward improving future decisions. The adaptive management approach triggers the iterative process of acting, learning, and leveraging what is learned, rather than just investing in data.”

Decision makers have not had the tools to effectively implement adaptive management principles in a systematic way. To address this, researchers at PNNL recently designed the Adaptive Management Platform (AMP), a set of tools initially created to support salmon recovery decisions in the Columbia River Basin. Tools include computerized resources for analyzing decisions, tradeoffs, and uncertainties; methods to track analysis and automatically calibrate and link models; and techniques to review, display, and share data. This toolset benefits users in three ways:

• Accountability—Decision makers become more accountable as they articulate tradeoffs involved in the many conflicting objectives that surround environmental planning decisions.
• Adaptability—Users can employ their own models instead of being locked into pre-established ones.
• Accessibility—Decision makers can share what they’ve learned on their project with other users, regionally and locally, thus expanding the usefulness of the information.

AMP has been implemented as a prototype for the Washington State Department of Transportation, Tulalip Tribe, and Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission under the designation of Integrated Natural Resources Decision System (INRDS). INRDS helps balance the competing goals of allocating resources for salmon habitat restoration and protection with the impacts of storm water management, culvert removal, and road improvement.

For more information on AMP, contact Rick Skaggs, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, at (509) 376-3351, richard.skaggs@pnl.gov.