Topic: Expanded possibilities for adaptive management on Federal lands

Issue: The goal of management on Federal lands is to create and maintain sustainable ecosystems that can support human needs indefinitely. To increase chances that goals can be met requires increasing knowledge of societal values, ecological capacity, and their interactions through more effective learning and adapting. Traditionally, scientists have been responsible for creating new formal knowledge about ecosystems. But science organizations do not have the resources necessary to develop the amount and kinds of information required by today's greatly expanded scales of geography, time, and complexity. Partner-ships with managers and citizens therefore may be required to increase effectiveness of learning and adapting.

Findings:

Concepts of adaptive management are confused. A wide range of definitions of adaptive management now exist, such as simply completing the planning-doing-monitoring-evaluating cycle, local public participation, and fiddling (trying new approaches in an unstructured way). We define adaptation as the process of responding positively to change, and adaptive management as an approach to managing complex natural systems that builds on common sense and learning from experience to include experimenting, monitoring, and adjusting practices based on what was learned. We argue that adaptive management should focus on accelerating learning and adapting through new partnerships, structured learning, and by changing management and research institutions.

New citizen­manager­scientist partnerships are essential to learn to achieve sustainable ecosystems. Society no longer accepts expert-based learning and decisionmaking and segregating learning by scientists from doing by managers. We are optimistic that creative solutions exist and that they will arise from interactions of diverse manager, scientist, and citizen groups. New roles for citizens are needed to relate management to societal values, bring in fresh ideas, and challenge existing institutions. New roles and responsibilities for scientists and managers also need to be developed and tried.

Don't wait for a cookbook. People learn and adapt in many ways, and the process of learning and adapting must also evolve over time. What we can do is define a range of learning and adapting for the diversity of ecosystems and possible manager-scientist-citizen partnerships. We are advocating that adaptive management become an expanded focus on learning-and then on adapting to changes in the understanding of society's needs and wants and of ecological capacity.

We can no longer afford reactive learning. Agencies have mostly been learning reactively, where external influences dominate decisions. Learning can be accelerated by designing management projects to produce knowledge along with other resource objectives. Learning that compares a range of management approaches simultaneously, has the goal of speeding learning to create, over time, a wider range of acceptable approaches.

We must assume that a variety of pathways can meet a given objective. People must design and test a wide range of pathways to achieve the objectives set by the current generation and to provide future generations with better choices. For example, side-by-side prescriptions following separate pathways, established and documented today, will be especially valuable to future generations.

Making management more experimental is not an attempt to convert managers into researchers. We suggest that managers, in partnership with scientists and citizens, apply some science-based learning tools to answer questions that are balanced across critical manager, scientist, and citizen issues. Experimental management compares alternative strategies, each of which can reasonably be expected to achieve the same objective for the area being managed; permits a complex of management practices; and uses statistical tools where possible (replication, random allocation of treatments, long­term monitoring).

Many small-scale management experiments have been started, but some important questions can only be addressed at large scales. Many manager-driven comparisons of alternate stand-scale prescriptions have been designed and implemented (e.g., Mt. Hebo restoration project, variable-density thinning study), especially in adaptive management areas. But many environmental, social, and organizational dynamics can not be measured at stand scales and these dynamics can overwhelm stand-scale studies. Because few examples of management experiments exist at large scales, their development is challenging. Assessments and Forest Plan revisions and amendments can add learning objectives and approaches to begin effective learning at this scale.

The purpose of adaptive management is to expand decision space over time. Rapid learning among citizens, managers, and scientists, and successful adaptation is perhaps the only method available to expand the range of alternatives available to managers and society to increase the condition where societal values and ecological capacity are simultaneously met. Decision space is increased by finding new creative solutions, such as increasing compatibility between resource uses and developing management disturbances to mimic natural disturbances.

Lead Scientists (and Professionals):

Bernard T. Bormann (PNW)

Jon R. Martin (Ranger, Orleans RD, Six Rivers NF)

Frederic H. Wagner (Utah State University)

Patrick G. Cunningham (PNW)

Martha H. Brookes (PNW)

Collaborators:

Paul Friesema (Northwestern University))

Gene Wood (Clemson University)

Jim Alegria (BLM OR State Office)

Joy Berg (WO)

John Henshaw (National Forest Foundation)

Jim Furnish (Supervisor, Siuslaw NF)

Jerry McIlwain (PNW)

John Gordon (Yale University)

William Sexton (WO)

Robert Tarrant PNW-retired)

Don Gonzales (Ranger, Hebo RD, Siuslaw NF)

Gordie Reeves (PNW)

The Coast Range Provincial Advisory Committee

To the extent that more effective approaches to learning and adapting through new partnerships are required to meet agency goals and mandates and public expectations, this research is essential. Decision makers in Federal land-management and research agencies have benefited from a clear synthesis of what is known about adaptive management and from having a wider range of alternative approaches to choose between. Science organizations have benefited by beginning to see new roles and opportunities. Citizen collaborators are beginning to see a way for their ideas to be implemented in management and research.

Priority:

This research touches all Station priorities by seeking to alter our relationship with manager and citizen partners to speed learning by partners and improve learning by applying aspects of the scientific method (learning how to learn is more valuable to partners than only hearing what researchers have learned). If a single priority must be cited, it is probably "Framework for integrated management", especially when the uncertainty in all alternatives recognized, and that ultimately the only way to significantly reduce that uncertainty is to compare multiple approaches in a structured "management experiment". This is also an example of "Applying science to policy", especially sharing our understanding of how to learn with new learning partners. Creating manager-citizen-scientist learning partnerships is perhaps the only way to begin to integrate, through action on the ground, "Biophysical, social, and economic processes."