Adaptive Management Strategy

Successful adaptive management programs bring forest managers, scientists, and citizens together in the learning process. The concept of adaptive management portends that information highly valuable for increasing management effectiveness can be obtained by carefully documenting management activities and results, as well as relationships and trends in resource conditions.

In the context of the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment, adaptive management is being applied to the development of a monitoring and research strategy that targets key information needs associated with implementation of the ROD, and emphasizes integrated and collaborative information gathering, synthesis, and evaluation processes.

The Adaptive Management Strategy was developed over a five-year period. Supporting and associated documents include a publication in Volume 64 of the Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (Manley et. al. 2000, pp. 139 to 152) entitled "Monitoring ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada: the conceptual model foundation", and Appendix P in Volume 4 of the FEIS, which details the vulnerability analysis used to identify and prioritize species of concern.