2. Management situation
The management situation for adaptive management can be
framed in terms of resources that are responsive to management
interventions but subject to uncertainties about the impacts of
those interventions. Applications of adaptive management
typically involve the following general features (Fig. 1):
* The natural resource system being managed is dynamic,
changing through time in response to environmental conditions
and management actions that vary through time. These factors
can influence resource status and the ecological processes by
which resource changes are realized.
* Environmental variation is only partially predictable, and sometimes
is unrecognizable. Variation in environmental conditions
induces stochasticity in biological and ecological processes, which
leads in turn to unpredictability in system behaviors.
* The resource system is subjected to periodic and potential
management interventions that potentially vary over time.
Management actions influence system behaviors either directly or
indirectly, by altering system states such as resource size, or
influencing ecological processes such as mortality and movement,
or altering vital rates such as reproduction and recruitment rates.
* Effective management is limited by uncertainty about the nature
of resource processes and the influence of management on them.
Reducing this uncertainty can lead to improved management
actions.
The fact that management, environmental variation, and
resource status are expressed through time provides an opportunity
to improve management by learning over the course of the
management timeframe.