“Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs. Its most effective form–”active” adaptive management–employs management programs that are designed to experimentally compare selected policies or practices, by evaluating alternative hypotheses about the system being managed.” (BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations, 2011).
Within an AM approach there is an explicit acknowledgement of uncertainties and knowledge gaps about the response of the system to management actions. Reducing these uncertainties (e.g. learning) becomes one objective of management. It should be noted that AM is a deliberate process, not ad-hoc or simply reactionary. However, flexibility in the approach is important to allow the creativity that is crucial to dealing with uncertainty and change.