Adaptive Management

Question 1

What does adaptive mean in relation to animal fitness?

Answer 1

Being successful
o Recognizes when change is coming.
o Diagnoses the meaning of change.
o Makes a plan.
o Put the plan into action.
o An adaptive person learns.

Question 2

What are the three types of learning in adaptive management

Answer 2

1. Tradition
2. Trial and Error
3. Scientific Experiment

Question 3

Define traditional adaptive management

Answer 3

The transfer of knowledge
 Myth, lessons from elders, parental guidance, taboos, formal ceremonies, internships, classroom.

Question 4

Define trial and error adaptive management

Answer 4

On-the-job training, expert opinion, “school of hard knocks”

Question 5

Define scientific experiment adaptive management

Answer 5

This method is considered the best way to gain explicit knowledge in Western cultures because it is objective explicit, replicable, and therefore is valid anywhere anytime.

Question 6

Explain the characteristics of Traditional management

Answer 6

Speed of learning: Slow
Resistance to change: High
Ease of teaching to others: Easy
Suitable to stable situations: Best
Suitable to complex situations: Poor
Benefits: High
Costs: Low

Question 7

Explain the characteristics of Trial and Error management

Answer 7

Speed of learning: Faster
Resistance to change: Lower
Ease of teaching to others: Hard
Suitable to stable situations: Not Good
Suitable to complex situations: Very Poor
Benefits: Unpredictable
Costs: High

Question 8

Explain the characteristics of Scientific Experiment management

Answer 8

Speed of learning: Fastest
Resistance to change: Lowest
Ease of teaching to others: Easiest
Suitable to stable situations: Easiest
Suitable to complex situations: Best
Benefits: Highest
Costs: High

Question 9

Define adaptive management

Answer 9

The process of treating management as an experiment
 By doing this, the practicability and importance of trial and error are added to the rigor and explicitness of the scientific experiment, producing learning that is both relevant and valid.

Question 10

What is most important in active adaptive management?

Answer 10

Analyzing feedback in order to chose the best policy options

Question 11

Key Concepts for Adaptive Management

Answer 11

• Conceptualize
• Plan actions and monitoring.
• Implement actions and monitoring.
• Analyze, use, and adapt.
• Capture and share learning.
• Need a hypothesis, peer review, a population size, and the ability to replicate work.

Question 12

What are examples of ecosystem goals?

Answer 12

Sustaining a healthy hardwood forest that allows:
 Timber harvest.
 Outdoor recreation.
 Wildlife habitat.
 Biodiversity conservation.
o The desired aspect of this ecosystem might be a large and widely dispersed late-successional stands of native hardwoods.

Question 13

What is the Glen Canyon Dam and complications that arose from its construction?

Answer 13

Impounds water in the upper Colorado River.
 Forms massive Lake Powell reservoir (second largest US reservoir) and generates hydropower.
o Regulates water in the Grand Canyon National Park.
o Causes depletion of sand bars and similar structures.
o Changes the water temperature – affecting fish and aquatic invertebrates.

Question 14

Explain the Adaptive management of Glen Canyon Dam.

Answer 14

 In response to new federal laws in the 1990’s the Glen Canyon Dam was required to be operated as an adaptive management program.
 The Grand Canyon Protection Act (1992) required “adaptive management” in rates of water release.
 To improve its ecological and recreational values.

Question 15

Why are the presence of dam decreasing?

Answer 15

 People are recognizing the cost of dams.
 714 dams have been removed in the US.
* The removal is not easy.
 There are legal complexities to damn removal.
* Existing uses (flood control, irrigation water, lake-related recreation)
* Conflict with expected advantages (establishing fish, recreational, and aesthetic uses)
* Surface water is often diverted.

Question 16

What is an example of how surface water is often diverted?

Answer 16

Interbasin water transfer: water is moved from one watershed to another.
 Taking water to where it is scarce.
 Causing water pollution and water loss in the original rivers and lakes.

Question 17

What are estuaries

Answer 17

productive ecosystems in bays and rivers where fresh river water mixes with seawater

Question 18

How was adaptive management affected estuaries?

Answer 18

• Breeding grounds for birds, fish, and shellfish.
• Decreased fresh water increases the water’s salinity.

Question 19

How has adaptive management affected San Francisco Bay?

Answer 19

In San Francisco Bay, over 60% of freshwater has been diverted for irrigation and municipal use:
* This has devastated the bay:
* Fish populations have disappeared or been reduced.
* Tidal wetlands have been reduced by 92%.

Question 20

Define the Idaho elk management in relation to adaptive management steps

Answer 20

Management Goals:
 Managing Idaho elk populations.

Methods:
 The active adaptive management process for elk in Idaho used 11
different management units (hatched areas on the map), comprising 10% of the state’s land area.
Examples: heavy hunting, little hunting, moderate hunting, and hunting licenses.

What did they learn:
 After 6 years of implementing the active adaptive management experiment, data showed that higher harvest rates improved calf/cow ratios and improved overall recruitment to the populations, indicating that harvest mortality was compensatory.

Question 21

What is passive adaptive management?

Answer 21

 Possible skipping the construction of elaborate models and choosing sites for treatments non-randomly.
 Actions might be selected based on more immediate needs, such as legal requirements, court decisions, or economic requirements.
 Examples:
* Northwest Forest Management Plan.
* FEMAT (Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team)

Question 22

Define the Northwest Forest Plan management in relation to passive adaptive management steps

Answer 22

 Objective: protection of late-successional forests, sustainability of the logging industry
 FEMAT-Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team was created by Clinton in 1993–to forge an interagency ecosystem management plan.
 The plan explicitly commits federal land management agencies to use adaptive management as a fundamental element of their programming.

Question 23

Define documented trial and error

Answer 23

Elaborate adaptive management like these examples is highly desirable, but – seldom accomplished.

Trial-and-error learning can also resemble adaptive management, as long as the learners:
* collect data, analyze them objectively, and share their learning with others.

Question 24

List conditions necessary for adaptive management to work:

Answer 24

 Ecological Conditions
 Large differences
 Collect data-easy and inexpensive.
 Results develop quickly.
 Socioeconomic conditions
 Agreement on outcomes
 Interest
 Agree to facts.
 Institutional conditions
 Committed to learning.
 Funding and leadership are stable.