Introducing a practice perspective on monitoring for adaptive management

Abstract

Adaptive management (AM) is one of the most prominent ways ecologists contribute to ecosystem management, policy, and planning. AM treats management actions as experiments to monitor and learn from, creating a central role for ecologists in constructing the monitoring programs intended to guide learning. Yet, ecologists have found monitoring for AM challenging. They face a daunting series of dilemmas: How to produce monitoring programs that are responsive to management goals and provide clear signals for action, in ever-changing social-ecological contexts, and in light of impending deadlines, limited funding and available skills? The applied ecological literature has so far struggled to acco..