ADAPTIVE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Kornfeld, Itzchak 6/8/2014
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ADAPTIVE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN COMPLEX..., 26-WTR Nat....
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26-WTR Nat. Resources & Env’t 29
Natural Resources & Environment
Winter, 2012
Feature
ADAPTIVE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN COMPLEX SY STEMS
Itzchak E. Kornfelda1
Copyright © 2012 by American Bar Association; Itzchak E. Kornfeld
What are the systemic implications of saving endangered species, reallocating fresh water, or limiting emissions of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere? Regulatory agencies and environmental and conservation communities can generally provide
qualitative assessments. However, deeper critical analysis is required to more accurately determine the extent to which efforts
to affect these ecosystems are working and to diagnose why some actions succeed while others do not.In recent years,there has
been a convergence of thinking among regulatory agencies and environmental and conservation organizations as to how to
better assess, plan, and implement these actions. One method that has emerged is adaptive resource management (ARM), also
known as adaptive management. ARM is a structured, iterative process of optimal decision making in the face of uncertainty. It
is aimed at reducing ambiguity over time via systematic monitoring, focused on one or more resource objectives, that
accumulates data required to improve future management. Ecosystem adaptive management is based on a learning process
designed to improve long-run management outcomes. However, the ARM process must meet the challenge of achieving the
proper equilibrium between enlarging one’s knowledge base and making governance decisions aimed at achieving an optimal
short-term outcome based on contemporary knowledge.
ARM uses a number of tools in addressing a resource system. These tools, scientific and social processes, are the vital
components of the ARM process. They include: (1) management linked to appropriate temporal and spatial scales; (2)
management focused on statistical power and controls; (3) computer models to build synthesis and an embodied ecological
consensus; (4) ecological consensus-building to evaluate strategic alternatives; and (5) communication of alternatives to
politicians for negotiation of a selection.
If ARM is done correctly and transparently, particularly by government agencies, the democratic process is the winner, since
the methodology is open to all stakeholders. Indeed, when a given objective or goal must be accomplished, and the ARM
process is open to all of the impacted stakeholders-- each of whom is subsequently represented at the table--the collection of
ideas and approaches is filtered through public discourse, with the remaining ideas incorporated into the solution or remedy.
Accordingly, in order to be successful, the ARM process needs to maintain political open-mindedness, create an open and
cooperative process,and rationally employ the scientific method in its decision-making analysis.
This article defines the ARM process and provides a historical framework for its development, organization, and process for
cooperative integration of natural resources conservation. The article will then address the methodologies central to develop ing
new ARM institutions and strategies and to harmonizing scientific hypotheses and resultant field studies. Finally, this article
will focus on the ARM process in practice, using as examples the Bureau of Reclamation’s monitoring and research
information for the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park, and the Everglades ARM.
What Is Adaptive Resource Management (ARM)?

When resource management agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, or the Bureau of
Reclamation, are required to make regulatory or policy decisions, they have employed a multiplicity of approaches that
encompassed diverse levels and types of scientific data, political, economic, and social concerns, and historical precedence.
However, these time-honored decision-making approaches frequently failed to realize ecosystem management objectives for
complicated problems in large, complex systems such as the Colorado River Basin or the Everglades. In contrast, the July 2,
2011, ruptured Exxon-Mobil pipeline underlying the Yellowstone River in Montana demonstrated that conventional
decision-making approaches can be comparatively successful at tackling relatively uncomplicated problems in discrete
ecological systems.
Complex systems, however, require an approach to resource management that is grounded in and admits of uncertainty,such as
the modeling of an aquifer or analyzing climate change. First used in the 1970s, ARM is a methodology for dealing with
complex systems like ecosystems. In essence, ARM involves an iterative process whose practitioners recognize that in order to
understand,manage,and regulate a complexenvironmental or resource system, one must fully understand it (i.e., gain a holis tic
knowledge about a systemand comprehend its responses to various stressors or inputs). By holistic, I mean the aggregate of the
variables or properties that make up a particular system(e.g., a watershed, which includes the physical, biological, chemica l,
economic, social, *30 sustainable biodiversity, and other components). Indeed, the systemcannot be determined or explained
by its component parts alone. Rather, the sumof the properties and their interrelationships determines how each part behaves .
Measuring and understanding a system’s responses to changes in variables or properties over time decreases the uncertainty
related to future management decisions. It is akin to building a case, where every new piece of evidence allows one to build a
clearer and more realistic picture of what occurred.
Learning is not simply a byproduct of adaptive resource management. Rather, it is integral to the resource management process
because the ARM process is simply an extension of the scientific method. The scientific method is a means of asking and
answering questions by observing phenomena and undertaking experimentation in order to reproduce the observation. It has
seven steps, which include: (1) inquiry or asking a question (Why does an apple fall froma tree?); (2) performing background
research (examine the phenomenon of why and how the apple falls); (3) forming a hypothesis (an explanation of why the apple
falls); (4) conducting an experiment to test the hypothesis; (5) evaluating the experiment’s outcome or data and examining
whether the data support the hypothesis (i.e., drawing a conclusion); (6) assessing whether the conclusion matches the result
seen, which may necessitate more experimentation; and (7) communicating the result to the wider scientific community and
testing it to see if it can be replicated.
Under the ARM approach, learning more about the systembeing assessed is valued to the degree that increased understanding
helps improve the system‘s long-termperformance. The ARM process recognizes that resource management decisions must be
made even if one does not have all the information one would like to have, or one is not quite certain what the entire suite of
impacts might be. ARM also recognizes that lessons learned and better understanding of the systemgleaned fromthe process
will be feedback into the ARM process for appropriate adjustments. Thus, the ARM process is both a management tool for
achieving resource objectives and a method of inquiry for the discovery of additional information about the resource orsystem
being managed.
Indeed, the process “is an attractive one, promising a way to make decisions in the face of current uncertainty while also
reducing uncertainty over time.” Holly Doremus, Adaptive Management as an Information Problem, 89 N.C. L. REV. 1455,
156-67 (2011). The key concept of adaptive management is that the execution of an objective should assimilate, rather than
follow, learning about the systemto be managed. Id. at 1457. Accordingly, an ARM framework overtly builds in potential for
learning and corrections. Ideally, the process produces a pliant organizational configuration that acclimatizes to change. On e
field that will most likely employ and test the efficacy of the ARM process is global climate change. However, given ARM’s
long-term iterative process, gathering workable results from longitudinal study may take too long, frustrating policy makers
and otherscientists.
Although the ARM process has strong adherents, it also has fervent doubters. It is in the field of climate change that its greatest
doubters are found. Id. One area for skepticism is adaptive management’s implementation.There are questions,at this juncture,
about where the learning ends and the management begins. Moreover, ARM’s requirement for collaboration and adaptive

approaches, as well as its iterative and integrative process, creates ambiguity about how to balance learning and
implementation. So, in enormously complex systems, such as climate change, “in the absence of a clear statement of federal
priorities for sustaining or restoring ecosystems and the minimum level of ecosystem health needed to do so, ecosystem
management has come to mean different things to different people.” U.S. GEN. ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ECOSYSTEM
MANAGEMENT: ADDITIONAL ACTIONS NEEDED TO ADEQUATELY TEST A PROMISINGAPPROACH 38 (1994).
Additionally, in the United States., where science is routinely challenged and ridiculed, the politics and decision -making
dynamics of various stakeholders,including those in government agencies, may well impact the process and impair its efficacy.
Furthermore, the ARM process may cause new accountability conundrums, including affording cover to resource management
agencies that allows them to postpone or delay “imposing politically controversial limits on economic activity.” Id. For
instance, the ARM process might encounter agency bias when economic activity potentially conflicts with environmental or
health safeguards. One example of this conflict is the regulation of Marcellus Shale, a large natural gas reservoir located
primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. Accusations have been made that Pennsylvania’s governor and the state’s
Department of Environmental Protection have favored drillers over drinking water quality. See, e.g., Eliza Griswold, Situation
Normal All Fracked Up, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 20, 2011, at MM44. A second example is the environmental justice plight of
American Indians and the poor. See generally, Carlton Mark Waterhouse, The Past, Present, and Future of Environmental
Justice, and Philomena Kebec, Environmental Justice and the American Indian Bands, Presentations at the Florida A&M
College of Law’s Green Justice for All: International and Comparative Dimensions of Environmental Justice (Nov. 3-4, 2011).
*31 Adaptive Resource Management Case Studies
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). The Everglades, comprising at least half of southern Florida’s
watershed, is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. It commences with the Kissimmee River and the
Fisheating Creek, near Orlando, both of which flow southeastward and discharge into Lake Okeechobee. Designated as a
World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and Wetland of International Importance, the Everglades ecosystem is
home to numerous rare and endangered fauna and flora. The Everglades is a brackish water ecosystemthat includes sawgrass
marshes, tropical hardwood hammocks, cypress swamps, estuarine mangrove forests, pine rockland, and the marine
environment of Florida Bay. Over the past century, human activity, including sugar agriculture and other industrie s, has
considerably altered the Everglades ecosystem in south Florida. Today, more than 1.5 million acres today are riddled with
exotic and invasive plants and over 1 million acres are contaminated with mercury. Moreover, 68 plant and animal species are
threatened or endangered, and populations of wading birds have declined by some 95 percent. NATIONAL RESEARCH
COUNCIL (NRC), ADAPTIVE MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE EVERGLADES
RESTORATION PLAN 1 (National Academies Press, 2003).
Responding to the massive deterioration of the Everglades ecosystem, Congress enacted the Water Resources Development
Act in 1992 (WRDA). WRDA authorized an across-the-board review of the Central and South Florida Project. Its main goal
was to examine the restoration potential for the Everglades ecosystem. The review resulted in the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan, probably the largest ecosystemrestoration endeavor in the world. The restoration will entail enhancing and
modifying the systemof canals, levees, and water-control structures carved into the Everglades over the past century, in order
to reestablish south Florida’s ecosystem. The restoration plan’s “fundamental premise ... is that restoring the historical
hydrologic regime to the remaining wetlands will reverse declines in many native species and biological communities.” Id. at 2.
Two agencies have been designated to implement the plan: the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. To date these agencies have yet to establish a timeline. Army Corps of Engineers, Central Everglades
Planning Project (Dec. 2011), www.evergladesplan.org/docs/fs_cepp_ dec_2011.pdf. However, to place the CERP’s ARM in
proper context, it is important to stress that human activity over the past 100 years has wrought incalculable damage upon the
Everglades ecosystem. Indeed, the extent of the destruction of this once vibrant ecosystem is unimaginable, and it will take
decades to restore it.
The CERP includes a Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP), which is grounded in contemporary scientific theory as well as

ARM. Unfortunately, the CERP’s ARM is seriously flawed because of its underdeveloped feedback mechanism.
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, at 51. Recognizing this problem when it studied the ARM, the NRC
recommended three changes needed in the CERP’s ARM: (1) adaptive management must not simply mean “flexibility in
decision making under uncertainty.” When considering a variety of possible strategies, actions should be taken that are
informative, reversible, and less uncertain or at least robust to uncertainties; (2) institutional mechanisms should be created and
sustained to ensure that scientific information is available and accessible to the decision-making process; and (3) opportunities
for flexibility in design should be identified and operational features of the restoration plan components should be assessed to
help prioritize monitoring and assessment activities.
The NRC panel also concluded that the “restoration goals, objectives, and targets for the Everglades are inadequately defined
and are not reconciled with the large-scale forces ofchange in south Florida.” Id. The NRC urged that “[t]argets should be set as
soon as possible that define the extent of compatibility between the built and natural systems and that address possible conflicts
between ecological restoration and other policies, statutes, and social demands.” Id. Additionally, “[r]esearch and monitoring
must continue to better conceptualize and describe current conditions in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. Continued support
and coordination of hydrologic and ecological monitoring and coordination among them are important components of
monitoring and assessment. Integrated modeling is the best method for extrapolating findings over large areas and long
periods.” Id.
Given the panel’s criticism of the ill-defined goals and targets, its recommendations are tepid. For example, declaring that
“[t]argets should be set as soon as possible” leaves too much roomfor dalliance. Instead, concrete, prompt deadlines should be
set, if the ARM process is to come to fruition. Similarly, the assertion that “continued support and coordination of hydrolog ic
and ecological monitoring ...” is just too “squishy.” The foregoing terminology provides no force or impetus to get things done.
Each of the stakeholders, in a concerted effort, must push for continual progress though hard and fast dates. Of course,
deadlines must be realistic--establishing hard and fast dates or targets does not mean that they will be achieved. See, e.g., the
Clean Water Act.
*34 Adaptive Management of Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River Ecosystem
The Glen Canyon Dam is situated on the Colorado River in northern Arizona’s Coconino County. The dam was constructed
pursuant to the Colorado River Storage Project Act of 1956. Operated and managed by the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), it
was completed in 1963 and began operation in 1966. Glen Canyon spans the Colorado River south of the Arizona-Utah border
and forms Lake Powell, which stretches upstreamfor 186 miles. Downstream, the Colorado passes through a 15-mile stretch of
Glen Canyon and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area into Marble Canyon at Lee’s Ferry, where it enters Grand Canyon
National Park. The river then flows almost 300 miles through the Grand Canyon, before it arrives at Lake Mead, which is
impounded behind Hoover Dam, 35 miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada. NAT’L ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
DOWNSTREAM: ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT OF GLEN CANYON DAM AND THE COLORADO RIVER
ECOSYSTEM (1999)[hereinafter DOWNSTREAM].
The dam’s construction engendered a huge wave of opposition. Indeed, as early as 1963, when the dam was built, David
Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and founder of the Wilderness Society, argued that “Hoover, Parker, and
Davis dams already exist and control the river adequately; they could probably continue to do so until Lake Mead is silted in
completely, perhaps two hundred years fromnow.” ELIOT PORTER, THE PLACE NO ONE KNEW: GLEN CANYON ON
THE COLORADO (1963).
To “protect, mitigate adverse impacts to, and improve the values for which Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon
National Recreation Area were established, including, but not limited to natural and cultural resources and visitor use,”
Congress enacted the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-575, 106 Stat. 4669 (Oct. 30, 1992), which called
for an adaptive management (AM) program focused “on the Colorado River Ecosystem.” Strategic Plan, Glen Canyon
Adaptive Management Program (Final Draft, Aug. 17, 2001) [hereinafter Strategic Plan]. The Act mandated a Glen Canyon
Dam environmental impact statement (EIS) and required the secretary of the interior to undertake a long -term monitoring of

dam operation impacts on “resources of the Colorado River downstream of Glen Canyon Dam.” § 1804(d).
After extensive public participation and comment, interdisciplinary discussions, and professional analysis of the inputs and
technical data, the final EIS was concluded in March 1995. Nine alternatives were chosen for detailed study by an interagency
Glen Canyon Dam EIS team. These alternatives were selected “to allow the Secretary of the Interior to balance competing
interests and to meet the statutory responsibilities for protecting downstream resources and producing hydropower, and to
protect affected Native American interests.” Strategic Plan at 8. The EIS’s preferred alternative, “Modified Low Fluctuating
Flows,” proposed quantified minimum and maximum flow rates and provided for controlled floods to enhance, protect, and
restore downstreamresources.Downstream at 2.
The EIS “identified a set of expected benefits associated with the preferred alternative, but it also recognized scientific
uncertainties regarding the extent and ways in which those benefits could be achieved. The preferred alternative was and is an
experiment.” Id. As part of the EIS, the BOR proposed a program of “adaptive management” to put the experiment into
operation, and to improve results over time, based on a long-term monitoring and research plan. The AM programand the Glen
Canyon Protection Act also faced a number of legal constraints, including “the compacts, federal laws, court decisions and
decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines collectively known as the ‘Law of the River,’ which apportions the water and
regulates the use and management of the Colorado River among the seven basin states and Mexico,” U.S. Dept. of Interior, The
Law of the River, www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g1000/lawofrvr.html, the Endangered Species Act, and federal trust responsibilities
to Indian tribes. These limitations have been incorporated into the AM over the past 10 years.
The EIS, the ARM, and AM programwere incorporated into a Record of Decision (ROD), which then Secretary of the Interior,
Bruce Babbitt, signed on October 8, 1996. The ROD established an Adaptive Management Program (AMP), which is
composed of five elements: (1) the Adaptive Management Work Group (AMWG); (2) the Technical Work Group (TWG); (3)
the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center; (4) independent review panels; and (5) the appointment by the secretary of
the interior of a designee (today, that person is Anne Castle, the Department of the Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Water and
Science). Each of these entities has its own jurisdiction and members are appointed by either federal or state agencies. For
example, the AMWG is a federal advisory committee. Its members are appointed by the secretary of interior. This group is
represented by each of the cooperating agencies, members fromeach of the Colorado River basin states, environmental groups,
recreation interests,and contractors for federal power from Glen Canyon Dam.
Similarly, the TWG is a subcommittee of the AMWG. It is chaired by a TWGcommittee member, who is selected by the other
committee members. The TWG’s responsibilities include developing criteria and standards for monitoring and research
programs; providing periodic review and updates; developing resource management questions for the design of monitoring and
research by the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center; and providing information, as required, for the preparation of
annual resource reports and other reports, necessitated by the AMWG. See generally, U.S. Dep’t. of the Interior, Bureau of
Reclamation, Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (2011), www.usbr.gov/uc/rm/amp.
*35 A major concern about the plan is its scientific frailty. For example, the NationalAcademy of Sciences (NAS) reported that
the “preferred alternative was and is an experiment” and questioned the long-termefficacy of the AM program, noting that “the
concept is still evolving.” DOWNSTREAMAT 2. Indeed, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, in a letter dated August 7,
2009, addressed to the members and alternates of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group, noted that
“President Obama and I have repeatedly stressed the importance of ensuring that sound science is used to inform the policy
decisions facing our Government and our Nation. This principle is fundamental to the Department’s continued efforts to
implement and balance the complex provisions of Federal law that apply to the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management
Program.” (Emphasis added) www.usbr.gov/uc/rm/amp/amwg/pdfs/SecDesigneeApptmt.PDF.
Given the evolving nature of the proposals, the NAS report evaluated two strategic plans, one from 1997, a revised version in
1998, as well as a succeeding development. Subsequently, on July 7, 2008, the Bureau of Reclamation issued a Final
Environmental Assessment for Experimental Releases from Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, 2008 through 2012. U.S. Dep’t of the
Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado Region (2008), available at
www.usbr.gov/uc/envdocs/ea/gc/2008hfe/GCD-finalEA2-29-08.pdf. In that document the BOR proposed a series of

experimental releases of water from Glen Canyon Dam to help native fish, particularly the endangered humpback chub, and
conserve fine sediment in the Colorado River corridor in Grand Canyon National Park. These elements were not considered in
the EIS or the ROD. They were, however, addressed by the NAS and were subsequently incorporated into the Finding of No
Significant Impact (FONSI). Thus, the iterative process appears to be working.
On July 5, 2011, the Bureau of Reclamation issued two draft environmental assessments. The first is a Draft Environmental
Assessment (EA) Non-Native Fish Control, U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado Region (2011),
available at www.usbr.gov/uc/envdocs/ea/gc/nnfc/index.html. The Draft EA addresses actions that are necessary due to heavy
competition and predation by nonnative rainbow and brown trout, which are reducing the survival of young native humpback
chub and are threatening the survival of this threatened species. The second report is a Draft Environmental Assessment
Development and Implementation of a Protocol for High-flow Experimental Releases from Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona,
2011-2020, U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Colorado Region (2011), available at
www.usbr.gov/uc/envdocs/ea/gc/HFEProtocol/index.html. This report proposes “to develop and implement a protocol for
high-flow experimental releases from Glen Canyon Dam to better determine whether and how sand conservation can be
improved in the Colorado River corridor downstream of Glen Canyon Dam including areas within Grand Canyon National
Park.” Id. Both drafts are protocols that are part of the ongoing Glen Canyon Dam ARM. The findings in each Draft EA are
included in the learning and iterative process.
One might think that the lengthy process described above is interminably long. However, given the damage to the environment,
occurring over 100 years in the case of the Everglades or 59 years for the Glen Canyon, the time spent resurrecting these
ecosystems, whose damage we still do not fully understand, is not long at all. As a parallel, consider the following analogy: A
bottle ofsyrup drops off a kitchen counter. It takes less than a second to fall a distance of four feet. However, it will take at least
a half hourto clean up, not only picking up the glass shards and cleaning the sticky syrup but also mopping up the floor. An d, let
us not forget the effort of buying another bottle of that tasty maple syrup.
The importance of ongoing learning, as part of the ARM process of altering a plan or programas one gains new data, cannot be
underestimated. Contrast the ARM process with that ofan EIS underthe National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) where
“[t]he combination of narrow judicial oversight and lack of accountability for error [in the EIS process] can produce terrible
consequences.” David Hodas, The Role of Law in Defining Sustainable Development: NEPA Reconsidered, 3 WIDENER L.
REV. 1, 45-48 (1998). Because an EIS has no substantive mandate or substantive value, courts appear to be more concerned
with whether an agency meets its procedural touchstones in evaluating the environmental impact of a particular project rather
than examining whether the project is implemented in a manner consistent with the EIS assumptions. See Hodas, The Role of
Law, supra at 46, citing Ogunquit Village Corp. v. Davis, 553 F.2d 243, 244-45 (1st Cir. 1977) where the court rejected a
“challenge to a beach erosion project that utilized inland sand (an option not mentioned in the EIS) instead of the type of sand
evaluated in the EIS.” Under NEPA, there are no post-EIS iterative adjustments based on project monitoring and feedback.
In conclusion, one cannot understate that the central idea of the ARM process is a valuable tool for managing big, complex
systems in the face of scientific uncertainty. ARM is a learning and feedback process that takes time, diligence, and patience.
But the process does not operate in a vacuum. Like so many human endeavors it is buffeted by the turbulence of political and
social pressures.
Footnotes
a1 Mr. Kornfeld is a Giordano Fellow at the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. He may be reached at
kornfeld.itzchak @mail.huji.ac.il.
26-WTR NATRE 29
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