Adaptive Management

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) team will develop species distribution models that incorporate hydrologic and habitat variables known to influence Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow occurrence.

Pink-footed geese in Svalbard are a highly valued resource, but their increasing population causes conflicts with agricultural needs. USGS is devloping population models to help inform management of optimal harvest strategies.

State and Federal agencies are working together to assess the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to determine appropriate restoration actions to restore natural resources, ecological services, and recreational services injured or lost due to the incident.

Manatees are tropical to subtropical in distribution and, with few exceptions, Florida is the northern limit of their natural winter range. The availability of warm-water habitat during winter is critical for the future persistence of the population in Florida.

The establishment and proliferation of exotic plants and animals can interfere with native ecological processes and can cause severe stress to sensitive ecosystems.

The goal of this project is to educate resource professionals in the tools and techniques of structured decision making and adaptive management.

Barrier island resource managers within the northern Gulf of Mexico have the opportunity to more directly incorporate scientific uncertainties and technological challenges inherent with large-scale barrier island restoration projects, and as such, commit to developing robust long-term monitoring programs and applying adaptive management.

The Mississippi barrier islands are dynamic coastal landforms that are the first line of defense between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi mainland coast. These islands are experiencing changes in structure (land area and habitat) and geomorphic processes (erosion and accretion) due to frequent intense storms, relative rise in sea level, and changes in sediment supply. A long-term monitoring...

The 2011 (Draft) Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on Migratory Bird Hunting (EIS) offers four alternatives concerning the timing of the regulatory process for setting waterfowl hunting seasons. The no-change alternative involves a process by which most proposals for hunting seasons are developed in response to survey information that becomes available in early summer, such as breeding...

Adaptive management (AM) is an iterative science-based process that accepts uncertainties in ecological systems and uses best available science and technology such as research, modeling, experimentation, monitoring and evaluation to address uncertainties.

USGS is developing strategies to model species assemblages to allow inferences to be made about individual species, local communities of species, or for an entire metacommunity of species - while accounting for errors in species detection during sampling.

Based on field research conducted during 2002-2009, the bobwhite population on the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Southwest Florida is incapable of supporting desired levels of sport harvest.