Adaptive management is an ongoing, science-based process through which the Chesapeake Bay Program plans, implements and evaluates its restoration efforts. In simple terms, adaptive management is “learning by doing”: taking action with acknowledged uncertainties, carefully monitoring outcomes, transparently assessing progress and redirecting efforts when necessary.
Adaptive management helps the Bay Program partnership become more strategic and coordinated in its complex restoration effort. By adjusting management actions based on past performance, Bay Program partners steadily improve implementation and leverage limited resources. This leads to better organizational performance over time.
The Bay Program is moving toward using adaptive management to coordinate the partnership’s activities at all organizational levels. By carefully developing an adaptive management plan for each of its many goals, the Bay Program can coordinate and strategically manage all individual restoration activities, as well as the entire collection of efforts.
The process begins when each individual goal team develops an adaptive management plan. The plans then move up through the Bay Program’s organizational structure, where they can be integrated and coordinated throughout the partnership.
Each goal team will evaluate and describe its work using the Bay Program’s adaptive management decision framework:
This information will ultimately provide the basis for coordination, collaboration and development of a program-wide strategy.