Adaptive Management

There are several definitions of Adaptive Management depending on the context and desired outcome. The most relevant with regard to monitoring comes from the Ministry of Forests and Range (2006):

"Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs. Its most effective form–"active" adaptive management–employs management programs that are designed to experimentally compare selected policies or practices, by evaluating alternative hypotheses about the system being managed". This definition is portrayed in a six-step cycle (see right).

Applied to RAMP, adaptive management means flexibly adjusting the frequency and type of monitoring. Where environmental impacts are observed, the design is adjusted to determine where the impacts originate and how they can be mitigated. Where no impacts are observed then the frequency and detail of the monitoring plan can be reduced, freeing resources to intensify monitoring in areas of greater concern.