Passive and active adaptive management: approaches and an example

Adaptive management is a framework for resource conservation that promotes iterative learning-based decision making. Yet there remains considerable confusion about what adaptive management entails, and how to actually make resource decisions adaptively. A key but somewhat ambiguous distinction in adaptive management is between active and passive forms of adaptive decision making. The objective of this paper is to illustrate some approaches to active and passive adaptive management with a simple example involving the drawdown of water impoundments on a wildlife refuge. The approaches are illustrated for the drawdown example, and contrasted in terms of objectives, costs, and potential learning rates. Some key challenges to the actual practice of AM are discussed, and tradeoffs between implementation costs and long-term benefits are highlighted.     

Adaptive management of natural resources--framework and issues

Adaptive management, an approach for simultaneously managing and learning about natural resources, has been around for several decades. Interest in adaptive decision making has grown steadily over that time, and by now many in natural resources conservation claim that adaptive management is the approach they use in meeting their resource management responsibilities. Yet there remains considerable ambiguity about what adaptive management actually is, and how it is to be implemented by practitioners. The objective of this paper is to present a framework and conditions for adaptive decision making, and discuss some important challenges in its application. Adaptive management is described as a two-phase process of deliberative and iterative phases, which are implemented sequentially over the timeframe of an application. Key elements, processes, and issues in adaptive decision making are highlighted in terms of this framework. Special emphasis is given to the question of geographic scale, the difficulties presented by non-stationarity, and organizational challenges in implementing adaptive management.     

Adaptive management for a turbulent future

The challenges that face humanity today differ from the past because as the scale of human influence has increased, our biggest challenges have become global in nature, and formerly local problems that could be addressed by shifting populations or switching resources, now aggregate (i.e., "scale up") limiting potential management options. Adaptive management is an approach to natural resource management that emphasizes learning through management based on the philosophy that knowledge is incomplete and much of what we think we know is actually wrong. Adaptive management has explicit structure, including careful elucidation of goals, identification of alternative management objectives and hypotheses of causation, and procedures for the collection of data followed by evaluation and reiteration. It is evident that adaptive management has matured, but it has also reached a crossroads. Practitioners and scientists have developed adaptive management and structured decision making techniques, and mathematicians have developed methods to reduce the uncertainties encountered in resource management, yet there continues to be misapplication of the method and misunderstanding of its purpose. Ironically, the confusion over the term "adaptive management" may stem from the flexibility inherent in the approach, which has resulted in multiple interpretations of "adaptive management" that fall along a continuum of complexity and a priori design. Adaptive management is not a panacea for the navigation of 'wicked problems' as it does not produce easy answers, and is only appropriate in a subset of natural resource management problems where both uncertainty and controllability are high. Nonetheless, the conceptual underpinnings of adaptive management are simple; there will always be inherent uncertainty and unpredictability in the dynamics and behavior of complex social-ecological systems, but management decisions must still be made, and whenever possible, we should incorporate learning into management.     

Preliminary indoor radon risk assessment at the Poços de Caldas Plateau,MG-Brazil

This paper aims to present an assessment of the environmental radiological exposure at a Brazilian area of high natural radiation and discusses the indoor radon exposure risk. A survey of inhabitant exposures arising from the inhalation of radon progeny and external gamma exposure was conducted in urban and rural areas of the Po?os de Caldas Plateau, which is recognized worldwide as a high natural radiation region. The results of this survey indicated that highest radiation exposure was restricted to the rural area of Po?os de Caldas. The radiation exposure in urban locations was quite similar to the values observed in normal background areas in some Brazilian counties. By the application of a constant relative risk model, an additional 20% in the lifetime risk of lung cancer mortality due to the exposure to radon progeny was estimated at Po?os de Caldas. It was also estimated that 16% of all lung cancer deaths at Po?os de Caldas county could be attributable to radon exposure.     

黄荆自然保护区植物区系的初步研究

黄荆自然保护区地处四川盆地与云贵高原的过渡地带,地带性植被为亚热带偏湿性常绿阔叶林,有种子植物165科745属1521种,其中裸子植物9科19属24种,被子植物156科726属1497种.该区特殊的自然条件和复杂的地质构造,使其成为多种植物地理成分的汇集地,并成为我国乃至全世界亚热带(同纬度)地区保存较好的常绿阔叶林植被群落,具有极高的研究价值和生态价值.根据近年来的科学考察,认为黄荆自然保护区植物区系的种类丰富、珍稀特有植物较多、起源古老、区系成分复杂,显示出多方植物交汇的特点.     

给水管道振动信号的小波分析及消振研究

某核发电厂部分蒸汽和给水管道振动情况非常严重 ,以致影响到正常的安全生产。笔者从给水管道的测振出发 ,并利用 3层Daubechise对振动信号进行了小波消噪、滤波、重构处理 ,以找到影响管系振动的激励源的主要频域成分。进而利用比较成熟的结构分析软件ANSYS对管系进行了模态分析 ,得到系统的低阶固有频率和振型。根据管道振动的原因 ,在不改变管系主要特征的基础上 ,给出了简单易行的消振措施 ,实际运行情况表明消振方法效果良好。     

评价自然灾害健康效应及其需要的指标体系

介绍了评价自然灾害健康效应及其需要的指标体系。提出通过调查死亡、伤亡、患病等，分析其与灾区人口、特定年龄人群、职业、习惯、地理位置、时间分布等关系，来科学评价灾害的严重性，提出救灾技术措施和确定主要卫生服务内容，保护易感人群，为灾后进行建筑物结构或位置的易感性分析以及制定防灾减灾计划提供科学依据。     

人类的行为与地质灾害

全面科学地分析了人类的行为与地质灾害后，针对我国当前的实际情况，提出了几个值得深思的问题，试图提醒人们如何规范自己的行为，以达到保护环境，预防和减轻地质灾害之目的。     

自然灾害变动的集成预测模型及其应用

本文提出了以非线性回归拟合发展趋势、正弦函数逼近周期变动和马尔可夫链刻划随机扰动的集成预测模型，并应用于山东省农业自然灾害成灾面积的变动规律模拟，得到了较好的预测效果。理论和实践表明，集成预测模型优于传统的单模型预测，为预测具有复杂机制的自然灾害演变提供了一种新方法。     

A method for evaluating areas for national park status

A procedure for evaluating different areas as national parks based on a scoring system is proposed. A National Park Evaluation Form (NPEF) evaluating natural, cultural, and recreational resources in accordance with international criteria for national parks is presented. The evaluation points given to an area indicate the possibility of the area becoming a national park. In this method, subjectivity and bias have been minimized by a special application of the Delphi technique. The method outlined here could help in the efforts of selecting and establishing national parks in many countries.