Outline for Continued Adaptive Management Work

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1 Outline for Continued Work on the Adaptive Management Background After discussing the Platte River Program adaptive management process with the Adaptive Management Advisory Group it is clear to me that it is necessary to reorganize the material describing adaptive management in support of the Program Document. Originally the Integrated Monitoring and Research Plan (IMRP) was meant simply as a description of Program monitoring and research. The document contains a brief description of adaptive management but lacks the detail necessary to implement an adaptive management plan. Some of the detail has been developed in the past but was left out or removed from the IMRP, partially because it didn't seem to fit within the broader context of the document. I believe the solution is to create a Platte River Program Adaptive Management Plan. I also think that the outline for such a plan suggested by Scott McBain and edited by Ed Hanna is a reasonable place to start. I concur with Scott's comments about the time needed to produce an AM Plan. There is neither the time nor the staff to complete a detailed Adaptive Management Plan before the NEPA and ESA process is complete. The material we are working on now will be included in an AM Plan that provides a broad overview of the adaptive management program, and likely will replace the IMRP as "Attachment 3" within the Program document. In effect the existing IMRP becomes section VI in Scott's outline. This document needs to be completed by approximately March l, 2005. A more comprehensive and detailed adaptive management plan will be developed during the first year of the First Increment of the Program. The Document The current consultation process with the AM consultants should focus on getting the GC started on the development of the broad overview document. I believe the document should be based on the same outline as the more detailed plan. It should contain as much detail as possible on each section and provide a discussion of what the more detailed plan would contain and a process and timeline for adding the detail. For example, the AM Plan we are working on now would contain items such as • Existing Program goals and objectives • The existing organizational structure and illustration of information flow and a decision process(e.g., show the feedback loop and mechanism), identification of decision makers • Conceptual ecosystem model(s) (CEM) for habitat compleYes (Table 1 items from the Land Plan) and alternative habitat (Table 2 in the Land Plan) and their relationship to habitat needs of the three target bird species, priority linkages within the CEM, and linkage to management model(s) • CEM for the pallid sturgeon and the relationship of its habitat to flows in the central Platte River, priority linkages within the CEM, and linkage to management model(s) • A description of the existing hypotheses (including competing hypotheses) that the IMRP is based on and potential hypotheses that are "nested" within the CEMs