Weston Roundtable — Adena Rissman

Adaptive management seeks to plan for uncertainty. It treats policies as experiments through which to test hypotheses. The adaptive management heuristic makes some variables visible, others invisible, but doesn't clarify how change happens. These dynamics are illustrated by the social-ecological systems literature and a case study from the Yahara Watershed. How can science improve sustainability, assess environmental management efforts, and track change in coupled social-ecological systems?