Delta Conservation Adaptive Management Action Strategy

Various efforts are ongoing to restore and enhance ecosystems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Yolo Bypass, and Suisun Marsh (hereafter the Delta) that require support for adaptive management. Adaptive management is a science-based, structured approach to environmental decision making under uncertain conditions. Adaptive management emphasizes acquisition and use of new knowledge in natural resource management, leading to continuous iterative improvements in project planning, implementation, monitoring, and follow-up. Adaptive management is required for compliance with multiple regulatory processes, such as consistency with the Delta Plan and the Suisun Marsh Plan, but recent reviews have found that a full adaptive management cycle is rarely completed at either the project- or system-level in the Delta (Delta Independent Science Board 2016; Nagarkar and Raulund-Rasmussen 2016). To address this issue, the Delta Science Program initiated an effort to work with agency and stakeholder partners in the Delta to develop a comprehensive, science-based adaptive management approach to support achievement of Delta conservation goals. Conservation, as defined in the Delta Conservation Framework (Sloop et al. 2018), consists of efforts to protect, restore, and enhance ecosystems in the Delta. The Delta Conservation Adaptive Management Action Strategy is based on the Adaptive Management Framework outlined in the Delta Plan (Figure 1, Delta Stewardship Council 2013).