Building science-based adaptive management into ecosystem restoration

The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, the largest wetland restoration on the west coast of the U.S., will undertake the restoration of 6,100 hectares of former salt ponds in south San Francisco Bay to provide a mix of habitats for South Bay species, ensure flood protection, and offer wildlife-compatible public access. Project implementation will begin in 2008 and is expected to last at least 30 years. Because the Project so large and long term, Project proponents were faced with great uncertainty in developing the optimal restoration plan for achieving the Project goals. Scientific input was critical to the planning process, resulting in the Project’s use of an adaptive management framework for dealing with uncertainty during implementation. Specifically, adaptive management will allow managers to determine how much tidal marsh to restore while still achieving the Project objectives. The Project’s Science Team completed a number of pivotal tasks that lead to a science-guided restoration plan including: identifying a manageable list of key uncertainties central to achieving Project goals, conducting literature reviews on those uncertainties, refining the uncertainties into applied study hypotheses for testing, and initiating applied studies research during planning. In addition, the Science Team worked closely with Project proponents to write an Adaptive Management Plan (AMP) based on restoration targets, monitoring for assessing restoration progress, modeling, and applied studies. The AMP also lays out the organizational structure for adaptive management decision-making. This talk discusses the integration of the AMP and the Project, and discusses how adaptive management information is being developed and used to guide restoration decision-making.