Social-ecological learning and adaptation

Given that some level of uncertainty always exists in complex systems, decision makers need to continuously monitor and integrate appropriate ecological, social, and economic information into management. Such adaptive management, whereby policy making is seen as an iterative experiment, acknowledges uncertainty, rather than assuming it away. Carrying out adaptive management requires a great deal of information to provide feedback to the manager regarding the consequences of the policy experiment. In addition to some of the conventional kinds of ecological and economic data, adaptive management requires qualitative information in the form of feedback from the social–ecological system to indicate the direction in which management should proceed.