Tag: Adaptive management

The Florida Everglades: Human-Environment Interactions

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Located in Southern Florida and widely known as the “River of Grass”, the Everglades are one of the largest wetlands in the world. The ecosystem covers over 4,500 miles of slow moving waters. Water leaving the lake in the wet-season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long, but rarely more than a few feet deep, flowing southwards across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state (U.S. Geological Survey, 1999).

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A Systems Approach to Port Phillip Bay

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Port Phillip Bay is capable of providing for the 3.5 million people who dwell on the coast with a diverse and wealthy level of opportunity and exploitable capital. It is the combination of which that gives Port Phillip Bay a reputable identity.

Port Phillip Bay is a complex system, socially, economically and environmentally. It operates on a range of temporal and spatial scales. Critical ecosystem services work in unison with larger scale climate change, whilst trade fluctuates with global exchange rates. For Port Phillip Bay the range of scales presents managers with challenges as processes can occur beyond scales of technical, financial and political means.

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Adaptive Management

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Port Phillip Bay is home to multiple formal and informal institutions across a variety of scales. Government stakeholders (Table 11) operate on larger scales and have a greater level of resources. Decisions on this scale tend to be more long term and reactionary. Formal institutions take time to set up studies and then implement their findings. The levels of influence they wield politically and financially are unmatched and have the ability to communicate their message over a large proportion of the population. This is important for shifting social attitudes and is effective at dealing with larger scale pulse events that shock a system such as a forest fire or toxic spill.

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Historic Indicators

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As discussed adaptive cycles function at a variety of scales. Each component of a system also has its own adaptive cycle and they are linked in a spatial and temporal context. Interactions between the cycles involves the sharing of information or matter and as long as transfers are maintained, the system overall is sustained. Systems collapse when the exchanges fail. Continue reading “Historic Indicators” →

Cycle Assessment

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The system has shown it is capable to attract more tourists and for longer periods of stay and this has led to an increase in the value of takings.  Employment figures too have risen over the 2000-2009 period. Unemployed persons have remained steady and the trend for unemployment rates was, until 2008, down. The HPI has shown growth in both the established and project indexes. This seems to suggest that the system is still capable of growth. This puts the system outside of the late K-phase. Continue reading “Cycle Assessment” →

Adaptive Cycle Indicators

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A system’s resilience can only be assessed by determining its current position within the adaptive cycle. Socio-economic indicators will be used to determine the relative position of individual components within the cycle and a judgement made on the relative position of the focal system itself. Continue reading “Adaptive Cycle Indicators” →