“Science-Based Management in Practice: an example with native
prairies” Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 Native prairies managed by
the USFWS in the Prairie Pothole Region are extensively invaded
by introduced cool-season grasses, smooth brome (Bromus inermis)
and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). Management to suppress
these invasive plants has had poor success, mainly for
insufficient understanding of prairie restoration ecology and
absence of systematic evaluation of management effects. In
partnership with the USFWS, we developed an adaptive decision
support framework to assist managers in selecting management
actions under uncertainty and maximizing learning from
management outcomes. Decision making under this framework is
adaptive, as monitoring feedback increases understanding of the
system and in turn determines the path of future decision
making. Refuge-specific data provided by cooperators reduces
uncertainty across the whole region, allowing individual land
managers to receive updated decision guidance