Project: Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) decisionmaking

Project

Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) decisionmaking

October 2021 - September 2023

Personnel

Jeffrey Muehlbauer, Non-PI Collaborator

Participating Agencies

As climate change alters ecosystems worldwide, managers are faced increasingly with challenges in how to manage for its impacts. The Resist-Accept-Direct framework provides a guide for decisionmaking about how, when, and where to choose to implement actions for climate resiliency in ecosystems. This project seeks to apply the RAD framework to river ecosystems worldwide, specifically including the Mississippi River. It is carried out in collaboration with partners across USGS, other Bureaus in the Department of the Interior, and elsewhere in Federal, State and Tribal governance, in addition with non-profit groups. The research helps inform decisions about river management in the face of ongoing climate change.

Research Publications

Research Publications	Publication Date
Ward, N. K., A. J. Lynch, E. A. Beever, J. Booker, K. L. Bouska, H. Embke, et al. 2023. Reimagining large river management using the Resist–Accept–Direct (RAD) framework in the Upper Mississippi River. Ecological Processes 12:48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13717-023-00460-x \| Abstract \| Publisher Website	October 2023	<i>Background</i>: Large-river decision-makers are charged with maintaining diverse ecosystem services through unprecedented social-ecological transformations as climate change and other global stressors intensify. The interconnected, dendritic habitats of rivers, which often demarcate jurisdictional boundaries, generate unique management challenges. Here, we explored how the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework may enhance large-river management by promoting coordinated and deliberate responses to social-ecological trajectories of change. The RAD framework identifies the full decision space, wherein managers may <i>resist </i>change to maintain historical conditions, <i>accept </i>change toward different conditions, or <i>direct </i>change to a specified future with novel conditions. In the Upper Mississippi River System, managers are facing ecosystem transformations from more frequent and extreme high-water events. We illustrate how RAD-informed basin-, reach-, and site-scale decisions could: 1) provide river continuum and cross-spatial scale framing; <i>and</i> 2) open the entire decision space of possible approaches; <i>to</i> 3) enhance coordinated inter-jurisdictional management in response to the trajectory of the Upper Mississippi River hydrograph.<br><i>Results</i>: The RAD framework helps identify plausible long-term trajectories in different reaches (or subbasins) of the river and how the associated social-ecological transformations could be managed by altering site-scale conditions. Strategic reach-scale objectives may reprioritize how, where, and when site conditions (e.g., habitat connectivity, diversity, redundancy) could be altered to contribute to the basin goal, given the basin’s plausible trajectories of change, and vice versa.<br><i>Conclusions</i><b>: </b> When faced with long-term systemic transformations (e.g., > 50 years), RAD helps explicitly consider whether or when the basin vision or goals may no longer be achievable, and <i>direct </i>options may open yet unconsidered potential for the basin. Embedding RAD in hierarchical decision making clarifies that the selection of actions in space and time should be derived from basin-wide goals and reach-scale objectives to ensure that site-scale actions contribute effectively to the larger river habitat mosaic. Embedding RAD thinking in large-river decisions can provide the necessary conduit to link flexibility and innovation at the site scale with stability at larger scales for adaptive governance of changing social-ecological systems.

Presentations

Presentations	Presentation Date
Ward, N., A.J. Lynch, K. Bouska, H. Embke, J. Kocik, T. Krabbenhoft, D. Lawrence, M. Magee, B.M. Maitland, J. Morton, J.D. Muehlbauer, R. Newman, H.M. Rantala, G.G. Sass, A. Schulz and J. Wilkening. 2022. Using the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework to reimagine large river management. American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting, American Fisheries Society, Spokane, Washington, 21-25 August 2022.	August 2022

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Project

Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) decisionmaking

October 2021 - September 2023

Personnel

Participating Agencies

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program:
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources