AM in Real Time: Fish-Water Management Tool Applied to Okanagan Sockeye

During 2001, the Canadian Okanagan Basin Technical Working Group initiated a fish-and-water management tools project to develop a quantitative decision-support system (FWMT-DSS) to reduce uncertainties and improve the basis for water management decisions influencing flood protection, fish production and other water use objectives. From the outset, FWMT project content and outcomes have been shaped by a commitment to support a six-step adaptive management (AM) approach involving assessment, design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and refinement.  The resultant FWMT-DSS currently consists of a coupled-set of 4 biophysical models of key relationships among climate, fish and water that interact with a 5^th water-management rules and impacts model used to predict consequences of water management decisions for fish and other water users in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. The FWMT-DSS provides a multi-user, gaming environment accessed through standard, web-browser technology from a common server at several locations by natural resource managers representing private industry, First Nations, federal and provincial interests. FWMT-DSS software allows users to explore water management decision impacts in near “real-time” (current-mode), within historic intervals (retrospective-mode) or during future intervals (prospective-mode) given data on water supplies, climate and fish population state(s). The long-term success of the FWMT-DSS will be determined by whether it improves the ability of fish-and-water managers to satisfy competing water use objectives in the Okanagan. However, there is already a consensus among participants, after six years of use, that the FWMT project has achieved a large measure of success by: 

• applying leading-edge science and technology to provide fish-and-water managers with a new generation of user-friendly tools to satisfy conflicting resource management objectives (e.g., increase fish production without significantly increasing risk of flood or drought-induced “property” losses),

• implementing FWMT as a truly ecosystem-based framework that specifies objectives, indicators and benchmarks for fish-and-water management in the Okanagan (i.e., FWMT integrates biophysical processes, deals with multiple species and geographic locations, anticipates socio-economic outcomes of decisions),

• supporting the use of AM experiments to verify DSS model assumptions, and

• establishing increased cooperation among government agencies, industry and local communities for conservation and restoration of fish populations at risk (i.e, Okanagan kokanee and sockeye salmon).
  

Development and application of the FWMT-DSS have been accompanied by completion of a full AM cycle providing results and experience to contribute to an assessment of progress, problems and prospects in the use of a rigorous AM approach.