Habitat Status and Trends: an Adaptive Approach to the Diagnosis & Treatment of Ecosystems

Habitat restoration is a continuous improvement process aimed to address historic and ongoing degradation, and to protect against future loss.  Ecosystem Diagnosis & Treatment (EDT) provides a framework for defining restoration as technical prescriptions within an institutional framework capable of implementing them.  Institutional resources and social processes govern the rate and intensity at which habitat actions are implemented, whereas ecological processes govern the rate and term for which actions effect the environment.  EDT provides an ecosystem context for management, but cannot a priori define the optimal frequency and level of adaptive planning for a specific ecosystem.  We extend the EDT process to include initial prescriptions for adaptive management including the frequency of examination, diagnosis, and treatment planning with the understanding that the adaptive elements themselves will evolve in concert with institutional learning.  To illustrate we present habitat status & trends reports for three watersheds in the Columbia Basin, and describe changes in ecosystem performance through the eyes of Chinook salmon.  Subbasin Planning models developed in 2004 were compared with more current information in the Okanogan River in Northern Washington, the Umatilla River in Eastern Oregon, and Johnson Creek in the Willamette Basin in Western Oregon.  All watersheds demonstrated sufficient change in the past five to seven years to present different limiting factors, limited life stages, and priority restoration/protection areas.  Improvement in habitat conditions was notable in some reaches in each of the systems as well.  Regular revision of ecosystem diagnostics and treatment plans maximizes institutional learning, advances future habitat decisions, and provides a framework for reporting progress.