High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Adaptive management (AM), also known as adaptive resource management (ARM), is a structured, iterative process of optimal decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously maximizes one or more resource objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. Adaptive management is a tool which should be used not only to change a system, but also to learn about the system (Holling 1978). Because adaptive management is based on a learning process, it improves long - run management outcomes. The challenge in using adaptive management approach lies in finding the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short - term outcome based on current knowledge (Stankey Allan 2009).