October 1, 2002

Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan
Performance Measures and Adaptive Management

Chief of Engineers'
Environmental Advisory Board (EAB)

Issue Paper No. 2

Introduction

The scope, complexity, and significance of the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan (CERP) (http://www.evergladesplan.org) warrant the
establishment of tools to measure, assess alternative plans, and report
progress towards achieving the CERP objectives.  Performance measures have
been developed by the REstoration COordination and VERification (RECOVER)
(http://www.evergladesplan.org/pm/recover/recover.shtml) team to evaluate
and assess the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP).  These
performance measures will be used to measure and evaluate the success of
CERP and to demonstrate compliance with all applicable federal and state
laws and regulations, including the Water Resources Development Act of 2000,
Florida Statute 373, the Principles and Guidelines, and federal regulations
specifically guiding implementation of the CERP, including the programmatic
regulations (http://www.evergladesplan.org/pm/progr_regs.shtml)

CERP performance measures are unique to the goals and objectives of the
Comprehensive Plan . These performance measures have been developed by a
team of scientific multidisciplinary, interagency experts for the purposes
of determining baseline conditions, identifying ecological trends and
impacts resulting from natural and anthropogenic factors, establishing
performance targets, tracking Plan performance and progress, and improving
plan performance through adaptive management strategies.  The measures have
been developed through a multiyear, iterative process.

The performance measures correspond to the natural and human systems in
South Florida that should be measured in order to determine the success of
the CERP. These performance measures address system-wide performance
problems that the CERP is explicitly designed to improve or correct. These
measures include a specific set of hydrologic, biological, and water quality
performance measures that should be monitored to evaluate progress toward
achieving restoration targets during the implementation and operation of the
CERP. The development, review, revision and use of the CERP performance
measures are dynamic. The measures will be periodically reviewed and refined
as needed.

As the purposes of the CERP include enhancing ecologic and economic values
and social well-being in the South Florida ecosystem, each performance
measure identifies a physical or biological element that will be modeled or
monitored, and identifies either a desired direction of change or a desired
endpoint. Two key criteria of the performance measures are: 1) the measures
must correspond to an element of the natural or human system that the CERP
is specifically designed to improve; and 2) the measures must be
instrumental in identifying needs, opportunities and alternatives necessary
to maintain and support the total ecosystem restoration goals of the plan.

System-wide and Project Level Performance Measures

Performance measures will be used to predict and assess performance at the
project and system-wide levels.  System-level performance measures are
metrics to assist in determining base performance, identifying performance
targets and evaluating impacts.  RECOVER teams will develop the set of
performance measures to be used to measure the progress and success of the
CERP from a regional (system-wide) perspective. These measures fall into
three categories: ecological performance measures, hydrological performance
measures (including water supply and flood protection), and water quality
performance measures. The water supply and flood protection performance
measures reflect the objective of providing for other water-related needs of
the region. These measures will be used to evaluate system-wide performance,
identify shortfalls and improve system-wide performance through the Adaptive
Management process.   System-wide performance measures will be used to
predict the performance of alternative plans; predict the impacts of plans
when they are implemented; and determine what to monitor and how to assess
monitoring results.

The overall CERP goals and objectives apply to each component of the CERP.
As such, project-level performance measures will be consistent with and
complement system-wide performance measures.  Project Development Teams will
develop project-level performance measures for the purposes of predicting
the performance and impacts of alternative plans; and monitoring local
performance of CERP components in meeting the system-wide goals and
objectives of the CERP.  For the natural system, these performance measures
are largely derived from the physical and chemical stressors and biological
attributes and the working hypotheses contained in a set of conceptual
ecological models for the major wetland physiographic regions of South
Florida.

Evaluation and Assessment of Performance

Performance measures will be used to evaluate performance and assess
impacts.  Therefore, these measures are broken into two categories:
evaluation measures and assessment measures. Evaluation measures are used to
predict system-wide performance as determined through simulation modeling of
the plan. Therefore, the selection of evaluation measures is constrained by
the modeling tools that are available to the evaluation teams. Each
evaluation measure can be used to predict how well a component and/or
combination of components will meet one or more goals of the plan.

The assessment measures will be used to measure responses in the natural and
human systems as components of the plan are implemented. Each assessment
measure identifies one or more elements to be monitored as a basis for
tracking how well the plan is meeting its system-wide goals. The assessment
measures have been used to determine the content and design of the CERP
Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP), and are the key features of the CERP
Adaptive Management Program.  The MAP will address the uncertainties and
associated risks inherent in the CERP and ensure achievement of the goals
and objectives of the CERP.

The EAB views, input and recommendations on the use and application of
performance measures is requested.

PREPARED BY:  Gary Hardesty, Program Manager
              Everglades Restoration Program
              (202) 761-5854
              Gary.M.Hardesty@USACE.ARMY.MIL
              Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (CECW-B)
              October 1, 2002

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