The impacts of long-term change on water systems often manifest themselves as short-term management challenges. For example, increases in the frequency of extreme events in future decades will require adaptively changing operational control and response plans. Consequently, society’s ability to adapt to long-term global change is inexorably linked to its short-term adaptive capacity. Bridging these scales in the management of coupled human-natural systems remains an unresolved scientific challenge. The nature and source of relevant uncertainties at each scale are different, challenging traditional planning methods. Moving beyond traditional approaches to planning under uncertainty, emerging work instead focuses on developing flexible physical and human systems that adapt and respond to new information. In this session, we solicit novel contributions in adaptive management on topics including: (1) climate adaptation; (2) uncertainty and sensitivity analyses for vulnerability assessments; and (3) reducing the impacts of nonstationary extreme events on water, energy, agricultural, and ecological systems.