Methods and apparatuses for facilitating managing cells in a multi-carrier system from an access terminal and base station are provided. The base station and access terminal communicate via an anchor carrier and a supplementary carrier. A triggering algorithm generated by the base station is transmitted to the access terminal. The triggering algorithm includes instructions for the access terminal to report downlink measurements as a function of trigger events detected over the anchor carrier and/or the supplementary carrier. Downlink measurements taken by the access terminal are provided to the base station. Cell management instructions based in part on the downlink measurements are then provided to the access terminal by the base station.