Approach
Increase drought resilience in forests.
Tactics
- Increase the amount of thinning and possibly alter thinning prescriptions.
- Use girdling, falling and leave trees, prescribed burns, and wildland fire to reduce stand densities and drought stress.
- Maximize early-successional tree species diversity by retaining minor species during precommercial thinning activities to promote greater resilience to drier conditions
- Consider including larger openings in thinning prescriptions and planting seedlings in the openings to create seed sources for native drought-tolerant species
Sensitivity
Strategy
Halofsky, J.E.; Peterson, D.L.; O’Halloran, K.A.; Hawkins Hoffman, C., eds. (2011). Adapting to climate change at Olympic National Forest and Olympic National Park. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-844. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station., Sample, A.; Halofsky, J.E.; Peterson, D.L. (2014). U.S. strategy for forest management adaptation to climate change: building a framework for decision making. Annals of Forest Science. 71: 125–130., Halofsky, J.E.; Peterson, D.L. (2016). Climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation options for forest vegetation management in the northwestern USA. Atmosphere. 7: article 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos7030046., Halofsky, J.E.; Peterson, D.L.; Prendeville, H.R. (2018). Assessing vulnerabilities and adapting to climate change in northwestern U.S. forests. Climatic Change. 146: 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1972-6., Halofsky, J.E.; Peterson, D.L.; Joyce, L.A.; Millar, C.I.; Rice, J.M. (2016). Implementing climate change adaptation in forested regions of the western United States. In: Sample, V.A.; Bixler, R.P.; Miller, C., eds. Forest conservation in the Anthropocene: science, policy, and practice. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado: 165–178.