Approach
EASTERN: Diverse communities may be less vulnerable to climate change impacts and disturbances because they distribute risk among multiple species, reducing the likelihood that the entire system will decline even if one or more species suffer adverse effects. This may be especially important in communities with low diversity; even small increases in diversity may increase resilience without greatly altering species composition. Forests with higher levels of species diversity are also expected to be less vulnerable to declines in productivity due to climate change.
WESTERN: Diverse communities may be less vulnerable to climate change impacts and disturbances because different species have unique susceptibility to stress or disturbance; thus a diverse community allows the risk to be dispersed among multiple species, reducing the likelihood that the entire system will decline even if one or more species suffer adverse effects. This may be especially important in communities with inherently low diversity; even small increases in diversity may increase resilience without greatly altering species composition. Forests with higher levels of species diversity are also expected to be less vulnerable to declines in productivity due to climate change.
Tactics
- Using silvicultural treatments to promote and enhance a mixture of diverse native species, including through regeneration.
- Transitioning plantations to more complex systems by underplanting or promoting natural regeneration of a variety of native species (conifers and hardwoods) expected to do well under future conditions.
- Planting select desired native species within an area that is otherwise expected to regenerate naturally in order to add diversity.
- Restoring native vegetation on areas that have been severely altered by anthropogenic activities, such as abandoned agricultural areas or surface mines.
- Planting species with diverse timing of phenological events (e.g. flowering, fruiting, leaf out, leaf drop) to provide necessary resources over a longer timeframe to forest-dependent wildlife species.
- Using prescribed fire, managed wildfire, pyrosilviculture, and/or mechanical thinning to increase light and moisture availability and stimulate growth, recruitment, and regeneration in aspen, cottonwood, alder, and other broadleaved or coniferous...
- Prioritize and restore areas of high cultural or socioecological value in partnership with local tribes and communities; these may include meadows and riparian forests that can produce valued foods and uses such as elderberries, California mint, Yarrow,etc.
- Develop early detection monitoring and environmental analysis for nonnative species eradication.
Strategy
Strategy Text
Land managers already work to increase structural and species diversity in many cases, and as an adaptation strategy this general goal receives added effort and focus. Structural and species diversity may buffer a community against the susceptibility of its individual components to climate change. In other words, a community may still experience stress as individual components fare poorly, but the redundancy of particular roles and variability among all species’ responses contribute to the resilience of the community. Although a forest is often defined by its dominant or most abundant species, even rare species can act as keystone species or contribute to the suppression of invasive exotic plants.
1. Swanston, C.W.; Janowiak, M.K.; Brandt, L.A.; Butler, P.R.; Handler, S.D.; Shannon, P.D.; Derby Lewis, A.; Hall, K.; Fahey, R.T.; Scott, L.; Kerber, A.; Miesbauer, J.W.; Darling, L. (2016). Forest Adaptation Resources: Climate Change Tools and Approaches for Land Managers, 2nd Edition. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-87-2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station p. http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/52760