The ORISE Fellow will conduct research contributing to the Forest Climate Indicators project, and will engage in product co-production, outreach, and training at every stage of the project.
Research Project: The ORISE Fellow will engage in research, collaboration, and outreach with the Northeast and Midwest Climate Hubs and partners at Cornell University’s Northeast Region Climate Center on a project called “Using the Applied Climate Information System (ACIS) to Support Adaptation Management and Planning in Forestry Across Multiple Time Scales” (herein called the “Forest Climate Indicators” project). The aim of the project is to align climate change indicators with the needs of forestry stakeholders. Tracking trends in weather and changes in conditions using indicators can help forest managers make decisions. The research team will co-develop relevant indicators with stakeholders and design ways to apply the indicators across various temporal and spatial scales. Identifying and quantifying changes in climatic change affecting forests using these indicators and real-time weather data will guide development and adoption of effective adaptation, resilience, and sustainability practices.
Learning Objectives: The ORISE Fellow will conduct research contributing to the Forest Climate Indicators project, and will engage in product co-production, outreach, and training at every stage of the project. They will gain feedback from project partners on their research methods, program design product development, and meeting project objectives. The Fellow will support outreach activities that promote research results and collaborations.
Specific components related to the project will include:
- Facilitate a series of stakeholder meetings with State, Private and Tribal foresters to identify relevant indicators.
- Contribute to the development of open-source software to compute indicators at historical, real-time, and future time scales.
- Collect management options related to the selected indicators documenting viable adaptation options for short-term practices and long-term changes that can be applied in-season to maximize productivity, minimize economic loss and address forest plan objectives.
- Contribute to the development of a web-platform linking the tools, map graphics, and management information such as those provided through extension publications.
- Outreach related to the use of the prototype tools to regional users, as identified during the stakeholder meetings.
- Outreach to other Hubs and Forest Service Regions related to adoption of the software infrastructure used in these tools to other regionally (and nationally) relevant indicators and decisions.
- Contribute to training manual development and workshop facilitation and trainings targeted at State, Private and Tribal foresters, Hubs, private industry, Extension, and other relevant audiences to facilitate use and expansion to other regions and indicator types.
- Contribute to peer-reviewed journal articles.
The ORISE Fellow will learn collaboration methods for co-production, partner and stakeholder engagement, product/tool development and project design. Additionally, the Fellow will learn and experiment with various approaches for engaging partners and communicating science to a specific audience.
Mentor: The mentor(s) for this opportunity is Erin Lane (erin.d.lane@usda.gov). If you have questions about the nature of the research, please contact the mentor(s).
Application deadline: 1/5/2024 3:00:00 PM Eastern Time Zone
Anticipated Appointment Start Date: January 2024; Start date is flexible and will depend on a variety of factors.
Appointment Length: The appointment will initially be for one year, but may be renewed upon recommendation of ARS and is contingent on the availability of funds.
Level of Participation: The appointment is full-time.
Participant Stipend: The participant will receive a monthly stipend commensurate with educational level and experience. The current stipend for this opportunity ranges from $69,107-$71,436 per year.
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