Colorado State University, the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS), the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS), and the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station recently hosted a virtual climate change adaptation workshop for folks working on the ecology and management of spruce-fir forests.
This workshop is part of a project titled the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network, which is a collaborative effort between managers and scientists working to establish a series of experimental trials across a network of diverse forest ecosystems throughout North America. Each trial is focused on understanding and evaluating management options designed to enable forests to respond to a changing climate.
The ASCC experiment at the Colorado State Forest explores this spectrum of adaptation options ranging from resistance to transition1,2:
- Resistance –maintain relatively unchanged conditions over time
- Resilience – allow some change in current conditions, but encourage eventual return to original conditions
- Transition – actively facilitate change to encourage adaptive responses
All of the sites that are a part of the ASCC Network explicitly test these three adaption options, linking them to site-specific management objectives, desired future conditions, and silvicultural actions. Our working definitions below closely follow Millar et al. 20071. Site-specific treatments were developed at the Colorado State Forest according to local conditions and tailored to meet site-specific management objectives, while at the same time aligning under the common ASCC framework for answering questions about how different forest types will respond to future climate.
![](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Exploring%20ASCC%20Site%20Locations%20%281%29.jpg)
The Colorado State Forest ASCC workshop on spruce-fir forests served two primary purposes:
- To engage managers and scientists in the ASCC co-development framework to create a suite of adaptive experimental silvicultural treatments for a Colorado State Forest spruce-fir forest as be part of the ASCC Network; and
- To begin defining research and monitoring questions as part of the Colorado spruce-fir ASCC installation.
After three days on Zoom, which participants said flew by, partners answered the question: What actions can be taken to enhance the ability of a system to cope with change while continuing to meet management goals and objectives at the Colorado State Forest? Workshop participants developed a suite of adaptation actions designed to specifically address climate change impacts and vulnerabilities to high-elevation spruce-fir forests. This includes continuing management practices that are currently taking place to protect high-elevation forest watersheds, and trying something new and different to address climate change, such as transitioning from a spruce-fir forest to a pine-dominated forest type.
Next steps include refining the final treatment prescriptions, laying out the treatment units at the Colorado State Forest, collecting pre-treatment data, implementing the treatments, and partnering with researchers to begin collecting post-treatment monitoring data. Stay tuned for more details on the Colorado State Forest ASCC project here: www.adaptivesilviculture.org.
References:
1Millar, C.I., N.L. Stephenson, and S.L. Stephens. 2007. Climate change and forests of the future: Managing in the face of uncertainty. Ecol. Appl. 17(8): 2145-2151.
2Nagel B.J. Palik, M.A. Battaglia, et al. 2017. Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change: A National Experiment in Manager-Scientist Partnerships to Apply an Adaptation Framework. Journal of Forestry 115:167-178. http://dx.doi.org/10.5849/jof.16-039
3Swanston, C.W., M.K. Janowiak, L.A. Brandt, et al. 2016. Forest adaptation resources: Climate change tools and approaches for land managers, 2ndedition. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report NRS-87-2, Northern Research Station, Newton Square, PA. 161p.