Research Database
Displaying 61 - 67 of 67
Placing Forestry in the Assisted Migration Debate
Year: 2012
Assisted migration (AM) is often presented as a strategy to save species that are imminently threatened by rapid climate change. This conception of AM, which has generated considerable controversy, typically proposes the movement of narrowly distributed, threatened species to suitable sites beyond their current range limits. However, existing North American forestry operations present an opportunity to practice AM on a larger scale, across millions of hectares, with a focus on moving populations of widely distributed, nonthreatened tree species within their current range limits. Despite these…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Projecting future distributions of ecosystem climate niches: Uncertainties and management applications
Year: 2012
Projecting future distributions of ecosystems or species climate niches has widely been used to assess the potential impacts of climate change. However, variability in such projections for the future periods, particularly the variability arising from uncertain future climates, remains a critical challenge for incorporating these projections into climate change adaptation strategies. We combined the use of a robust statistical modeling technique with a simple consensus approach consolidating projected outcomes for multiple climate change scenarios, and exemplify how the results could guide…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Is Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change Necessary in Grazed Rangelands?
Year: 2012
In this article we test the notion that adaptation to climate change in grazed rangelands requires little more effort than current approaches to risk management because the inherent climate variability that characterizes rangelands provides a management environment that is preadapted to climate change. We also examine the alternative hypothesis that rangeland ecosystems and the people they support are highly vulnerable to climate change. Past climate is likely to become an increasingly poor predictor of the future, so there is a risk in relying on adaptation approaches developed solely in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Ecosystem Greenspots: Identifying Potential Drought, Fire, and Climate-Change Micro-Refuges
Year: 2012
In response to climate change and other threatening processes there is renewed interest in the role of refugia and refuges. In bioregions that experience drought and fire, micro-refuges can play a vital role in ensuring the persistence of species. We develop and apply an approach to identifying potential micro-refuges based on a time series of remotely sensed vegetation greenness (fraction of photosynthetically active radiation intercepted by the sunlit canopy; fPAR). The primary data for this analysis were NASA MODIS 16-day L3 Global 250 m (MOD13Q1) satellite imagery. This method draws upon…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using niche models with climate projections to inform conservation management decisions
Year: 2012
Conservation science strives to inform management decisions. Applying niche models in concert with future climate projections to project species vulnerability to extinction, range size loss, or distribution shifts has emerged as a potentially useful tool for informing resource management decisions. Making climate change niche modeling useful to conservation decisions requires centering studies on the types of decisions that are made regarding the focal taxa of a niche model study. Recent recommendations for climate adaptation strategies suggest four types of decision makers: policy, habitat…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Responding to Climate Change in National Forests: A Guidebook for Developing Adaptation Options
Year: 2011
This guidebook contains science-based principles, processes, and tools necessary to assist with developing adaptation options for national forest lands. The adaptation process is based on partnerships between local resource managers and scientists who work collaboratively to understand potential climate change effects, identify important resource issues, and develop management options that can capitalize on new opportunities and reduce deleterious effects. Because management objectives and sensitivity of resources to climate change differ among national forests, appropriate processes and…
Publication Type: Report
Forest ecosystems, disturbance, and climatic change in Washington State, USA
Year: 2010
Climatic change is likely to affect Pacific Northwest (PNW) forests in several important ways. In this paper, we address the role of climate in four forest ecosystem processes and project the effects of future climatic change on these processes across Washington State. First, we relate Douglas-fir growth to climatic limitation and suggest that where Douglas-fir is currently water-limited, growth is likely to decline due to increased summer water deficit. Second, we use existing analyses of climatic controls on tree species biogeography to demonstrate that by the mid twenty-first century,…
Publication Type: Journal Article