COS 254-4 - Implementing climate change adaptation strategies across an elevational gradient in the Colorado Rocky Mountains

Abstract: The uncertainty of forest ecosystem response to a changing climate requires forest managers to attempt various adaptation strategies for managing forests. Across various forest types in Colorado, several on-the-ground, long-term, forest adaptation research studies are being established to aid forest managers in understanding which adaptation measures or tactics might be effective in preparing forest ecosystems to deal with climate change. These projects include 3 installations of the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) network that are being planned and implemented in dry mixed conifer, lodgepole pine, and spruce-fir forest types within Colorado. Within each ASCC study site, four adaptation treatments were developed to demonstrate a gradient of accommodating change: Do nothing, Resistance, Resilience, and Transition. Each 10-ha treatment is replicated 4 times. Each ASCC installation and treatments were developed locally within a formalized collaborative framework involving scientists, forest managers, and stakeholders. In this presentation, we discuss the strategies we are taking in each forest type which include tree density reduction, favoring drought and fire adapted species, and implementing different strategies of assisted migration for planted seedlings. Over the next several decades, various ecosystem responses will be measured and compared within and among the ASCC sites. These various studies will contribute to the broad understanding of adaptive management strategies designed to address the uncertainty of climate change across the network of sites, while testing site-specific effects on forest resiliency to increased wildfire potential, drought, disease, insects, and other disturbance factors relevant to the current forest type.