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Now available in PDF format: Abstract Book [7.4 Mb] (posted 10 November 2005)

Abstracts for Posters

Ecosystems (P-EC)

Sub-Theme 3: Land & Wildlife Management

P-EC3.1

Decision Support Tools for Adaptive Forest Management

William T. Sommers, EastFIRE Laboratory, Center for Earth Observing and Space Research (CEOSR), School of Computational Sciences (SCS), George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, wsommers@gmu.edu

Scientific understanding of ecosystems recognizes that ecosystem structure, function and health represent a continual balancing of ecosystem processes within a climate framework. Although ecosystem managers are aware of that scientific understanding as they assess, plan, set policy and adaptively manage, they still use Decision Support Tools (DST) that generally fail to incorporate climate variability and change. Those managers are now asking how they should adjust their DST in the face of predicted climate change.

Forest ecosystems are a particularly worrisome subset. The lifespan of their identifying component (trees) is long in relation to the time scale of
significant change. They are a central reservoir and supplier in regard to water, carbon, wildlife, recreation, timber, flood control, and too many other resources to list. Science recognizes that disturbance is the most rapid mechanism for forest ecosystems to seek adjustment to changed environmental forcing conditions. An accepted scenario for forest-based disturbance is drought stress leading to insect outbreaks leading to catastrophic fires leading to new growth. However, the new growth will not replicate the previous ecosystem when climate variability, climate change, and invasive species come to play a significant role. Whether they manage for wildlife habitat along the Gulf Coast, timber in Georgia, recreation in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, the Wildland Urban Interface in California, or Salmon in the Pacific Northwest, today's forest ecosystem managers face unprecedented assessment, planning, policy and adaptive management challenges increasingly framed by climate variability and change.

To meet these challenges, the decision makers and scientists who support them must rapidly evolve a set of DST based on integrated observational systems, employing coupled predictive modeling, and presenting information in a risk based probabilistic framework. Climate scientists are best equipped, in fact should feel responsible, to initiate a concerted drive to meet this need. This paper details a logical pathway to this end by including risk assessment in adaptive management DST approaches for forest ecosystem management. Underlying science will view climate and disturbance driven ecosystem processes in the face of forest fries and demographic trends. Specific components of an integrated observational system to operationally supply the envisioned DST will be identified. Many of the necessary components exist or are being actively worked on today. But climate scientists and natural resource managers will both need to apply concerted pressure to align those components to meet the need for DST in support of adaptive forest management for changing climate.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC3.2

Interim Wildlife Management and Global Climate

Douglas Inkley, National Wildlife Federation, inkley@nwf.org

A key challenge for wildlife management decision makers is the expectation that their present day management choices will enhance wildlife populations now and in the decades ahead, even as the climate changes. The dilemma facing decision makers is that global climate change is likely already affecting local wildlife populations but there is a paucity of quantitative information regarding these and likely future impacts. Public expectations, despite climate change, include maintaining game wildlife populations at harvestable levels and conserving endangered species (which are especially vulnerable to climate change). The many other factors (pollution, habitat fragmentation and loss) already affecting wildlife and their habitats make successfully addressing climate change effects even more challenging.

This paper reviews 18 specific adaptive management and planning actions (Inkley et al. 2004) which decision makers can take now to best conserve wildlife until better qualitative information on the scope and impacts of climate change become available. These interim recommendations include planning for surprises, reducing the risk of catastrophic fires, monitoring and adaptive management, reduction of non-climate stressors on ecosystems, and adjusting yield and harvest models. The type of information that decision makers need to inform their interim management recommendations is presented and discussed.

Inkley, D.B., M.G. Anderson, A.R. Blaustein,V.R. Burkett, B. Felzer, B. Griffith, J. Price, and T.L. Root. 2004. Global climate change and wildlife in North America. Wildlife Society Technical Review 04-2. The Wildlife Society,Bethesda, Maryland, USA. 26pp.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC3.3

Redesigning Conservation for Climate Change

Lara Hansen, WWF, lara.hansen@wwfus.org

Eric Mielbrecht, Emerald Coast Environmental Consulting

Jennifer Biringer, WWF

Jennifer Hoffman, University of Washington

Conservation and resource management has long been considered in terms of spatial scales (reserve design, corridors, minimum habitat size, etc...). Climate change requires that this paradigm be changed and that temporal considerations figure more prominently in resource management. We must consider how systems will look in 5, 10 and 50 years, not just today. In order to meet these changing decision support needs we are conducting field studies to determine what factors are key in increasing the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. In this talk the basic tenets of such work will be discussed and case studies will be presented.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC3.4

Climate Variability Research & Resource Management Decisions

Douglas Fox, CIRA, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523
Allan Riebau, USDA Forest Service, Research and Development, Washington, D.C., ariebau@fs.fed.us
Thomas Crow, USDA Forest Service, Research and Development, Washington, D.C.

This presentation summarizes an ongoing assessment of the need for and the role of climate science research in the management of our national forest lands and related ecosystems. Dr. Riebau is the national program leader for atmospheric research in the Forest Service. As such it is his reponsibility to continually identify the need for climate research and how it is to be used in agency decisionmaking. Dr. Fox is a climate researcher with over 30 years experience developing and applying climate based descision support tools for land management.

In this presentation, we will focus on climate variability. Climate variability is fundamental to land management, it is a thread that runs through ecosystems, regions, and continents. Although climate variability has been recognized as an important part of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, to date, the USDA Forest Service has had no organized focus on it within its Global Change Research Program. This presentation outlines existing Forest Service research addressing climate variability, identifies information needed from other studies (both within the Forest Service specifically and within the U.S. Climate Change Science Program in general) and offers a cohesive strategy for introducing the resulting information into the land managment activities of the Forest Service.

[Poster PDF]