Objective: In keeping with the research goals of the US Climate Change Science Program, the USDA Forest Service (FS) Research and Development agenda helps define climate change policy and develop best management practices for forests (both rural and urban) and grasslands in order to sustain ecosystem health, optimize ecosystem services (“adaptation”), and increase carbon sequestration (“mitigation”), all under changing climate conditions. The fundamental research focus of the FS Global Change Research Strategy is to increase understanding of forests, woodlands, and grasslands ecosystems so that they can be managed in a way that sustains and provides ecosystem services for future generations.

Basis: Climate changes already observed and those predicted for the future differ considerably from conditions of the past and present, and have high geographic variability. These geographic differences manifest in both biophysical conditions and socioeconomic systems, and as such, land management plans and actions must differ locally to account for this variability. There are also national needs to link these local actions so the sum of their impacts can be considered and evaluated. A challenge posed by changing climate that must be resolved through land management is the need to remove carbon from the atmosphere by increasing its sequestration in ecosystems and wood/energy products, while enhancing the adaptation of these ecosystems to increasing changes due to climate.

To support this, a FS Global Change Research Strategy and the concomitant research are needed to balance and coordinate responses. This strategy is the basis for a unified approach to managing within the range of uncertainty provided by a changing climate.

Approach: The following document provides an overview of the FS Global Change Research Strategy. It balances research across a range of management, science, and technology transfer actions aimed at developing adaptation and mitigation approaches to sustain healthy trees and ecosystems. The following are research elements that serve as the organizing mechanism for this document.

1. The first element includes current and future FS research to enhance ecosystem health and sustainability, increase retention of newly sequestered carbon, and avoid carbon losses from major disturbances.
2. The second element focuses on research that will assist managers in enhancing carbon sequestration via management that could increase forest growth rates and area of forested lands; enhanced biomass extraction and utilization research and understanding long term carbon product storage pools.
3. The third element integrates the first two research elements by developing decision support tools and approaches for policymakers and land managers.
4. A fourth element is focused on the shared research needs for infrastructure, scientific collaboration, and technology transfer needed over the next decade to facilitate and implement in natural resource planning, the research and applications in the first three elements.