Future Forest Habitat Conditions in the Adirondack Region, NY
Climate change, the spread of invasive species, and shifts in natural disturbance regimes such as wildfires and drought represent major challenges facing forest managers in the Adirondack region of New York, and across the northeastern US. Managers require a suite of potential adaptive management options that could be implemented depending on how conditions change. Although general adaptation strategies have been suggested for sustaining forests, it is unclear how effective these strategies would be for maintaining forests – and the wildlife that depend on forests – at local or regional levels. In addition, these strategies have not been developed into explicit decision-support tools that could guide regional conservation planning. This lack of information hampers the ability of resource managers to anticipate landscape-level changes in forests and identify appropriate adaptive responses.
Focusing on the Adirondack Region of New York, the goal of this project is to inform forest and wildlife management decisions in light of changing conditions. Researchers will use a framework that incorporates the effects of future disturbances (e.g. wildfires or drought), insects and diseases, changing climate conditions, and different adaptive management approaches on forest conservation. Using this integrative approach, researchers will be able to model the future distribution and condition of forests under different scenarios of climate change, disturbance, and invasive species, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of different adaptive management strategies under alternative scenarios.
The results of this project will inform not only forest conservation, but also wildlife conservation in the Adirondacks. For example, the results will support current work by the Wildlife Conservation Society examining the vulnerability of bird species in the Adirondacks. The results will also be incorporated into a Northeast Climate Science Center project on adaptive management for priority species in montane spruce-fir ecosystems in the Northeast.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 599d8298e4b012c075b96425)
Climate change, the spread of invasive species, and shifts in natural disturbance regimes such as wildfires and drought represent major challenges facing forest managers in the Adirondack region of New York, and across the northeastern US. Managers require a suite of potential adaptive management options that could be implemented depending on how conditions change. Although general adaptation strategies have been suggested for sustaining forests, it is unclear how effective these strategies would be for maintaining forests – and the wildlife that depend on forests – at local or regional levels. In addition, these strategies have not been developed into explicit decision-support tools that could guide regional conservation planning. This lack of information hampers the ability of resource managers to anticipate landscape-level changes in forests and identify appropriate adaptive responses.
Focusing on the Adirondack Region of New York, the goal of this project is to inform forest and wildlife management decisions in light of changing conditions. Researchers will use a framework that incorporates the effects of future disturbances (e.g. wildfires or drought), insects and diseases, changing climate conditions, and different adaptive management approaches on forest conservation. Using this integrative approach, researchers will be able to model the future distribution and condition of forests under different scenarios of climate change, disturbance, and invasive species, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of different adaptive management strategies under alternative scenarios.
The results of this project will inform not only forest conservation, but also wildlife conservation in the Adirondacks. For example, the results will support current work by the Wildlife Conservation Society examining the vulnerability of bird species in the Adirondacks. The results will also be incorporated into a Northeast Climate Science Center project on adaptive management for priority species in montane spruce-fir ecosystems in the Northeast.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 599d8298e4b012c075b96425)