Resist-Accept-Direct Framework

Project Overview The iconic grizzly bear of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has exhibited a remarkable recovery in response to concerted conservation actions implemented since its listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975. However, information regarding the potential effects and timing of climate change in conjunction with increasing human recreation and...

Project Overview: Native Yellowstone cutthroat trout and mountain whitefish in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYA) are ecologically and socio-economically important species, but are threatened by drought, rising water temperatures, habitat loss, and non-native species. Researchers supported by this North Central CASC project will use climate data and extensive population records to...

Vegetation transformations after wildfires are a growing issue for forest and shrubland managers in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Severe fires combined with persistent drought and invasive species can slow or prevent the recovery of burned forests and shrublands to their pre-fire states, resulting in ecological, economic, and cultural losses. Forests may be converted to shrub fields or...

The Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) is an iconic landscape with national parks, iconic species like grizzly bears and elk, and over 11,500 square miles of forest. While fires are a natural part of the GYA, climate change and land management legacies are increasing the frequency and size of severe fires. Climate change interacts with these fires to shift conifer forests to non-forested...

As climate change progresses, profound environmental changes are becoming a widespread concern. A new management paradigm is developing to address this concern with a framework that encourages strategic decisions to resist, accept, or direct ecological trajectories. Effective use of the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework requires the scientific community to describe the range of...

Natural & cultural resource managers are facing a slew of new challenges for managing public lands stemming from climate change and human-driven stressors like invasive species, fragmentation, and new resource uses. In some cases, the very landscapes and species they are managing are changing in significant ways, transforming from one set of conditions to another. As a result, previously...

Climate change presents new and compounding challenges to natural resource management. With shifting climate patterns, managers are confronted with difficult decisions on how to minimize climate impacts to habitats, infrastructure, and wildlife populations. Further, managers lack the information needed to make proactive management decisions. To address this problem, this project will...

As wildfire activity surges in the western U.S., managers are increasingly challenged by decisions surrounding managing post-fire environments. Changing fire regimes and warmer, drier post-fire conditions are increasing the likelihood of post-fire vegetation transitions, for example, from forest to grassland. Given the economic and ecological importance of these ecosystems...

Climate change is altering the patterns and characteristics of fire across natural systems in the United States. Resource managers in the Northwest are faced with making natural resource and fire management decisions now, despite a lack of accessible information about how those decisions will play out as fire regimes, and ecosystem responses, will change across the landscape. Decision...

Recent changes in climate are having profound effects on many fish and wildlife species, and projections suggest that those trends are likely to continue. Changing climate conditions have the potential to transform ecosystems, which impacts not only fish and wildlife but also human communities, which rely on ecosystems for important goods and services such as food and water filtration...