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 grassland and sagebrush ecosystems. These transformations impact species habitat, carbon storage, and other management goals on public lands. However, managing for “natural ecosystems” is not always possible in the face of climate change.
The Resist-Accept-Direct framework (RAD) can help: under RAD, managers can resist change to maintain ecosystems, accept climate- and wildfire-driven ecological change, even if that means losing species habitat or ecosystem services, or direct ecosystem changes to maintain or gain key resources or services. For this project, researchers will work with managers in the GYA to implement RAD as a strategy to manage wildfires and subsequent ecosystem changes. With managers from each GYA agency researchers will identify 1) shared and unique management goals, 2) management options that can resist, accept, or direct wildfire-related ecosystem changes, and 3) ways to coordinate RAD implementation across agencies, since fires span management boundaries on the landscape
This project will help managers identify and coordinate approaches to achieve their conservation goals in the context of climate change, ensuring the preservation of key species, ecosystems, and resources in the North Central CASC region’s public lands.
