Brief Communication: Piloting a Climate-Change Adaptation Index on US National Forest Lands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R Coughlan ◽  
Heidi Huber-Stearns ◽  
Courtney Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Forest Service ◽  
National Forests ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Planning And Management ◽  
Forest Lands ◽  
Adaptation Index

Abstract Climate change presents a novel and significant threat to the sustainability of forest ecosystems worldwide. The United States Forest Service (USFS) has conducted climate change vulnerability assessments for much of the 193 million acres of national forest lands it manages, yet little to no research exists on the degree to which management units have adopted considerations of climate change into planning or project implementation. In response to this knowledge gap, we piloted a survey instrument in USFS Region 1 (Northern region) and Region 6 (Pacific Northwest region) to determine criteria for assessing the degree to which national forests integrate climate-change considerations into their management planning and activities. Our resulting climate-change adaptation index provides an efficient quantitative approach for identifying where, how, and, potentially, why some national forests are making more progress toward incorporating climate-change adaptations into forest planning and management. Study Implications We used a self-assessment survey of planners and managers on US National Forests in Forest Service Regions 1 and 6 to design a climate change adaptation index for measuring the degree to which national forests units have integrated considerations of climate change into their planning and management activities. Our resulting index can potentially be used to help understand how and why the USFS’s decentralized climate-change adaptation strategy has led some national forests to make comparatively significant progress towards adapting to climate change while others have lagged behind.

scholarly journals “Flagging the Lines”: Basque immigrant sheepherders and the early US Forest Administration in Nevada, 1890-1920

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-168
Author(s):  
Iker Saitua ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Domain ◽  
Forest Service ◽  
National Forests ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
The Public ◽  
Grassland Ecosystems ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Forest Service ◽  
Forest Lands

In the early twentieth century, the US Forest Service began to exclude itinerant sheep operations from the public-domain lands it administered: the National Forests. But beyond the National Forests, the extensive public-domain lands devoted to grazing were not regulated. To some local ranchers and stockmen, the increasing presence of itinerant sheepherders, including Basque immigrants, represented the first of a growing number of competitors on Nevada’s public-domain lands. These stockmen blamed itinerant sheepherders for all the problems affecting the water and grassland ecosystems, such as the deterioration of the ranges and the fouling of springs and streams. Their representatives requested an expansion of National Forest boundaries as a means of asserting exclusive use of the range for stockmen. Although at first the Forest Service keenly appreciated the problems of local stock raisers, it opposed the idea of expanding the National Forests in Nevada solely for the purpose of range control. This article explores how some ranchers advocated expanding the National Forest lands within the State of Nevada as a strategy to protect their economic interests and force itinerant sheepherders out of business.

Once and Future Trees

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard G. Wilshire ◽  
Richard W. Hazlett ◽  
Jane E. Nielson
Keyword(s):  
Flood Control ◽  
Forest Ecology ◽  
Urban Pollution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Biological Interactions ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Forest Lands

Along the Colorado Plateau’s high-standing Mogollon Rim in northern Arizona’s Coconino National Forest stands a small patch of big trees that matured well before Europeans came to North America. Massive ponderosa pines, and even pinyon pines and western junipers, tower above the forest floor, shutting out all but the most shade-tolerant competitors. Few places like this one still exist anywhere in the United States, even on national forest lands. A tourist hoping to see all the diversity that earliest European arrivals found commonplace in the western landscape must seek out a wide scattering of isolated enclaves across the region. Western forests no longer contain the grand glades and lush thickets that our forerunners encountered because most woodlands, especially those owned by the public, largely serve a wide variety of human purposes, as campsites or home sites, board-feet of lumber, potential jobs, recreational playgrounds, and even temples of the spirit. We also rely on forests to maintain habitat for endangered species and seed banks for restoring depleted biodiversity—and to provide us with clean air and water, stable hillside soils, and flood control in wet years. Forests must perform these roles while being consumed, fragmented by roads, and heavily eroded. But there is no guarantee that these most beloved and iconic of natural resources can sustain such a burden. Federal, state, and local government agencies oversee and regulate western U.S. forest lands and their uses, trying to manage the complex and only partly understood biological interactions of forest ecology to serve public needs. But after nine decades of variable goals, and five decades of encroaching development, western woodlands are far from healthy. Urban pollution and exotic tree diseases, some brought by humans, are killing pines, firs, and oaks. Loggers have more than decimated the oldest mountainside forests—most valuable for habitat and lumber alike—with clearcutting practices that induce severe soil erosion. Illegal clearings for marijuana farms are increasing.

Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation in Indian Country

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon M. McNeeley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Wind River Reservation

Abstract Much of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable development and climate change adaptation focus on poor and developing nations, yet many tribal communities inside the United States include marginalized peoples and developing nations who face structural barriers to effectively adapt to climate change. There is a need to critically examine diverse climate change risks for indigenous peoples in the United States and the many structural barriers that limit their ability to adapt to climate change. This paper uses a sustainable climate adaptation framework to outline the context and the relationships of power and authority, along with different ways of knowing and meaning, to illustrate the underpinnings of some tribes’ barriers to sustainable climate adaptation. The background of those structural barriers for tribes is traced, and then the case of water rights and management at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming is used to illustrate the interplay of policy, culture, climate, justice, and limits to adaptation. Included is a discussion about how the rulings of the Big Horn general stream adjudication have hindered tribal climate change adaptation by limiting the quantity of tribal reserved water rights, tying those rights to the sole purposes of agriculture, which undermines social and cultural connections to the land and water, and failing to recognizing tribal rights to groundwater. Future climate projections suggest increasing temperatures, and changes in the amount and timing of snowpack, along with receding glaciers, all of which impact water availability downstream. Therefore, building capacity to take control of land and water resources and preparing for climate change and drought at Wind River Reservation is of critical importance.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document