Adaptations to climate change: Colville and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests

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.

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Effects of Climate Change on Natural-Caused Fire Activity in Western U.S. National Forests

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos12080981 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 981

Author(s):

Hadi Heidari ◽

Mazdak Arabi ◽

Travis Warziniack

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

United States ◽

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Western United States ◽

National Forests ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Fire Activity ◽

The Future

Climate change, with warming temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns, may increase natural-caused forest fire activity. Increasing natural-caused fires throughout western United States national forests could place people, property, and infrastructure at risk in the future. We used the fine K nearest neighbor (KNN) method coupled with the downscaled Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) climate dataset to estimate changes in the rate of natural-caused fires in western United States national forests. We projected changes in the rate of minor and major forest fires from historical (1986–2015) to future (2070–2099) conditions to characterize fire-prone national forests under a range of climate change scenarios. The results indicate that climate change can add to the occurrence of forest fires in western United States national forests, particularly in Rocky Mountain, Pacific Southwest, and Southwestern United States Forest Service regions. Although summer months are projected to have the highest rate of natural-caused forest fire activity in the future, the rate of natural-caused forest fires is likely to increase from August to December in the future compared to the historical conditions. Improved understanding of altered forest fire regimes can help forest managers to better understand the potential effects of climate change on future fire activity and implement actions to attenuate possible negative consequences.

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Responding to climate change in national forests: a guidebook for developing adaptation options

10.2737/pnw-gtr-855 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

David L. Peterson ◽

Connie I. Millar ◽

Linda A. Joyce ◽

Michael J. Furniss ◽

Jessica E. Halofsky ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

National Forests ◽

Adaptation Options

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Trends and spatial shifts in lightning fires and smoke concentrations in response to 21st century climate over the national forests and parks of the western United States

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ◽

10.5194/acp-20-8827-2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (14) ◽

pp. 8827-8838

Author(s):

Yang Li ◽

Loretta J. Mickley ◽

Pengfei Liu ◽

Jed O. Kaplan

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

United States ◽

21St Century ◽

Transport Model ◽

The United States ◽

Western United States ◽

Fire Season ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

National Forests ◽

Chemical Transport Model

Abstract. Almost USD 3 billion per year is appropriated for wildfire management on public land in the United States. Recent studies have suggested that ongoing climate change will lead to warmer and drier conditions in the western United States, with a consequent increase in the number and size of wildfires, yet large uncertainty exists in these projections. To assess the influence of future changes in climate and land cover on lightning-caused wildfires in the national forests and parks of the western United States and the consequences of these fires on air quality, we link a dynamic vegetation model that includes a process-based representation of fire (LPJ-LMfire) to a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem). Under a scenario of moderate future climate change (RCP4.5), increasing lightning-caused wildfire enhances the burden of smoke fine particulate matter (PM), with mass concentration increases of ∼53 % by the late 21st century during the fire season in the national forests and parks of the western United States. In a high-emissions scenario (RCP8.5), smoke PM concentrations double by 2100. RCP8.5 also shows enhanced lightning-caused fire activity, especially over forests in the northern states.

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