Forests
Adaptation Strategies in Forests
Summary of Resistance, Resilience, and Response Strategies from David Ganz
Resistance can be seen as a short-term strategy. Resistance strategies address immediate threats and focus on minimizing the impacts of disturbance regimes that are exacerbated by climate change.
Resilience can be seen both as a short-term and a long-term strategy. Resilience refers to the capacity of a forest stand or community to recover from a disturbance and return to a reference state (Noss 2001). Forest communities are most vulnerable to invasion and significant species shift following a disturbance, a strategy that promotes resilience at the stand establishment phase will be important to deliberately maintain desired commercial species (e.g., encouraging or allowing for the retention of diverse native species), particularly if climate change results in more frequent stand-replacing disturbance types. Resilience strategies must pay particular attention to invasive plant species and maintaining vigorous and diverse communities at the landscape scale.
The primary concept of Response is to facilitate the movement of species over time. Enabling land managers to respond to climate change requires an acceptance of a great deal of uncertainty around how quickly change will occur. This strategy encompasses the most costly practices and requires acceptance of a level of uncertainty that many landowners and managers will likely not choose.
References
Millar, Constance I., Nathan L. Stephenson, and Scott L. Stephens. 2007. Climate Change and Forests of the Future: Managing in the Face of Uncertainty. Ecological Applications 17, no. 8: 2145-2151.
Noss, Reed F. 2001. Beyond Kyoto: Forest Management in a Time of Rapid Climate Change. Conservation Biology 15, no. 3: 578-590.
Spittlehouse, David L. Adaptation to Climate Change in Forestry . Proceedings of the Species at Risk 2004 Pathways to Recovery Conference, March 2–6, 2004, Victoria, B.C.
Spittlehouse, David L. and Robert B. Stewart. 2003. Adaptation to climate change in forest management . BC Journal of Ecosystems and Management 4, no. 1: 1-11.
Rethinking Forests Video
The Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS) http://www.cafms.org/
ECOSYSTEM-BASED ADAPTATION IN FORESTS
The Protective Role of Natural and Engineered Defence Systems in Coastal Hazards
Prepared by Bijan Khazai, Jane C. Ingram, David S. Saah, David J. Ganz
Link to document: The Protective Role of Natural and Engineered Defence Systems in Coastal Hazards
