Management Goals & Treatments

What approach best prepares forest ecosystems for climate change? Adaptation options occupy a continuum of management goals related to their levels of desired change. A team of natural resource specialists and researchers familiar with the Second College Grant convened for a three-day workshop in the summer of 2016 to develop the study design for the ASCC project site. The team developed a set of desired future condition statements, objectives, and tactics for each major climate adaptation trajectory:

RESISTANCE

maintain relatively unchanged conditions over time

Management Goals:

• Encourage a multi-aged / size structure and maintain quality across all size classes
• Maintain hydrological cycle and erosion
• Stable carbon pools with accreting living biomass carbon
• Maintain/increase vigor and quality of residual trees while maintaining current productivity levels consistent with type

Strategies & Approaches: 

• Reduce competition for moisture, nutrients, and light 
• Single-tree selection (70-80 ft²/acre) 
• Multi-aged cohort 
• Retain biological legacies 
• Increase downed dead wood 

RESILIENCE

allow some change in current conditions, but encourage eventual return to original conditions

Management Goals:

• Multiple combinations of species composition and structure present (e.g., multiple pathways to recovery from disturbance)
• High overall tree species and functional diversity with increased component of local species adapted to future climate conditions/disturbance compared to current condition
• Multiple age classes present
• Increased amount of biological legacies and dead wood
• Same growth/productivity as Resistance treatment, but allowing for some deviation/oscillation
• High production of beech hard mast for wildlife

Strategies & Approaches: 

• Reduce competition for moisture, nutrients, and light 
• Group and single-tree selection (20% in gaps of 0.1-0.25 acre in size, 20% in reserves, 70-80 ft²/acre matrix) 
• Maintain and restore diversity of native species 
• Increase drought-adapted species (red maple and beech) 

TRANSITION

actively facilitate change to encourage adaptive responses

Management Goals:

• Increased dominance of species adapted to future climate change currently on site plus increased proportion of planted species (≥ 20% composition) not currently on site that are better-adapted to future climate change
• Increased amount of biological legacies and dead wood
• Increased diversity of tree functional traits

Strategies & Approaches: 

• Variable density thin / irregular shelterwood (20% in gaps of 0.25-1 acre, 10-20% in reserves, 70-80 ft²/acre matrix) 
• Increase future-adapted, off-site species (northern red oak, bitternut hickory, eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, basswood, black birch, bigtooth aspen, chestnut)