Forest managers need robust examples of how to integrate climate change adaptation into silvicultural planning and on-the-ground actions. The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network is a collaborative effort to establish a series of experimental silvicultural trials across different forest ecosystems in the United States and Canada.
Forest in Canada. Photo credit: Jeff Fera, Natural Resources Canada.
Experimental Design
Scientists, land managers, and a variety of partners have developed fourteen trial sites as part of this multi-region study to research long-term ecosystem responses to a range of climate change adaptation actions.
Site tour of the Mohegan State Forest. Photo Credit: Amanda Bunce, University of Connecticut.
The ASCC experimental treatments are focused on understanding management actions designed to enable forests to respond to a changing climate. All sites use a common framework for evaluating how forests will respond to future conditions. The treatments at each site were developed according to local conditions and tailored to meet site-specific management objectives.
This two-tiered design provides a means for evaluating adaptive management strategies across distinct forest types, allowing researchers to ask broad questions about climate change adaptation across all study sites, while also addressing on-the-ground management needs specific to individual sites.
ASCC Network Goals
The ASCC Network aims to achieve the following long-term goals:
Goal 1: Sustainable and Vibrant Network Maintain a highly engaged community of managers and scientists who are working collaboratively to develop, evaluate, and promote climate-informed silvicultural practices.
Goal 2: Generate Applied Science Generate science that is contributing to a growing body of knowledge addressing climate change challenges and developing best practices for implementing climate adaptation strategies in real-world scenarios.
Goal 3: Advance Implementation of Climate-Adaptive Silviculture Apply ASCC lessons learned in on-the-ground implementation of climate-adaptive silviculture practices in forest ecosystems through training with decision-makers.
what We do
Second College Grant Resilience Treatment. Photo Credit: Tony D’Amato, University of Vermont.
The ASCC Network is the largest experimental silviculture program focused on climate adaptation in North America and provides crucial information on how to manage forests for changing conditions. The Network currently maintains 14 statistically robust, operational, and diverse experimental sites, with 15 years of existing data at our oldest site.
Since its inception in 2009 and looking forward, the ASCC Network is:
Developing and implementing an experimental framework testing a suite of climate-adaptive management actions with practical, real-world relevance
Evaluating and comparing intentionally designed silvicultural treatments of resistance, resilience, and transition to identify forest adaptation interventions
Fostering diverse, collaborative science-management partnerships, which leads to more direct actionable science delivery and implementation of adaptation actions
Providing valuable insights to the broader community of researchers, managers, and others actively responding to climate change
