By using a common experimental framework across diverse sites, the ASCC Network brings a much-needed level of scientific rigor to the emerging field of ecosystem climate adaptation and provides important insights and lessons applicable to the growing communities of practice engaging in adaptation. The ASCC study design consists of three active management treatments—resistance, resilience, transition (RRT)—a no action control that provides a passive approach to adaptation (i.e., no management intervention, let nature take its course). The strength of the RRT framework is that it specifies intent and direction of adaptation actions relative to the current condition, creating a framework for comparing the efficacy of different actions in working toward management goals and desired future conditions. The ASCC Network installations are diverse in forest types, historical disturbance regimes, and management contexts, so the development and application of RRT adaptation treatments is conditional and informed by the starting conditions for each location.
Conceptual diagram of the Resistance – Resilience – Transition (RRT) framework applied to the ASCC Network, positioned vertically along a spectrum of ecological persistence to change (i.e., adaptation). The y-axis presents the degree of alignment with current conditions relative to the future range of acceptable outcomes (i.e., desired future conditions). Graphic by Kailey Marcinkowski, Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science.
Common Experimental Design
The ASCC study is designed to maintain key elements that are consistent across all sites within the Network while allowing individual sites to tailor treatments to their unique, local contexts. All ASCC Network sites utilize the same experimental approach and study design for treatment types and spatial and temporal factors, allowing sites to evaluate outcomes of adaptation actions over both the short- and long-term across the same set of adaptation concepts. Additional design elements consistent across sites in the Network include statistically robust replication of the treatments (i.e., four replicates), operational unit sizes (approximately 10 hectares per unit), monitoring guidelines for overstory, midstory, and understory vegetation response, and an evaluation window of stewarding and monitoring the ASCC sites 20 years into the future post-implementation. However, the co-production process also recognizes that success at meeting management goals and objectives in the short- vs. long-term may look very different across local forest types and that the specific treatments will differ based on local context: forest type, current conditions and study site layout, local management objectives, climate vulnerabilities and other stressors, social and economic considerations, and the management actions prescribed to meet the adaptation treatments (Nagel et al. 2017). Each site also has a unique set of partners with their own set of research and management questions, resulting in unique and individualized monitoring plans for variables that include but are not limited to carbon sequestration, fuels reduction, impacts to pollinator habitat, and small mammal herbivory on planted seedlings.
ASCC Network leadership, common experimental design, and site specific responsibilities framework. Graphic Credit: ASCC Network Leadership Team.
Collaborative Workshop
Site tour of Second College Grant. Photo Credit: Sam Myers, University of Vermont.
Each ASCC site engages multidisciplinary researchers working with local on-the-ground managers to facilitate long-term dialogue throughout creation, implementation, and monitoring of climate-adaptive silviculture treatments, as well as effective communication of the results with the broader community. The creation of each new site centers around a workshop of local scientists, land managers, and key partners, where participants evaluate the initial forest conditions and then identify the silvicultural treatments that will achieve the goals of resistance, resilience, and transition for the local forest. Utilizing an iterative process throughout the workshop, participants discuss and shape the site-specific management goals, articulate ecosystem vulnerabilities and desired future conditions that map with adaptation concepts, and identify silvicultural ‘tactics’ or actions to achieve these management goals. Ultimately, these sets of silvicultural tactics are translated into treatments along resistance, resilience, and transition (and no-action) spectrum.
Ohio Hills workshop. Photo Credit: Courtney Peterson, Colorado State University.
ASCC Sampling Protocol
All ASCC study sites monitor overstory, mid-story, and understory forest composition, as well as health and productivity using a consistent data-collection protocol. In order for the ASCC approach to be applicable to any and all forest types, the tactics employed at each site vary. A panel of expert scientists and managers visit the study site to tailor the specific treatments design elements to local conditions and concerns. Each ASCC experimental unit is measured before and immediately after treatment implementation and then re-measured at consistent time intervals following treatment.
ASCC plot design for planting and monitoring. Graphic Credit: ASCC Network Leadership Team.
Key Questions Posed by the ASCC Network
The ASCC Network is testing these management-related ideas:
Will adaptation approaches and treatments work in a real-world context to meet local management goals and objectives?
How feasible are the treatments silviculturally, as well as in terms of financial, social, or other management constraints?
How does our idea of desired future conditions (DFCs) change with each treatment type?
What does it mean to deliberately create a future-adapted ecosystem, and why would a manager choose to do this?
What tradeoffs exist between achievement of adaptation objectives and other common objectives for a given region and ecosystem type?
The scientific questions to be addressed through hypothesis-driven research at each ASCC site include:
Do the treatments create significant changes to forest conditions over time at a particular site, and how do treatments compare across sites?
How do hypothesized treatment responses (DFCs) compare with actual responses observed in the future?
Do these treatments achieve what they were designed for?
What criteria emerge to enable managers to identify which treatments perform best?
Does one type of treatment (resistance, resilience, transition, or no action) consistently perform better across all sites?
