Scientific Management

Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) project is a collaborative effort to establish a series of experimental silvicultural trials across a network of different forest ecosystem types throughout the United States and Canada.

Our Research

Silviculture & Climate Adaptation

Resistance

Managing for resistance means improving the defenses of the forest against anticipated changes, or directly defending the forest against disturbance, in order to maintain relatively unchanged conditions.

Resilience

Managing for resilience means accommodating some degree of change, but encouraging a return to a prior condition or an identified benchmark condition following disturbance.

Transition

Managing for transition (or response) means intentionally accommodating change and enabling ecosystems to adaptively respond to changing and new conditions.

About

The ASCC Study

To develop the ASCC study, we brought together a core team of scientists and managers interested in integrating climate change adaptation into their silvicultural planning and on-the-ground management actions at each site. The big question ASCC is poised to answer is: What actions can be taken to enhance the ability of a system to cope with change while continuing to meet management goals and objectives?