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Localizing Forest Adaptation Strategies to Diverse Northeastern Forest Ecosystems and Threats



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This presentation was given by Anthony D'Amato, head of the forestry progam at the University of Vermont, for the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Webinar Series.

Webinar Description: Northeastern forests span a great diversity of ecological settings and ownership types, which limits the general utility of broad recommendations for sustaining forest functions and values under changing climate and disturbance regimes. Similarly, the varied nature of climate change impacts and their interactions with other stressors, including non-native insects and diseases, present unique, site-level management challenges that complicate strategies for maintaining specific species or habitat conditions into the future. To address the need for site- and ecosystem-level guidance on best forest adaptation strategies, a series of operational-scale studies were co-developed with diverse partners over the past decade across a range of key forest types in NH, NY, and VT. Strategies tested include a mix of novel tactics, such as planting future-climate adapted species, and more commonly applied ecological silvicultural approaches designed to increase ecosystem complexity, all localized to current forest conditions and long-term forest and wildlife goals for the site. This webinar will highlight the outcomes from this work and implications for balancing objectives associated with increasing adaptive capacity, while sustaining key wildlife species and ecosystem processes, such as carbon storage and sequestration.
Category
Management
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