Task I Findings and Recommendations
I5
Finding Guidance for integrating climate into forest and integrated management planning is lacking. ■ Most forest management plans are older, and many are in the revision process. There is widespread recognition of the need to include climate-informed actions, adaptation, or forest carbon stewardship strategies in the revisions of these plans. However, despite disturbances becoming a dominant feature in planning, there is little capacity to bring climate into planning as a new mega-driver and coupler of multiple disturbances or alternative future scenarios, or a problem framework for developing integrated strategies to address vulnerabilities and resilience. ■ Much of the forest science and management that has been applied to climate response has focused on forest health and disturbance, anchored in the belief that adaptation is about resilience to be achieved through restoration to historic ranges of variability. Not well- developed are the concepts of explicit measures of resilience and strategies chosen for robustness across a range of future situations that are much different than historical conditions. ■ There are large differences in depth and resolution in climate response guidance and resources for implementing landscape scale approaches across tribes and their neighbors. This makes collaborative strategies for climate change response difficult to forge and implement. Tribes
Recommendation ■ Provide clear guidance for incorporating climate drivers into forest management and planning. This would include a thorough “cross walk” between general climate resilience planning and climate adaptation, forest system vulnerabilities, tribal adaptation strategies, and climate-informed forest management in forest management plans and IRMP’s. The guidance would be consistent enough across tribes, agencies, and partners to encourage collaborative efforts at assessment and planning at the landscape scale and the development of implementable risk sharing and co- management of resilience strategies. ■ This guidance would also include provisions for periodic update and adjustments to accommodate new impacts and new management approaches for dealing with changing resource vulnerabilities, adaptation, and learning.
lack the staff to pursue voluminous environmental analysis to manage
exposure to appeals and litigation risks. Joint projects with the Forest Service or other agencies are important in large scale pro-active disturbance and resilience building, but tribes are often discouraged by the asymmetric process demands and requirements among partners for moving forward.
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