The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network was established in 2009 in response to our changing climate, aiming to test and provide credible, data-backed climate-adaptive forest management strategies for forest managers and policy makers alike. The project seeks to identify management actions that enhance the ability of a system to cope with change while continuing to meet management goals and objectives. It’s information that’s important to Minnesotans, who rely on and value our forests for products, jobs, recreation, hunting, clean water, carbon sequestration, and more.
Sixteen years later, the ASCC Network has grown to become the country’s biggest experimental silviculture program focused on climate adaptation, involving more than 200 land management and science collaborators at 14 sites across the United States and Canada. In total, nine important forest types are represented and cover, collectively, more than 2,000 hectares (7.7 square miles) of forest lands.
Working in collaboration, scientists, local land managers, and community partners are leveraging place-based knowledge to test and measure the effects of four adaptation management strategies across the network: resistance (actions that improve the defenses of the forest against anticipated changes or disturbance in order to maintain relatively unchanged conditions), resilience (actions that accommodate some degree of change, but encourage a return to a prior or desired condition following disturbance), transition (actions that intentionally accommodate change and enable ecosystems to adaptively respond to changing and new conditions), and no action (no management). The data collected is helping to inform larger-scale land management practices for a variety of ecological, socioeconomic, and management contexts.
ASCC is a project that’s of special importance to the Department of Forest Resources as well as the state of Minnesota. Two unique experimental sites in Minnesota – the Cutfoot Experimental Forest, located on the Chippewa National Forest and the homeland of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and the urban Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, located along the Mississippi River corridor that runs through the Twin Cities – are led by faculty members Rebecca Montgomery and Marcella Windmuller-Campione, respectively. Plus, the ASCC was co-founded and continues to be co-led by our new department head, Linda Nagel.
It’s also work that’s made possible thanks to the contributions of volunteers. “We’re really lucky to have a climate change experiment in our community where thousands of volunteers have helped plant, tend, and maintain the experiment,” says Windmuller-Campione about the Mississippi River corridor experimental site.
This fall marked 10 years of data collection at ASCC sites, which was celebrated with a new paper by lead author Linda Nagel and published in BiosScience. (Read the full paper: "Ten Years of Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change: An Applied, Coproduced Experimental Framework".) Although that’s still early in terms of the lifecycle of a forest, it’s a valuable point for reflection on the experiment. “The value of this work extends far beyond the data we are gathering from climate-adaptive silvicultural treatments. Through partnerships among scientists, land managers, and communities, we are co-producing knowledge and drawing on place-based expertise,” says Nagel. “Together, we’ve created a foundation that will guide and inspire future forestry practices for years to come.”