SCIENCE APPLICATIONS
The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network is a replicated, operational-scale experiment testing the effectiveness of climate adaptation strategies in a diversity of forest ecosystem types across North America.
The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network is a collaborative effort led by Linda Nagel at Colorado State University (but NIACS claims her, too!) to establish a series of experimental silvicultural trials in various forest ecosystem types across the United States and Canada. Scientists, land managers, and key partners have co-developed a network of fully-replicated, operational sites and new affiliate sites to study long-term ecosystem responses to a range of climate change adaptation actions. Silvicultural treatments at each study site were developed using NIACS’ adaptation resources and encompass treatments for three broad climate adaptation options: resistance, resilience, and transition.
2021 ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The ASCC Network continues to grow, adding four new sites over the last year. Despite the challenges of the past years, the ASCC Network has continued to find ways to do research and work on-the-ground, collect data, and “adapt” to changing and new conditions.
LOOKING FORWARD
Interest in ASCC continues to grow. We are working with new collaborators on potential ASCC core and affiliate sites at the following locations:
- An oak ecosystem-focused site in Ohio
- A lodgepole pine forest located in Taylor Park in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests (GMUG) in Colorado
We hosted an ASCC Network-wide virtual meeting in March 2021 where we reaffirmed that ASCC partners view pursuing cross-site research projects as a top priority to foster collaboration across the Network. Following up on this, we plan to convene a virtual ASCC Network “Conference” for ASCC partners to engage and collaborate with each other in 2022. The goals of a future ASCC-centered conference will be to facilitate cross-pollination of research ideas and cross-site questions, explore conceptual paper ideas, and identify future network initiatives.
