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Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC)

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) project is trying to answer what may be the most critical forest management question of our time: how can today’s forestry practices help create the healthiest possible forests of the future in the face of climate change and all the uncertainty it brings?

Established in 2009, the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) project uses consistent experimental design elements at all study locations while allowing individual sites to tailor treatments to their unique, local contexts. Each study focuses on understanding and evaluating management options designed to enable forests to respond to a changing climate.

There are currently fourteen ASCC study sites across the United States and Canada, each managed by a different set of partners. The three Northern Research Station-led sites include one in New Hampshire (the Second College Grant site), one in Ohio (the Ohio Hills site), and one in Minnesota (on the Cutfoot Experimental Forest, which is located on the Chippewa National Forest).

There are three additional ASCC sites in the 20-state NRS footprint that are led by partner organizations: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA, in Minnesota), Driftless Area (Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin), and Southern New England (Connecticut and Rhode Island).

Goals

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) project aims to:

  1. Create a multi-region study with locally relevant climate change adaptation treatments using input from an expert panel of regional scientists and local managers.
  2. Introduce forest managers to tools and approaches to consider changing climate conditions when making resource management decisions.

The ASCC Network is trying to answer these specific questions:

  1. Will adaptation approaches and treatments work in a real-world context to meet local management goals and objectives?
  2. How feasible are the treatments from a forest management standpoint, as well as in terms of financial, social, or other management constraints?
  3. How does our idea of ‘desired future conditions’ change with each treatment type?
  4. What does it mean to deliberately create a future-adapted ecosystem, and why would a manager choose to do this?
  5. What tradeoffs exist between achieving climate adaptation objectives and reaching other common goals for a given region and forest type?

ASCC’s ultimate goal is to provide proven examples of how to integrate climate change adaptation into forest planning and on-the-ground actions.

Since its inception, the ASCC Network has had a major impact on climate-adaptive silviculture. Some highlights include:

  • ASCC is the largest experimental silviculture program focused on climate adaptation in the country, including 14 statistically robust, operational, and diverse experimental sites, with 15 years of existing data at our oldest site.
  • Over 500 natural resource professionals have been directly trained in applying climate-adaptive silviculture using ASCC site examples through the Forest Service’s National Advanced Silviculture Program.
  • Over 200 management and science collaborators are sharing lessons learned from ASCC to train and advise FS staff and partners on climate-informed management.
  • More than 500 adaptation projects have been developed using the same toolkit of adaptation resources.
  • The ASCC installations demonstrate and evaluate management actions across a spectrum of adaptation options: resistance, resilience, transition, and a no action control.

NRS-Led ASCC Sites

Ohio Hills Site, Ohio

The 2,882-acre Ohio Hills ASCC study site is located in the Vinton Furnace State Forest in southeastern Ohio. Forest types range from dry to mesic species compositions dominated by white oak, black oak, chestnut oak, red maple, yellow poplar, and sugar maple. This research site is within the Ohio Interagency Forestry Team’s Collaborative Oak Management Region.

Expected climate change impacts at this site include:

  • Higher average annual temperatures;
  • Changing precipitation amounts;
  • More frequent extreme weather events;
  • Higher risk of drought and more water loss;
  • Less annual snowpack;
  • More frequent invasions by non-native plants, insects, and plant and animal diseases;
  • Higher risk of wildfires.

Ongoing monitoring efforts at Ohio Hills will track songbirds, bats, timber rattlesnakes, salamanders, other wildlife, oak regeneration, and survival and growth of existing and planted trees.

Cutfoot Experimental Forest Site (Minnesota)

The ASCC study on the Chippewa National Forest’s Cutfoot Experimental Forest was the very first to be planned and carried out. The Cutfoot Experimental Forest covers approximately 3,000 acres and most of it is natural-origin red pine stands. The ASCC project site is dominated by red pine trees regenerated from a fire roughly 100 years ago.

Expected climate change impacts at this site include higher risk of wildfire and increasing drought stress, which may result in reduced forest growth and greater susceptibility to pests and diseases.

Ongoing monitoring at the Cutfoot Experimental Forest ASCC site includes survival and growth of existing trees, planted seedling survival and growth, songbird species and numbers, and natural tree regeneration.

Second College Grant Site (New Hampshire)

The Dartmouth College Second College Grant site is one of the original five ASCC study sites. “The Grant” consists of 27,000 acres of forests, rivers, and wetlands that have been owned and managed by Dartmouth College since 1807. The forest is dominated by sugar maple, American beech, and yellow birch with small amounts of red maple, red spruce, and other species. “The Grant” has long been used for producing timber but it is also a model forest for wilderness recreation and forest research.

Expected climate change impacts at this site include:

  • More frequent wind and ice events that damage the forest;
  • Increasing moisture stress due to both drought and periods of above-average precipitation;
  • Loss of key species or functional groups that are critical for maintaining ecosystem services.

Ongoing monitoring at the Second College Grant ASCC site includes natural tree regeneration, residual tree survival and growth, songbirds and other wildlife species, planted seedling survival and growth, and increased carbon pools through living and downed wood material.

Additional ASCC Sites in the NRS Footprint

The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA)

The MNRRA site in Saint Paul, Minnesota was the first ASCC Network site in an urban setting. The first study was set up in 2019 at Crosby Farm Regional Park, a 736-acre natural area along the Mississippi River. Learn more about the MNRRA study.

Driftless Area

The Driftless Area ASCC project sites are located in northeastern Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, and southwestern Wisconsin. Each site has silt loam soils and mature dry-mesic forests dominated by northern red and white oak. Treatments began in the spring of 2023 with the underplanting of about 15,000 seedlings across the study. Learn more about the Driftless area study.

Southern New England

The Southern New England ASCC affiliate site is composed of multiple small research areas at the Mohegan State Forest, University of Connecticut Forest, and Lee Farm in Connecticut, and the DeCoppet Preserve in Rhode Island. This arrangement of small research areas was chosen to mimic the parcelized nature of forest ownership that exists throughout the oak/hickory forest range. Because they are easy to access and are located near cities and towns, the Southern New England ASCC sites are ideal settings to bring natural resource professionals, landowners, students, and the interested public to talk about climate change impacts on the region’s forests. Learn more about the Southern New England study.

See Affiliate Sites at AdaptiveSilviculture.org for more information about each of these sites.

Collaborators

Publications

Last updated December 10, 2024
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