Climate Change Accounting in Two National Forests
WENATCHEE -- The Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests will be among the first in the nation to prepare for global warming.
Forest administrators are working on a plan that includes measuring climate change, and strategies to adapt quickly if changes occur.
The plan, when unveiled in 2007, will take a serious look at how to deal with what experts say may include larger and more frequent wildfires, and massive forest die-backs from pine beetle and other insects.
"The Okanogan, Wenatchee and Colville forests are going to be at the leading edge, at least for this region. They're going to be the guinea pigs, if you will," said Rex Holloway, Forest Service spokesman in Portland.
Across the country, Forest Plans -- first developed in the 1980s -- are being revamped under new rules. In North Central Washington, a local Forest Service team has been working for more than two years to revise the plans for the Wenatchee, Okanogan and Colville National Forests.
"We are one of the first forests to operate under this new planning rule, and one phase is to consider all of the disturbances to the ecosystem. Well, climate change is certainly a disturbance," said Phil Jahns, vegetation team leader for the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests and a member of the Forest Plan revision team.
Jahns said climate change models aren't specific enough yet to know how changes will affect North Central Washington forests. He said the vast majority of scientists now believe climate change is real, and to a certain degree unstoppable, so it's time to reflect that in forest management decisions.
But instead of developing a plan based on an unknown scenario, the plan will include ways to accommodate changes in the climate -- like replanting logged or burned areas with a wide range of species, instead of a single species designed to grow at a certain altitude and climate.
Margaret Hartzell, the Forest Plan team leader for all three forests, said the new plan will require more closely monitoring forest die-backs, insect infestations, drought, and other results of a changing climate.
The plan will also allow for yearly adjustments based on what the monitoring shows, she said. Those adjustments, said Jahns, would include things like replanting areas with tree species that are more resistant to drought, or selecting seed of the same species, but from lower elevations, so some trees are tuned to a warmer climate.
For guidance on how to consider global warming in the plan, the team turned to the Pacific Northwest Research Station, an arm of the Forest Service in charge of forestry research.
Ron Neilson, a climatologist at the research center, offered a glimpse of what the planning team faces.
"Virtually all natural resource management has been based on some presumption of what it looked like in the past -- a sense that we can get back to the way things used to be. That's off the table now," Neilson explained. New forest plans will have to incorporate a sense of the unknown, he said. "Now, we have to manage for change."
Continue reading this article from the Wenatchee World:
Accounting for climate change: NCW forests are on the leading edge of planning to cope with the realities of global warming
