AUTHORS: Melissa Lucash, Portland State University; Robert Scheller*, North Carolina State University
ABSTRACT: Forest managers must consider how climate change will alter the resilience and sustainability and use this information to guide their decision-making. We used a state-of-the-art forest landscape model (LANDIS-II) in conjunction with LandViz, a new web-based visualization tool, to project how climate change will affect the spatial patterns of resilience to disturbances (i.e. wind, insects, and fire) and forest management in north-central Minnesota, USA. We explored management options for maximizing resiliency (i.e. current practices, maximizing economic returns, maximizing carbon storage and climate change adaptation). Resilience was significantly lower under climate change, though there was wide variation among climate change scenarios. Only climate-adaptive management had consistently higher resilience under climate change. We demonstrate that only a substantial shift in simulated forest practices was successful in promoting resilience in central MN under climate change. Visualization was key to developing our scenarios and communicating results back to forest managers although substantial resources are required for maintenance of customized visualization applications and long-term storage of data.