Climate change presents unique challenges to forest management as site conditions shift away from historic norms into novel local and regional conditions. To respond effectively, forest managers need to (1) monitor and assess changing conditions, and (2) identify early warning signs of forest stress that may lead to undesirable trajectories of forest conditions.
To address this need, we developed the Monitoring and Managing for Climate Change framework to provide a menu of simple, relevant, and cost-effective metrics for monitoring the response of forests to climate change. Forest managers can use the information collected through this Framework to inform their decision-making.
The final Framework provides a two-tiered approach, with locally relevant metrics (e.g., lightweight additions to existing forest inventory) and an assessment of the larger regional context (e.g., via USFS Forest Inventory & Analysis data and/or remote sensing).