Dave Spittlehouse,
Research Branch, BC Min. Forest & Range, Victoria, BC
MTNCLIM08, Silverton, CO, 9-12 June 2008

• Adaptation and forest management
• BC’s Future Forest Ecosystems
Initiative
• Current activities
• Challenges

• Reduce vulnerability of an entity to climate change
• Vulnerabilities vary with entity, time frame, adaptive capacity, uncertainty
• Management = Juggling a range of values and vulnerabilities

Adapt forests to the changing climate
- Influence the direction and timing of the response
Adapt our utilization of forest resources to the forest response to the changing climate
(Spittlehouse and Stewart 2003, Spittlehouse 2005)

• Facilitated migration
• Diversity – species management
• Stand management
• Control of pests, invasive species
• Migration corridors / genetic
‘reservoirs’
• Fire management

• Adapt expectations of and demands on forests and range resources
• Change rotation age and utilization
• Modify harvesting and wood processing technology
• Non-timber values a priority
• Forest and range carbon management
• Revise conservation objectives

• Goal: To adapt BC’s forest and range management framework to the changing climate.
• Outcomes: Ecosystems remain resilient to stress caused by climate change, human activity, and other agents of change.
Ecosystems continue to provide the values, basic services, products, and benefits society depends on.

• Research to understand functional constraints for key species & ecological processes
• Forecast how climate change scenarios might alter key species and ecological processes over time
• Monitor key species and ecological processes to detect changes over time, and determine agents of change
• Communicate knowledge gained to aid adapting the management framework to climate change

Ecosystems
Timber supply
Genetic resources
Range / grasslands
Biodiversity & wildlife Forest health
Fish, riparian, water Invasive species
Soil resources Fire management
Tree species suitability Forest carbon balance

• FFEI Technical team
• Climate change unit for coordination/policy
• Research program - grants and competitive funding of $6.5 million 2008/9
• Communications
• FFEI integrated into MOFR business plan
• Informing Operations Division & MoFR policy
• Provincial carbon management goals

• Foundation papers: Scenarios, Ecosystem
Resilience, Hydrology/Geomorph, Habitat …
• Access to high spatial resolution climate data
• Species/ecosystems response models
• Vulnerability assessment framework
• Policy evaluation (seed zones, species selection, fire risk, forest carbon …)
• Extension – publications, web sites http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hts/Future_Forests/ http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hre/topics/climate.htm

ClimateBC – High spatial resolution climate data
(Wang et al. 2006) (http://genetics.forestry.ubc.ca/cfgc/climate-models.html)

Historic and climate change data visulization and access
(http://www.pacificclimate.org/)

Lodgepole pine and mean annual temperature
(Wang et al. 2006)
Seed Planning Zones
A2 scenario

Framework for vulnerability assessment, and implementing adaptation
Overviews – Scenarios, Resilience, Hydrology, Habitat…
Vulnerability/risk assessment – impacts, timing, scale, uncertainty, adaptive capacity …
Adaptation options – what could be done
Policy/management advice – how to implement
This is an iterative process

• When will we know enough to respond?
• Which climate scenario(s) to aim for?
• Climate sensitivity - ecosystems, species, provenances, operations, …
• Priorities and values
• Managing expectations
• Developing interim adaptive actions
• Who owns the risk?

Challenge of Scale and Time
95Mha
0.2Mha
24Mha
Annual harvest area
Timber harvest land base
Non-timber harvest land base

• Awareness & capacity building
• Vulnerability assessments
• Interim responses
• Research initiatives
• Adaptation - risk management