Climate change will fundamentally affect Northwest moist-forest ecology, species composition, and many benefits people receive from these forests. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the average annual temperature of the Northwest is projected to increase by 6°C by the end of this century compared with the 1950-2005 mean. The pace of climate change is projected to be rapid: the average annual temperatures of the region are predicted to depart from historical ranges within the next 3 to 5 decades. Currently, about half of the watersheds in the moist forests of Oregon and Washington are strongly influenced by snowmelt, but by 2080, most of those watersheds are projected to become rain-dominant systems. Climate models project increases in extreme heat and extreme precipitation events in the Northwest, and forest simulations project drier fuel conditions, leading to larger and more severe fires. Moist-forest response to climate change will vary by site, by forest age, and by fire history, but on a broad scale, forest stands that currently experience summer water deficit, climate change is likely to intensify drought conditions, reducing productivity and increasing risk for insect outbreaks and fire damage. Fish and wildlife distributions in the Northwest moist forests are shifting already and will shift more rapidly as climate change intensifies.
Results/Conclusions
Climate-smart conservation is “the intentional and deliberate consideration of climate change in natural resource management, realized through adopting forward-looking goals and explicitly linking strategies to key climate impacts and vulnerabilities.” Key characteristics of climate-smart conservation include management that is well informed through partnerships with science across a broad landscape context; conservation goals that prepare the landscape and its wildlife for the future; and strategies that embrace and confront uncertainties. The dominant paradigm for climate change adaptation has been to manage forests to be resistant or resilient to change, but some forests may exhibit tipping point and threshold responses to increasing disturbances and changing climate stressors, where the forest community shifts into a new, unanticipated stable state. Adaptation strategies may consider assisted migration, drawing from diverse seed banks, and increasing landscape diversity. For wildlife, new approaches help prioritize refugia, habitat corridors and connections. Uncertainties arising from natural variability and our ability to model them form key challenges. Decision science may help frame and quantify those uncertainties, and facilitate sound decision making. Ultimately, land-management goals may need to be revised to be consistent with the realities of a dynamic, uncertain future of climate change.