MANAGING THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Presentation Summary

This presentation will incorporate the work (cooperative efforts and mapping exercises) of various cooperative organizations dealing with the mountain pine beetle outbreak in Colorado and Emerald Ash Borer in the east as examples to land managers for using spatial data to balance the various sociological and ecological factors involved with large landscape scale disturbances, which might result from Climate Change.

Presentation Description

Various areas throughout the United States and Canada have been dealing with large landscape scale forest disturbances over the last decade. Some of these, like the bark beetle outbreak in British Columbia, involve native pests impacting immense areas of forested landscapes. Others, like the Emerald Ash Borer, have involved exotic insects, plants, and/or pathogens, which may ultimately change some of our native vegetation landscapes forever. Various resource and land managers are increasingly being forced to try and weigh ecological and social factors simultaneously in an attempt to not only communicate such issues to their cooperators and the general public, but also to prioritize treatments to deal with both the direct (tree mortality) and indirect (increased fuel loadings and fire hazards) impacts within a changing climate.

For almost a decade a mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak has been growing in severity and geographical extent across northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. This landscape scale disturbance has resulted in unprecedented tree mortality that has begun to impact various ecological and sociological resources throughout high elevations ecosystems of Colorado. In 2005 an organization known as the Colorado Bark Beetle Cooperative (CBBC) was established to tackle resource management problems related to the extensive MPB outbreak. Since 2005 the CBBC has developed a long-term strategy, organized a collaborative membership, and began the process of trying to create a mapping/spatial tool for prioritizing work on the landscape with a multitude of conflicting variables.

During the same time-frame a non-native pest, the Emerald Ash Borer, was discovered in the Detroit-metro area of southeastern Michigan. Since its discovery in 2002, the Emerald Ash Borer has killed millions of trees and resulted in millions of federal, state, local, and private dollars being spent on quarantines, eradication attempts, and outreach strategies. Various cooperatives and collaborative have sprung up, including those sponsored wholly by tribal governments, in an attempt to prevent the loss of Ash spp. throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic states.

This presentation will use the MPB outbreak in CO, the EAB infestations of the East, and the work of the various cooperative organizations dealing with these issues to offer spatial analysis tools to land managers for balancing the various sociological and ecological factors involved with large landscape scale disturbances that may result from our changing climate. Examples will include; cooperative approaches, communication strategies, and useful technological tools. The presentation will also discuss a number of substantial accomplishments that have occurred as well as various valuable lessons learned.