Climate Change Adaptation Library for the Western United States

Information in the Library is derived from climate change vulnerability assessments conducted by Adaptation Partners (adaptationpartners.org), which collaborates with a diversity of organizations and stakeholders to develop multi-resource assessments. A science-management partnership including research scientists and natural resource specialists provides a foundation for all projects. Adaptation options are intended to inform sustainable management of natural resources, reduce the negative effects of climate change, transition ecosystems to a warmer climate, and help integrate climate change in natural resource management, planning, and business operations of federal land management agencies.

Adaptation Partners has elicited expertise on management responses to climate change from land managers in the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and other organizations throughout the western United States. Specifically, adaptation options in the Library were developed by resource specialists during workshops convened to examine climate change vulnerability assessments. These climate change adaptation actions are organized by categories of 1) sensitivity to a particular climate change effect, 2) corresponding strategies to mitigate the impacts of this climate change effect, and 3) specific tactical actions that can take place as an implementation of that particular strategy. We have also provided citations of general technical reports that either originated or include these strategies and tactics.
Adaptation Partners Library | AP Library References Download Entire Library (MS Excel) (Updated 11/2019)

Showing all 161 sensitivities, across all categories.

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Resource Area: Cultural

Sensitivity: Climate change adaptation management for other resources may affect cultural resources.
Strategy: Comply with National Historic Preservation Act prior to implementation of adaptation strategies.
Tactics:
  • Develop a plan to address climate change effects on cultural resources.
  • Initiate National Historic Preservation Act compliance early in the course of specific project planning.
  • Mobilize large-scale planning effort. Integrate National Historic Preservation Act considerations into the development of adaptation tactics. If considering modification of landscapes or habitats, consider opportunities to preserve or protect cultural resources within the areas considered for treatment.
Sensitivity: High-severity fire may result in loss of pinyon pine forest as a cultural resource.
Strategy: Integrate traditional ecological knowledge and Western science to manage for pine nuts and other values (e.g., sage-grouse).
Tactics:
  • Emphasize preservation of stands with tribal significance.
  • Enhance resilience of stands to fire and other disturbances by focusing on phase 0/1 pinyon-juniper and isolated pinyon-juniper trees surrounded by good sage-grouse habitat.
  • Identify and protect areas suitable for pinyon under future climate conditions.
  • Look for opportunities to create strategic fuel breaks in contiguous woodland.
Sensitivity: Increased fire will result in increased erosion and loss of vegetation, which may increase damage and effects to archaeological sites.
Strategy: Encourage pre- and post-disturbance strategies to protect high-value archaeological sites and resources.
Tactics:
  • Develop a plan to address post-fire effects on archaeological sites that have been exposed.
  • Increase the use of prescribed fire or other vegetation manipulation.
  • Inventory, map, and rate fire risk for arch resources.
Sensitivity: Increased fire will result in increased erosion and loss of vegetation, which may increase damage and effects to cultural resources.
Strategy: Encourage pre- and post-disturbance strategies to protect cultural resources.
Tactics:
  • Develop a plan to address post-fire effects to cultural resources.
  • Increase the use of prescribed fire or other vegetation manipulation.
  • Inventory, map, and rate fire risk for cultural resources.
Sensitivity: Loss of traditional food sources due to high-severity wildfire.
Strategy: Integrate traditional ecological knowledge and Western science to manage for pine nuts and other values (e.g., sage-grouse).
Tactics:
  • Emphasize preservation of traditional food sources with tribal and local significance.
  • Enhance resilience of specific habitats to fire and other disturbances. Manage fire to maintain or protect sagebrush rangelands and other sensitive vegetation types.
  • Identify and protect areas suitable for traditional food gathering during fire suppression and rehabilitation activities.
Sensitivity: Temperature changes may lead to increased recreational use, leading to greater human effects on cultural resources and sites (e.g., looting, collecting, inadvertent effects from users to cultural heritage resources).
Strategy: Educate users and protect resources.
Tactics:
  • Direct protection with physical barriers, fencing, vegetation screening, access management.
  • Provide education and interpretation to inform the public of why these resources are important. Engage user groups.
  • Redirect public to less sensitive cultural areas.
Strategy: Improve the state of knowledge on remote cultural resources at risk from climate change; improve awareness among resource users.
Tactics:
  • Communicate with users in a variety of ways before they hit the trail.
  • Develop a monitoring program for high-priority resources.
  • Develop an inventory of high risk areas.

Resource Area: Ecosystem Services

Sensitivity: Air quality threatened by increased fire severity, frequency, etc. may adversely affect health, tourism and opportunity to recreate.
Strategy: Integrate climate change into fire planning and response.
Tactics:
  • Inform people more effectively in advance of and during burn events for prescribed burns and wildfires; improve understanding for prescribed burn necessity; improve messaging regarding natural fire cycles.
  • Minimize effects to tourism.
  • Model which places are susceptible to high smoke, and get that message out to developers, tourists, etc.
Sensitivity: Change in hydrological regime will affect the amount and seasonal distribution of water as it relates to meeting demand.
Strategy: Assess and communicate Forest Service ability to help meet demand.
Tactics:
  • Conduct integrated assessment of water and local effects of climate change.
  • Conduct vulnerability assessments.
  • Encourage communication and full disclosure of information.
Sensitivity: Climate change will likely lead to a shift in grazing patterns between Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands and may interfere with wildlife phenology (e.g., sage-grouse nesting).
Strategy: Develop a holistic approach to grazing management; understand rancher’s business approach, lands used, water management and competing demands from other resources and multiple uses.
Tactics:
  • Consider novel ways to manage grazing.
  • Minimize effects by designing more efficient livestock water developments (e.g., shutoff valves for tanks, protect spring sources).
  • Modify flexibility in timing, duration, and intensity of authorized grazing.
  • Use grazing as a tool to achieve desired conditions—holistic grazing, target grazing on noxious weeds.
Sensitivity: Climatic variability and warming will affect grazing resources and policy.
Strategy: Develop a holistic approach to grazing management; understand rancher’s business approach, lands used, water management and competing demands from other resources and multiple uses.
Tactics:
  • Implement education programs about climate change effects and sustainable grazing practices (highlight both positive and negative effects).
  • Partner with permittee and other managers of lands they use to create a holistic grazing program.
  • Understand changes in water availability to prepare and adjust grazing management.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures and increased fire activity will change the composition and alter the productivity of forage.
Strategy: Increase resilience of habitats used by ungulates and which are vulnerable to climate change effects.
Tactics:
  • Emphasize collaborative problem solving with permitees and other interested parties rather than enforcement.
  • Integrate grazing strategies and vegetation treatments (both wild and domestic ungulates).
  • Reduce conversion of native perennial vegetation to invasive species.
Sensitivity: Pollinator habitat may be diminished by an array of climate change effects.
Strategy: Enhance pollinator habitat on federal lands and federal facilities.
Tactics:
  • Develop revegetation guidelines that incorporate menu-based seed mixes by habitat type (e.g., species that are good for pollinators, sage grouse, umbrella species) and by empirical or provisional seed zones.
  • Direct Forest Service units to improve pollinator habitat by increasing native vegetation (via Integrated Pest Management) and by applying pollinator-friendly, forest-wide best management practices and seed mixes.
  • Establish a reserve of native seed mixes including pollinator-friendly plants that are adapted, available, affordable, and effective.
Strategy: Increase agency and public awareness of the importance of native pollinators.
Tactics:
  • Develop a checklist to consider pollinator services in planning, project analysis, and decision making.
  • Establish a pollinator coordinator to communicate with district- and forest-level ID teams, as well as the Regional Office and the public.
  • Establish pollinator gardens.
Sensitivity: Shift in phenology may lead to changes in timing and availability of special forest products, potentially leading to conflicting uses between subsistence, heritage, and commercial uses, or leading to higher intensity of human effects.
Strategy: Manage product harvest timing, location and user types.
Tactics:
  • Assess shifting use patterns for cross-resource effects (wildlife, etc.).
  • Determine effects of increased access.
  • Monitor and adaptively manage products and related vegetation types (e.g. salal, beargrass); track changes over time to inform permitting for sustainable harvest levels.
  • Redirect use away from highly vulnerable areas.
Sensitivity: Small rural communities that have resource-dependent economies are more sensitive to small changes to the watershed or water source that may be exposed to fire, drought, and floods associated with climate change.
Strategy: Make disaster preparedness plans and assess future needs for water.
Tactics:
  • Identify key watersheds that are vulnerable to projected changes.

Resource Area: Fish

Sensitivity: Climate change will enhance disturbance processes.
Strategy: Increase resilience of fish habitat to disturbance.
Tactics:
  • Create fuel breaks near riparian zones or consider fuel treatments in riparian zones (in dry forest ecosystems) to reduce fire hazard.
  • Decontaminate fishing gear and vehicles to prevent introduction of nonnative species.
  • Improve riparian habitat by increasing complexity (use fish-friendly vegetation treatments).
  • Maintain genetic diversity of native populations.
  • Maintain/improve aquatic connectivity for species viability.
  • Reconnect floodplains; improve hydrologic function.
Sensitivity: Climate change will result in native species distribution shifts and community realignments.
Strategy: Conduct biodiversity surveys to describe current baseline conditions and manage distribution shifts.
Tactics:
  • Assist species migrations.
  • Formalize, expand, and standardize biological monitoring programs (e.g., management indicator species).
  • Streamline and integrate field crew data collection protocols.
  • Use digital technology in data collection and database uploads.
  • Use existing corporate databases (e.g., AqS module in NRM) and legacy datasets.
  • Use modern, low-cost technologies like eDNA, DNA barcoding, and digital photopoints.
Sensitivity: Increased flood frequency and higher peak flows may reduce egg-fry survival for fall spawners and yearling parr winter survival.
Strategy: Increase habitat resilience by reducing stressors caused by roads and infrastructure in the floodplain.
Tactics:
  • Designate and restore natural floodplain boundaries.
  • Disconnect roads from streams.
  • Increase culvert capacity.
  • Increase floodplain habitat.
  • Increase side channel habitat and increase large wood for parr winter survival.
  • Reduce flashiness of peak flows.
  • Reduce road density near streams.
  • Remove infrastructure from floodplains.
Strategy: Increase spawning habitat resilience by restoring stream and floodplain structure and processes.
Tactics:
  • Consider removing natural barriers to increase spawning habitat.
  • Increase bank and channel stability.
  • Increase protection of alternate spawning habitat.
  • Protect habitat by increased use of engineered log jams where feasible.
  • Restore stream and floodplain complexity.
Sensitivity: Increased sedimentation in streams will accompany increased flooding of roads and culverts.
Strategy: Manage and reduce sediment generated by roads.
Tactics:
  • Evaluate road system for sediment input.
  • Reduce sediment input to streams by replacing culverts, and relocating and decommissioning roads.
Sensitivity: Lower low flows will increase pre-spawn mortality for summer run and stream-type salmon and steelhead.
Strategy: Increase in-stream flows with dry-season water conservation to reduce withdrawals.
Tactics:
  • Consider alternative water supplies for federal lands to retain in-stream flows.
  • Coordinate with downstream partners on water conservation education.
  • Increase efficiency of irrigation techniques.
  • Investigate and quantify connectivity between groundwater and streamflows, including adequate food source.
  • Reduce summer withdrawals on federal lands.
  • Restore beaver habitat and populations.
Sensitivity: Lower low flows will reduce fish habitat quality.
Strategy: Decrease fragmentation of stream network so fish can access appropriate habitats.
Tactics:
  • Identify stream crossings that impede fish movements and prioritize culvert replacement.
  • Maintain minimum streamflows (buy and lease water rights, install modern flow structures, monitor water use).
  • Rebuild stream bottoms by increasing floodplain connectivity, riparian vegetation, and water tables; decrease road connectivity.
  • Restore beaver habitat and populations.
  • Use stream simulation design (e.g., bottomless arches, bridges), adjusting designs to provide low-flow thalweg.
Strategy: Increase aquatic habitat resilience to low summer flows.
Tactics:
  • Design channels at stream crossings to provide a deep thalweg for fish passage during low-flow periods.
  • Increase deep-water habitat and channel morphology.
  • Increase off-channel habitat and protect refugia in side channels and channels fed by wetlands.
  • Maintain vegetation density and composition for optimal water balance and snow accumulation.
  • Protect wetland-fed streams that maintain higher summer flows.
  • Reduce width-to-depth ratios to reduce solar radiation in stream.
  • Restore mid-and high-elevation wetlands that have been altered by land use.
Strategy: Manage riparian vegetation to optimize shade to streams.
Tactics:
  • Eliminate human disturbances affecting width-to-depth ratio.
  • Increase sinuosity in channels.
  • Maintain or enhance shade adjacent to streams.
  • Plant trees in riparian areas.
Strategy: Protect existing hyporheic flows.
Tactics:
  • Avoid activities and structures that disrupt flows (e.g., roads).
  • Identify locations of hyporheic flows.
Sensitivity: Sedimentation in streams will increase as fire area and fire severity increase.
Strategy: Reduce sedimentation associated with erosion, fire, and trails.
Tactics:
  • Develop a geospatial layer of debris flow potential for pre-fire planning.
  • Include climate change projections in identification of potential areas for stream bank and upland erosion.
  • Inventory disturbed areas for riparian and upland vegetation restoration.
  • Manage fire and fuels with thinning and prescribed fire to reduce fire severity and extent.
  • Restore and revegetate burned areas to store sediment and maintain channel geomorphology.
Sensitivity: Shifts in flow regimes will occur with changing climate.
Strategy: Increase water residence time and store water on landscape.
Tactics:
  • Identify where reservoir management can improve species conservation.
  • Improve efficiencies in regulated water use; conserve water.
  • Improve grazing management to reduce negative effects on streams and water quality.
  • Manage the road network to reduce negative effects on streams.
  • Promote and reintroduce beavers.
  • Protect springs.
  • Restore fluvial processes.
  • Thin forests to reduce evapotranspiration.
Sensitivity: Transitions or losses of biodiversity will occur with crossing of ecological type thresholds (resulting from changes in connectivity, temperature, and water quantity).
Strategy: Understand and manage for community-level patterns and processes.
Tactics:
  • Continue to refine and improve understanding, adaptive actions, and models related to cold-water salmonids.
  • Develop and improve understanding, adaptive actions, and models related to non-game aquatic species (e.g., mussels, dace, sculpin, spring snails, and amphibians).
  • Use best available technology to monitor, record, and distribute information regarding the distribution of a broad array of aquatic species (e.g., eDNA, national databases.).
Sensitivity: Warmer stream temperatures may create more favorable conditions for diseases and parasites.
Strategy: Increase population resilience by increasing fish health.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate and standardize health survey methods among agencies.
  • Consider changes in hatchery practices.
  • Directly treat or remove infected fish.
  • Increase public education on how to eliminate disease vectors.
  • Survey fish health conditions.
Sensitivity: Warmer stream temperatures may favor nonnative fish species.
Strategy: Increase resilience of native fish species by reducing barriers to native species and removing nonnative species.
Tactics:
  • Assess migration barriers and potential habitat for native species.
  • Combine nonnative mapping with information on migration barriers.
  • Consider information from surveys of warmer basins farther south as indicators of vulnerability.
  • Maintain or construct barriers to prevent spread of nonnative species.
  • Remove barriers to fish passage where they will not increase stress from nonnative species.
  • Remove or control nonnative fish species.
  • Restore native trout to high-elevation, cold-water refugia.
  • Survey and map nonnative species.
Strategy: Monitor for nonnative species and suppress/eliminate/control populations.
Tactics:
  • Conduct education during the initial stages of invasion (proactive crisis avoidance).
  • Construct barriers that prevent access/invasion to conservation populations in headwaters.
  • Reduce or suppress brook trout populations.
  • Use environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring for early detection of nonnative species invasions.
  • Use monitoring and boat inspection programs to detect invasive mussels and aquatic plants species in lakes before populations are established.
Sensitivity: Warmer stream temperatures will reduce thermal heterogeneity in streams and increase thermal stress on many life stages of fish.
Strategy: Increase habitat resilience for cold-water fish by restoring structure and function of streams.
Tactics:
  • Increase habitat and refugia in side channels.
  • Manage livestock grazing to restore ecological function of riparian vegetation and maintain streambank conditions.
  • Protect wetland-fed streams that maintain higher summer flows.
  • Reconnect floodplains to improve hyporheic and base flow conditions.
  • Reduce high road densities that are intercepting subsurface stream flows.
  • Remove dikes and levees.
  • Restore and protect riparian vegetation.
  • Restore structure and heterogeneity of stream channels.
Strategy: Increase understanding of thermal heterogeneity in streams and cold-water refugia.
Tactics:
  • Identify and inventory cold-water refugia, springs, and groundwater input to springs.
  • Identify seasonal refugia (winter and summer).
  • Research fish use of thermal refugia.
  • Research the influences of lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater on stream temperatures.
Strategy: Increase understanding of thermal tolerance of fish species.
Tactics:
  • Conduct field experiments of fish-temperature relationships for multiple species and regions.
  • Evaluate nonnative species that might expand, and plan ahead for management.
  • Increase public education (e.g., brochure, flyer, web, signage).
  • Manage fishing to reduce stress to fish during critical times.
  • Monitor changes in stream temperature and fish distributions.
  • Re-evaluate and update water temperature standards (both values and indices).
  • Tailor restoration actions to benefit native species.
Sensitivity: Warmer summer stream temperatures may alter aquatic food web dynamics.
Strategy: Monitor changes in aquatic food web dynamics.
Tactics:
  • Assess food webs for baseline data.
  • Monitor food web dynamics for changes with warming.

Resource Area: Forest Vegetation

Sensitivity: Area burned and length of the fire season will increase with climate change.
Strategy: Increase and maintain moderate fire-danger conditions on the landscape.
Tactics:
  • Incorporate managed fire for resource objectives in forest plan revisions.
  • Increase education to public on the role of fire on the landscape (fire today could save your home tomorrow).
  • Limit potential for invasive establishment that may increase with increased fire; use pre- and post-fire treatments, weed control, and monitoring.
Sensitivity: Area burned will increase with warmer and drier conditions.
Strategy: Conduct post-fire restoration and manage post-disturbance response.
Tactics:
  • Conduct post-fire vegetation management and prevent invasives.
  • Conduct pre-fire planning to improve response time and efficiency, prioritizing key areas at risk to geologic hazard.
  • Identify, prioritize and protect values at risk; initiate programs to assess values and determine best protective actions.
Sensitivity: Areas with limited species and genetic diversity will likely be more susceptible to climate change stressors.
Strategy: Promote species and genetic diversity.
Tactics:
  • Interplant to supplement natural regeneration and genetic diversity.
  • Maintain species diversity during thinning.
  • Plant potential microsites with a mix of species.
Sensitivity: Changing climate may lead to a loss of relict or disjunct populations and rare species.
Strategy: Prevent loss of relict populations of vascular and nonvascular species.
Tactics:
  • Identify areas where relict plants could be established.
  • Increase seed collection and seed banks (ex situ).
Sensitivity: Climate change may increase disturbance interactions, compouding effects.
Strategy: Increase post-disturbance planning, management, and treatment implementation.
Tactics:
  • Create a strategy and develop criteria to prioritize areas that are more likely to recover after disturbance (e.g., critical habitats, population served by disturbed habitat).
  • Identify sites more susceptible to compounding disturbances (e.g., with dry fuel loads, beetle-caused tree mortality, invasives); monitor disturbance occurrence; prioritize seed sources to preserve some sites; map sites across landscapes; conduct proactive treatments in areas more resistant to disturbance.
  • Promote climate-adapted species (species resistant and resilient to disturbance) and genotypes.
Sensitivity: Climate change stressors cross boundaries, forcing agencies to coordinate and work across boundaries.
Strategy: Work across jurisdictions at larger scales.
Tactics:
  • Align budgets and priorities for program of work with neighboring lands.
  • Communicate about projects adjacent to other lands, and coordinate on the ground.
  • Work across boundaries to preserve roads, trails, and access with increasing fire and flood events.
Sensitivity: Climate change will increase forest drought stress and decrease forest productivity at lower elevations.
Strategy: Increase drought resilience in forests.
Tactics:
  • Consider including larger openings in thinning prescriptions and planting seedlings in the openings to create seed sources for native drought-tolerant species.
  • Increase the amount of thinning and possibly alter thinning prescriptions.
  • Maximize early-successional tree species diversity by retaining minor species during precommercial thinning activities to promote greater resilience to drier conditions.
  • Use girdling, falling, prescribed burns, and wildland fire to reduce stand densities and drought stress.
Strategy: Maintain and enhance forest productivity regardless of tree species; focus on functional ecosystems and processes.
Tactics:
  • Maintain soil productivity through appropriate silvicultural practices.
  • Manage species densities to maintain tree vigor and growth potential.
  • Prepare for species migration by managing for multiple species across large landscapes.
Strategy: Maintain genotypic and phenotypic diversity.
Tactics:
  • Maintain variability in species and in tree architecture in some locations.
  • Protect trees that exhibit adaptation to water stress (e.g., trees with low leaf area:sapwood ratio); collect seed for future regeneration.
Sensitivity: Climate change will increase the potential for mortality events and regeneration failures.
Strategy: Mitigate consequences of large disturbances by planning ahead.
Tactics:
  • Develop a gene conservation plan for ex situ collections for long-term storage.
  • Identify areas important for in situ gene conservation.
  • Increase production of native plant materials for post-disturbance plantings.
  • Maintain a tree seed inventory with high-quality seed for a range of species, particularly species that may do well in the future under hotter and drier conditions.
Strategy: Promote regeneration of older trees to ensure adaptation of progeny to future conditions.
Tactics:
  • Thin older forests to reduce fire hazard, protect older trees, and support regeneration.
Strategy: Use judicious managed relocation of genotypes where appropriate.
Tactics:
  • Relax seed zone guidelines to include genotypes from warmer locations; use a variety of genotypes rather than just one.
Strategy: Use tree improvement programs to ensure availability of drought-tolerant tree species and genotypes.
Tactics:
  • Develop seed orchards that contain a broader range of tree species and genotypes than in the past.
Sensitivity: Climate change will lead to increased opportunity for invasive species establishment, especially in arid to semiarid habitats.
Strategy: Increase invasive species control efforts.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate invasive species management, funding, and support between agencies.
  • Implement early detection, rapid response for invasive species treatment.
Strategy: Increase resilience by promoting native genotypes and adapted genotypes of native species.
Tactics:
  • Consider assisted migration.
  • Emphasize use of plant species that will be robust to climate change in restoration projects.
  • Plant genetically-adapted species from appropriate seed zones.
Strategy: Maintain integrity of native plant populations and prevent invasive species invasions.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate weed-free seed standards and regulations among agencies.
  • Ensure weed-free policies are included in planning documents.
  • Expand weed-free feed list to include additional invasive species.
  • Prevent invasive plant introductions during projects.
  • Promote weed-free seed.
  • Use early detection, rapid response.
Strategy: Prevent invasive plants from establishing after disturbances.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate invasive species management, funding, and support between agencies.
  • Include invasive species prevention strategies in all projects.
  • Inventory regularly to detect new populations and species.
Strategy: Prevent widespread outbreaks of invasive species or pathogens.
Tactics:
  • Maintain permits for aggressive treatment of invasive species (e.g., prescribed burning, herbicides).
  • Plan for extreme events and events with low probability.
Sensitivity: Climate change will lead to loss of large ponderosa pine individuals in ponderosa pine forests through increased risk of stand-replacing wildfire and mortality from drought.
Strategy: Decrease density within stands, and increase structural diversity across the landscape.
Tactics:
  • Monitor establishment, survival and development of ponderosa pine by age class and in different topoedaphic conditions using Forest Inventory and Analysis data and project-level stocking exams.
  • Promote age class and structural diversity across the landscape, through regeneration harvest, thinning, prescribed fire, and managed wildfire use.
  • Reduce density by thinning, prescribed fire, and wildfire use, with density and structural goals based on past and predicted future conditions.
Sensitivity: Climate change will likely result in increased tree mortality and loss of site conditions that support vulnerable species.
Strategy: Promote resiliency in communities with vulnerable species and increase resistance to mountain pine beetle.
Tactics:
  • Continue to establish permanent monitoring plots and share data.
  • Coordinate Forest Service and National Park Service efforts to collect cones and produce seedlings of species susceptible to mountain pine beetle.
  • Identify sites that are less likely to be affected by climate change (refugia), and focus on those sites for restoration.
  • Strategically use anti-aggregation pheromones to reduce mountain pine beetle damage on susceptible tree species.
Sensitivity: Climate change will result in shifting moisture regimes.
Strategy: Replace plant association group/habitat typing with an index based on biophysical variables.
Tactics:
  • Identify a set of biophysical predictors related to habitat types, site productivity, vegetation composition, and structure. Possible predictors include landform, soil depth, texture, type, actual and potential evapotranspiration, and water balance deficit.
  • Predict site productivity based on biophysical predictors; make concept operationally implementable so it can be used to support planting decisions, and aid understanding of long-term effects of management and long-term goals for a site.
Sensitivity: Current dry forest conditions (overstocked stands with more shade-tolerant species as a result of fire suppression) increase vulnerability to drought and wildfire.
Strategy: Actively manage dry forest areas that are susceptible to fire and drought.
Tactics:
  • Conduct more intensive thinning.
  • Introduce frequent fire.
  • Promote ponderosa pine by favoring frequent fires.
Sensitivity: Disturbances will alter ecosystem structure, species distribution, and species abundace across large landscapes.
Strategy: Create landscape patterns that are resilient to expected disturbance regimes.
Tactics:
  • Continue research on expected future disturbance regimes; evaluate potential transitions and thresholds.
  • Improve communication across boundaries.
  • Manage for diversity of structure and patch size with fire and mechanical treatments.
Strategy: Increase knowledge of patterns, characteristics, and rates of change in species distributions.
Tactics:
  • Expand long-term monitoring programs.
Sensitivity: Fire area burned will increase.
Strategy: To protect values, allow for more managed fire to reduce available fuel loadings.
Tactics:
  • Develop understanding or products that help managers and line officers make decisions on managing long duration fires; incorporate information learned into the Wildland Fire Decision Support System.
  • Find opportunities to work with partners to expand use of natural fire ignitions (develop greater support network of collaborators).
  • Utilize a risk benefit model to identify key locations where fuels modifications would benefit the potential use of managed fire (basically a fire behavior modeling exercise).
Sensitivity: Higher elevation forests may burn more frequently with climate change.
Strategy: Increase resilience of vegetation types at high elevations.
Tactics:
  • Increase heterogeneity through prescribed fire.
  • Use fire behavior and spatial modeling to identify high-priority areas to reduce or maintain fuels.
  • Use silvicultural practices (e.g., prescribed fire, thinning, daylighting/radial thinning) to reduce fire hazard.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures may increase stress for some alpine plant communities, including rare plants.
Strategy: Improve our understanding of the effects of climatic variability and change on alpine plant species.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with other federal agencies to monitor alpine species.
  • Install Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) plots to monitor species distribution and abundance.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures may increase stress for some species in cold upland and subalpine forests.
Strategy: Accelerate restoration of cold upland and subalpine forests where appropriate.
Tactics:
  • Increase the availability of nursery stock and seed for tree species in cold upland and subalpine forests where appropriate.
Strategy: Protect cold upland and subalpine forests by restoring more open structure in forests at lower elevations, thus reducing spread of large crown fires.
Tactics:
  • Create targeted fuel breaks at strategic landscape locations.
  • Thin dry forests to densities low enough to reduce fire intensity and spread.
Strategy: Protect rare and disjunct tree species.
Tactics:
  • Plant and encourage regeneration of rare and disjunct species in appropriate locations.
Sensitivity: Increased hazard trees with climate change will threaten people and infrastructure.
Strategy: Prevent the development of and reduce risks associated with hazard trees.
Tactics:
  • Consider increasing use of pheromone treatments to protect trees in campgrounds, in high-value habitats, and after floods.
  • Coordinate with entomologists.
  • Develop options, triggers, and methods for more aggressive management of hazard trees.
  • Increase internal education about increasing hazard tree risk.
Sensitivity: Increased temperatures and lower snowpack will result in more fire (larger aerial extent and more high-severity patches) and more area in recently burned or early-successional stages.
Strategy: Increase resilience of existing vegetation by reducing hazardous fuels and forest density and maintaining low densities.
Tactics:
  • Conduct thinning treatments (pre-commercial and commercial).
  • Consider using more prescribed fire where scientific evidence supports change to more frequent fire regime.
  • Increase intentional use of lightnigh-ignited fires and management of reignition of lightning-ignited fires.
  • Increase interagency coordination and shared risk.
  • Thin and burn to reduce hazardous fuels in the wildland-urban interface..
  • Use prescribed fire to maintain structure and promote fire-tolerant conifer species.
  • Use regeneration and planting to influence forest structure.
Strategy: Increase resilience through post-fire management.
Tactics:
  • Anticipate greater need for seed sources and propagated plants.
  • Consider climate change in post-fire rehabilitation.
  • Determine where native seed may be needed for post-fire planting.
  • Experiment with planting native grass species to compete with cheatgrass after fire.
  • Increase post-fire monitoring in areas not currently monitored.
Strategy: Manage forest landscapes to encourage fire to play a natural role.
Tactics:
  • Create incentives to encourage managed wildland fire.
  • Implement fuel breaks at strategic locations.
  • Implement strategic density management through forest thinning.
  • Incorporate climate change in the Wildland Fire Decision Support System.
  • Push boundaries of prescribed burning (e.g., burn earlier in spring, later in summer).
Strategy: Manage forest vegetation to reduce severity and patch size; protect refugia (e.g., old trees).
Tactics:
  • Identify processes and conditions that create fire refugia.
  • Include gaps in silvicultural prescriptions.
  • Map fire refugia.
Strategy: Plan and prepare for greater area burned.
Tactics:
  • Anticipate more opportunities to use wildfire for resource benefit.
  • Consider planting fire-tolerant tree species post-fire in areas with increasing fire frequency.
  • Consider using prescribed fire to facilitate transition to a new fire regime in drier forests.
  • Incorporate climate change into fire management plans.
  • Manage forest restoration for future range of variability.
  • Plan post-fire response for large fires.
Strategy: Use high-severity wildfires as opportunities to modify ecosystem structure.
Tactics:
  • Allow some burned areas to regenerate naturally.
  • Use post-fire timber harvest to prevent uncharacteristic reburns.
Sensitivity: Increased temperatures and reduced snowpack will result in significant loss of subalpine forest.
Strategy: Identify and map potential refugia for subalpine forests and identify stressors to refugia (e.g., fire, beetle outbreaks) for various seral stages.
Tactics:
  • Conduct prescribed fire and exclude wildfire.
  • Consider invasive species when prioritizing refugia, ensure that already-infested stands have some resistance to invasives.
  • Inform the public and communicate changes.
  • Map refugia.
  • Monitor forest conditions.
  • Promote tree growth.
  • Recognize diversity in understory, and control for invasive species.
  • Thin dense stands.
  • Treat individual trees with pheromones.
Sensitivity: Increased warming, drought and wildfire will reduce tree vigor and increase susceptibility to insects and pathogens, with increased potential for large and extensive insect and pathogen outbreaks, particularly of invasive insects and pathogens.
Strategy: Increase forest landscape resilience to large and extensive insect or pathogen outbreaks.
Tactics:
  • Consider planting desired species (assisted migration) rather than relying on natural regeneration and migration.
  • Design forest gaps that create establishment opportunities.
  • Increase diversity of patch sizes.
Strategy: Increase resilience of forest stands to disturbance by increasing tree vigor.
Tactics:
  • Consider using genetically-improved seedling stock.
  • Harvest to variable densities.
  • Increase stand-scale biodiversity and minimize monocultures.
  • Plant resistant species or genotypes where species-specific insects or pathogens are a concern.
  • Reduce density of post-disturbance planted stands.
  • Thin to accelerate development of late-successional forest conditions.
  • Thin to decrease stand density and increase tree vigor.
  • Treat existing pathogen outbreaks with more aggressive management.
Strategy: Increase resistance to invasive insect outbreaks.
Tactics:
  • Assertively apply early detection, rapid response to limit invasive insects.
Strategy: Promote diversity of forest age and size classes.
Tactics:
  • Diversify large contiguous areas of single age and size classes.
Strategy: Recognize the natural role of insect disturbances, and identify areas at high risk.
Tactics:
  • Implement prescribed burning in areas affected by insect outbreaks.
  • In dry forest, restore low-severity fire and early-successional species.
  • Tolerate some natural mortality.
Strategy: Reduce dominance of root disease-sensitive species (e.g., Douglas-fir and grand fir) on root disease-prone sites.
Tactics:
  • Regenerate and plant with species less susceptible to root disease.
  • Thin out root-disease-susceptible species where less root-disease-susceptible species are abundant.
Sensitivity: Lack of disturbance has caused shifts in species composition and structure in dry mixed conifer forest, creating a risk of high-severity fire with climate change.
Strategy: Increase knowledge of patterns, characteristics, and rates of change in species distributions.
Tactics:
  • Expand long-term monitoring programs.
Strategy: Maintain and restore species and age class diversity.
Tactics:
  • Identify and map highest risk areas across large landscapes to provide context for prioritization.
  • Reduce stand density and shift composition toward species that are more fire adaptive and drought tolerant.
  • Restore age class diversity while protecting legacy trees.
Sensitivity: Large-scale disturbance will affect landscape structural diversity of persistent lodgepole pine and available seeds sources.
Strategy: Maintain landscape heterogeneity to mitigate adverse effects from fire and mountain pine beetles.
Tactics:
  • Focus attention on collection of viable serotinous lodgepole pine seed sources.
  • Promote structural diversity at multiple scales.
  • Use available mapping products to identify areas of potential serotinous lodgepole pine seed sources.
Sensitivity: Large-scale disturbances (beetles, fire, white pine blister rust) will affect whitebark pine.
Strategy: Increase competitive ability and resilience of whitebark pine to changing disturbance regimes.
Tactics:
  • Control beetles.
  • Create fuelbreaks.
  • Plant whitebark pine at lower elevations.
  • Regenerate and plant rust-resistant whitebark pine strains; increase seed sources; maintain cache sites.
  • Thin to reduce competition (usually involves removing subalpine fir).
Sensitivity: Loss of subalpine areas will affect traditional uses of subalpine plant species.
Strategy: Maintain or increase the extent of subalpine areas.
Tactics:
  • Consult with tribes to understand historical patterns and current locations of huckleberry habitat.
  • Maintain huckleberry production through tree removal and prescribed fire.
Sensitivity: Reduced water availability will affect the fringe of persistent aspen community types.
Strategy: Focus on areas where persistent aspen communities are expected to expand and maintain communities where future climatic conditions will allow.
Tactics:
  • Reduce density of conifer species.
  • Remove competing vegetation (e.g., common juniper) and control ungulate browsing to allow for recruitment.
  • Use available mapping products to identify areas of potential expansion.
Sensitivity: Shifts in the hydrologic regime will occur with climate change; anticipated changes include lower summer flows, and higher and more frequent winter flows.
Strategy: Maintain and promote riparian processes and functions.
Tactics:
  • Manage upland vegetation that influences riparian function and process (e.g., with thinning and prescribed fire).
  • Restore riparian obligate species.
Sensitivity: Some invasive insects may become established and/or expand with changing climatic conditions.
Strategy: Increase resilience and resistance of trees to invasive insects.
Tactics:
  • Develop an integrated pest management strategy that includes identifying insect-resistant seed.
  • Identify and monitor invasive, invasive insects that are not currently present in the region but may be a risk in the future.
  • Identify current and projected distribution of invasive insects of concern.
Sensitivity: The capacity for aspen stand regeneration will be reduced with climate change.
Strategy: Increase capacity for aspen stand regeneration.
Tactics:
  • Increase the proportion of the landscape that is in early successional stages.
  • Maximize flexibility in managing herbivory.
  • Maximize genetic diversity.
Sensitivity: The distribution of subalpine forests is likely to shift as a result of increasing temperatures with climate change.
Strategy: Monitor and detect change in seedling survival, species composition, and mortality of mature trees in subalpine forests.
Tactics:
  • Expand reforestation monitoring and post-treatment monitoring.
  • Install and analyze additional plots to gather trend information over time, targeting areas where changes are expected.
  • Use Forest Inventory and Analysis plot information to determine trends in subalpine forests.
Sensitivity: The frequency and scale of disturbance will likely increase with climate change.
Strategy: Promote disturbance-resilient species.
Tactics:
  • Plant disturbance-resilient species.
  • Promote disturbance-resilient species with prescribed fire and/or managed wildland fire.
  • Thin to favor disturbance-resilient species.
Sensitivity: The spruce-fir component of subalpine spruce-fir forests may be reduced, exacerbated by current spruce beetle outbreaks that have reduced available seed sources.
Strategy: Maintain species, age class, and genetic diversity.
Tactics:
  • Collect seed that will cover a wide range of seed zones and species.
  • Conduct regeneration treatments (e.g., harvest, precribed fire) that focus on maintaining species diversity; plant a variety of species including Engelmann spruce, Douglas-fir, and lodgepole pine.
  • Plant a genetically-diverse mix of species based on adaptive traits.
Sensitivity: The western larch niche may be lost with changing climate, and regeneration may be reduced through competition with other conifers.
Strategy: Increase the competitive ability of western larch and its resilience to changing fire regimes.
Tactics:
  • Create gaps in forest to reduce competition and increase western larch vigor.
  • Maintain and promote large-diameter western larch across the landscape, so that large-diameter snags, larch seed sources, and wildlife habitats are also maintained.
  • Monitor establishment and survival of western larch by age class across different site types.
  • Promote age class and structural diversity across the landscape, through regeneration harvest, thinning, prescribed fire, and managed wildfire use.
  • Regenerate western larch with appropriate site preparation (e.g., prescribed burning, followed by planting); create appropriate fire regime and fuel loads.
Sensitivity: Tree mortality will increase with bark beetle outbreaks.
Strategy: Increase resistance and resilience to beetles in stands and across landscapes.
Tactics:
  • Manage for age and size class diversity.
  • Manage for species diversity.
  • Protect high-value areas using trap-tree felling, beetle traps, spraying, basal area reductions, and a beetle risk rating system.
Sensitivity: Treeline will move upward in elevation into alpine communities.
Strategy: Acquire information to develop understanding of alpine community sensitivity to climate change.
Tactics:
  • Develop seed collection and storage guidelines.
  • Develop seed transfer guidelines.
  • Establish monitoring sites.
Sensitivity: Warmer temperatures and reduced snowpack may increase tree establishment at treeline.
Strategy: Increase knowledge of rates and patterns of tree establishment and regeneration failures.
Tactics:
  • Detect and attribute historical changes in tree distribution at treeline.
  • Expand geographic scope of enhanced site monitoring.
  • Monitor tree establishment patterns.
  • Use climate change information to project changes in recreation use patterns in the alpine environment.
Sensitivity: Whitebark pine will be susceptible to changes in disturbance regimes (i.e., fire, insects, and disease).
Strategy: Increase resilience of whitebark pine communities.
Tactics:
  • Conduct restoration where the species is currently absent.
  • Improve age class diversity of whitebark pine communities at multiple scales.
  • Improve structural diversity of whitebark communities at multiple scales.

Resource Area: Non-Forest Vegetation

Sensitivity: Areas with limited species and genetic diversity will likely be more susceptible to climate change stressors.
Strategy: Promote species and genetic diversity.
Tactics:
  • Interplant to supplement natural regeneration and genetic diversity.
  • Maintain species diversity during thinning.
  • Plant potential microsites with a mix of species.
Sensitivity: Climate change stressors cross boundaries, forcing agencies to coordinate and work across boundaries.
Strategy: Work across jurisdictions at larger scales.
Tactics:
  • Align budgets and priorities for program of work with neighboring lands.
  • Communicate about projects adjacent to other lands, and coordinate on the ground.
  • Work across boundaries to preserve roads, trails, and access with increasing fire and flood events.
Sensitivity: Climate change will exacerbate the poor ecological condition and loss of sagebrush ecosystems (Wyoming, mountain, and basin big sagebrush species).
Strategy: Improve resilience and resistance of sagebrush ecosystems.
Tactics:
  • Adapt grazing management practices and policies to improve ecological resilience and resistance.
  • Control invasive species affecting ecology of sagebrush ecosystems by minimizing spread and using biological controls, herbicides, and mechanical treatments.
  • Develop seed zones and promote propagation of native seed sources for sagebrush ecosystems.
  • If annual grasses are present, adapt and make use of it; talk with other regions to share ideas; conduct research; consider nurse crops, especially after fire.
  • Maintain native perennials by using native seed sources for restoration (planting) that will be adapted to future climate conditions; fuelbreaks and grazing strategies; fencing for protection; and grazing strategies that allow for flexibility in season of use.
  • Manage pinyon-juniper encroachment to maintain sagebrush ecosystems.
  • Map resilience and resistance to climate change to aid in prioritizing areas for treatments.
  • Protect existing sagebrush communities from fire.
  • Protect refugia; if annuals grasses are not present, keep them out.
  • Use native seed sources for restoration (planting) that will be adapted to future climate conditions.
Strategy: Manage sagebrush to resist invasion of annuals.
Tactics:
  • Conduct targeted grazing.
  • Control invasive species by minimizing spread and using biological controls, herbicides, and mechanical treatments.
  • Educate the public and employees about invasive species.
  • Mainten native perennials by using native seed sources for restoration (planting) that will be adapted to future climate conditions; fuelbreaks and grazing strategies; fencing for protection; and grazing strategies that allow for flexibility in season of use.
Sensitivity: Climate change will lead to shifts in species composition, relative abundance, and species distribution patterns.
Strategy: Increase knowledge of patterns, characteristics, and rates of change in species distributions.
Tactics:
  • Expand long-term monitoring programs.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures and increased fire frequency will stress native sagebrush and grassland communities.
Strategy: Increase resilience of native sagebrush-grass ecosystems.
Tactics:
  • Develop flexible, novel grazing management plans.
  • Increase monitoring of post-fire effects and implement appropriate actions.
  • Promote the occurrence and growth of early-season native species.
  • Reduce grazing in July and August to encourage perennial growth.
  • Revise grazing policies, and review and evaluate grazing allotment plans.
Strategy: Maintain reproducing populations of curl-leaf mountain-mahogany, so it can expand as needed.
Tactics:
  • Manage hunting seasons to reduce effects of grazing by ungulates.
  • Use fencing to protect shrubs from grazing by livestock and ungulates.
Strategy: Maintain vigorous growth of native shrub, perennial grass, and other perennial species.
Tactics:
  • Apply prescribed burning in the spring.
  • Focus grazing on invasive species in spring; do not graze natives in summer.
  • Identify locations where late-season grazing has minimal effects.
  • Monitor successional patterns of vegetative communities.
  • Plant seed of native species.
  • Remove encroaching conifers.
Strategy: Manage for soil conditions to avoid increased runoff.
Tactics:
  • Ensure that vegetative ground cover is as high as possible for local conditions.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures may increase stress for some alpine plant communities, including rare plants.
Strategy: Improve our understanding of the effects of climatic variability and change on alpine plant species.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with other federal agencies to monitor alpine species.
  • Install plots to monitor species distribution and abundance.
Sensitivity: Increased disturbance and changing species distributions will increase opportunities for invasive species establishment.
Strategy: Determine potential resilience of different locations, and actively restore less resilient sites.
Tactics:
  • Decrease resilience of existing invasive species with appropriate management practices or biotic path herbicides.
  • Identify and promote early-successional natives that may be able to compete with invasives.
  • Increase resilience of native species where intact or productive communities exist.
  • Monitor soil stability and productivity to reduce low-fertility soils that promote invasives.
Strategy: Increase invasive species control efforts.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate invasive species management, funding, and support between agencies.
  • Develop weed management areas and coordinate management with partners.
  • Implement early detection, rapid response for invasive species treatment.
  • Include invasive species prevention strategies in all projects.
  • Use integrated weed management (i.e., chemical, biological, mechanical, and manual control, education, targeted grazing).
Strategy: Maintain integrity of native plant populations.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate weed-free seed standards and regulations among agencies.
  • Ensure weed-free policies are included in planning documents.
  • Expand weed-free feed list to include additional invasive species.
  • Implement early detection, rapid response for invasive species treatment.
  • Prevent invasive plant introductions during projects.
  • Promote weed-free seed.
Strategy: Mitigate consequences of large disturbances by planning ahead.
Tactics:
  • Develop a gene conservation plan for ex situ collections for long-term storage.
  • Identify areas important for in situ gene conservation.
  • Increase production of native plant materials for post-disturbance plantings.
  • Maintain a seed inventory with high-quality seed for a range of species, particularly species that tolerate hotter and drier conditions.
Strategy: Prevent invasive plants from establishing after disturbances.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate invasive species management, funding, and support between agencies.
  • Include invasive species prevention strategies in all projects.
  • Inventory regularly to detect new populations and species.
  • Plant seeds with biochar coating.
  • Reduce grazing practices that encourage spread of invasive species.
  • Seed native plant species in areas with invasive species.
Strategy: Prevent widespread outbreaks of invasive species or pathogens.
Tactics:
  • Maintain permits for aggressive treatment of invasive species (e.g., prescribed burning, herbicides).
  • Plan for extreme events and events with low probability.
Sensitivity: Increasing temperatures will result in loss of climatically-suitable habitat in persistent pinyon-juniper ecosystems.
Strategy: Maintain and restore ecological integrity of persistent pinyon-juniper communities.
Tactics:
  • Identify and map persistent pinyon-juniper communities and assess current conditions.
  • Maintain or restore structural diversity to promote natural disturbance regimes.
  • Reduce invasive species and maintain or restore native understory composition.
Sensitivity: Juniper expansion threatens sagebrush ecosystems that will be further stressed by climate change.
Strategy: Control/reduce expansion of western juniper.
Tactics:
  • Identify current and future critical areas to optimize return on investment of resources.
  • Use mechanical control (by hand or with equipment).
  • Use prescribed fire and managed wildfire.
Sensitivity: Loss of subalpine areas with climate change will negatively affect traditional uses of plant species.
Strategy: Maintain or increase the extent of subalpine areas.
Tactics:
  • Determine historical patterns and current locations of huckleberry habitat.
  • Maintain huckleberry production through tree removal and prescribed fire.
Sensitivity: More wildfires will occur with warmer, drier conditions.
Strategy: Conduct post-fire restoration and manage post-disturbance response.
Tactics:
  • Conduct post-fire vegetation management and prevent invasives.
  • Conduct pre-fire planning to improve response time and efficiency, prioritizing key areas at risk to geologic hazard.
  • Identify, prioritize and protect values at risk; initiate programs to assess values and determine best protective actions.
Sensitivity: Relict or disjunct populations and rare species may be extirpated with climate change.
Strategy: Prevent loss of relict populations of vascular and nonvascular species.
Tactics:
  • Identify areas where relict plants could be established.
  • Increase seed collection and seed banks (ex situ).

Resource Area: Recreation

Sensitivity: Change in timing of water availability and absolute amount of water available will affect water-based recreation. High temperatures may drive up demand for water recreation.
Strategy: Account for changes in recreation demand.
Tactics:
  • Reconsider campground locations to optimize comfort during hot climates (e.g., in the shade) and near existing water resources; intentionally locate sites to minimize effects of dispersed camping.
Sensitivity: Change in timing of water availability and water quantity will affect water-based recreation. High temperatures may increase demand for water recreation.
Strategy: Account for changes in recreation demand.
Tactics:
  • Identify places that are likely to be affected by climate change (e.g., where there may be a loss of water-based recreation, or where more recreation will be concentrated).
Sensitivity: Changes in recreation use patterns (year-round seasons for non-snow activities, shift in snow-dependent activities, changes in uses types and demand).
Strategy: Increase flexibility and capacity for managing recreation resources to meet shifting demands.
Tactics:
  • Develop creative budget strategies to support longer/overlapping use seasons; pursue additional grant funding and partnerships and opportunities for new fees (e.g., something similar to Adventure Pass, parking fees, use for peak use times); offer facilities through prospectus for businesses opportunities; leverage outfitting and guiding funds.
  • Increase flexibility for year-round use of facilities; redevelop/harden/mitigate existing or new sites (e.g., integrate summer uses into ski areas operations); pave access roads for winter and wet uses; install gates or other access control where snow no longer closes areas; change types of infrastructure (e.g., marinas used to be static but now need to be flexible); increase capacity at existing sites to accommodate longer use seasons.
  • Leverage local partnerships to assist with management of recreation facilities (e.g., develop partnerships with local government, agencies, tribes, user groups, and non-governmental organizations; promote trail adoption; facilitate local economic development opportunities).
Sensitivity: Climate change may lead to a shift of seasonality and unpredictable availability of non-commercial forest products (e.g. berries, mushrooms, Christmas trees, boughs).
Strategy: Work across jurisdictions for monitoring and restoration
Tactics:
  • Coordinate with other resources to look for habitat enhancement, restoration opportunities.
  • Work with partners to monitor forest products to gather information about status and trends.
Sensitivity: Extended shoulder seasons may lead to overlapping seasonal recreation uses traditionally limited to strictly summer or winter. Different and potentially more recreational opportunities (positive)
Strategy: Anticipate increased warm-weather recreation and shifting seasonal recreation patterns.
Tactics:
  • Identify emerging recreation opportunities, and shift marketing to take advantage of these opportunities to benefit communities.
  • Increase staffing capacity and partner staff presence in areas where motorized uses increase; leverage partnerships to increase volunteer presence.
  • Manage roads for potentially year-round access; identify and direct access to desirable locations; and ensure adequate infrastructure in targeted locations.
Sensitivity: Higher peak flows lead to increased road damage at stream crossings (because of insufficient culvert capacity, more culvert blockage, and low bridges); access and safety are compromised by more extreme events (e.g., landslides and debris flows).
Strategy: Facilitate response to higher peak flows by reducing the road system and thus flooding of roads and stream crossings.
Tactics:
  • Continue to decommission roads with high risk and low access.
  • Convert use to other modes of transportation (e.g., from vehicle to bicycle or foot).
  • Use drains, gravel, and outsloping of roads to disperse surface water.
Strategy: Increase resilience of stream crossings, culverts, and bridges to higher peak flows.
Tactics:
  • Complete geospatial database of culverts and bridges.
  • Replace culverts with higher capacity culverts or other appropriate drainage (e.g., fords or dips) in high-risk locations.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures will lead to an increase in recreation demand, while lack of summer precipitation will reduce suitable sites for water-based recreation.
Strategy: Increase flexibility in water-based recreation site management and facility design.
Tactics:
  • Increase flexibility in opening and closing facilities based on ice, weather conditions.
  • Increase length of boat ramps.
  • Manage lake and river access capacity.
  • Manage public expectations for availability.
  • Protect shorelines and dry lake areas.
Strategy: Proactively manage for risks to public health and safety.
Tactics:
  • Develop clear communication campaigns using social science research to address increased dispersed uses near waterline.
  • Evaluate facilities near water edges and shorelines to ensure they are not negatively affecting water quality (e.g. septic systems, vault toilets, pit toilets).
  • Increase communication with public on the health risk of algae blooms in lakes. Need public to understand warmer temperatures means more algae blooms, and this will affect water-based recreation.
Sensitivity: Ice- and snow-based recreation is highly sensitive to variations in temperature and the amount and timing of precipitation.
Strategy: Transition recreation management to address shorter average winter recreation seasons and changing use patterns.
Tactics:
  • Conduct safety education to make the public aware of increased risk of avalanche and thin ice.
  • Develop options for diversifying snow-based recreation, including cat-skiing, helicopter skiing, additional ski lifts, higher elevation runs, toboggan runs, snow making, and backcountry yurts.
  • Invest in temporary or mobile structures to adapt to higher variability seasonal changes, e.g., adjustable snow park system based on snow levels, portable toilets in lieu of permanent toilets. Likewise, divest in infrastructure that cannot be nimble or easily respond to variability.
  • Maintain current infrastructure and expand facilities in areas where concentrated use increases.
Sensitivity: Increased erosion and landslides will lead to more trail failures.
Strategy: Increase resilience of trail system to erosion.
Tactics:
  • Increase monitoring of groundwater to assess risk of landslides and slope failures.
  • Increase restoration and erosion control with revegetation projects.
  • Reduce erosion by building protection into trail design.
Sensitivity: Increased flooding will damage campgrounds, leading to higher use of alternative campgrounds, higher use of fewer facilities, and reduced services.
Strategy: Accept loss of campgrounds and other recreational facilities.
Tactics:
  • Change timing or route of access.
  • Close and abandon sites.
  • Revise access procedures when and where they would protect facilities and enhance safety.
Strategy: Increase resilience of facility and campground system to maintain access.
Tactics:
  • Abandon campsites in higher risk locations but add sites in other locations, conserving the total number of sites.
  • Educate the public about how funds are allocated to relocate sites (but total number of sites are conserved).
  • Redirect, but do not require, changes in visitor use of facilities.
Strategy: Prevent flood damage to high-use campgrounds.
Tactics:
  • Accept higher maintenance costs associated with more floods.
  • Protect campgrounds from increased flood risk.
Sensitivity: Increased risk to public safety will be associated with trail and bridge failures.
Strategy: Minimize risks to public safety.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate with recreation user groups to educate the public about safety concerns associated with increased bridge and trail damage.
  • Evaluate and monitor timing of visitor use relative to hydrologic dynamics.
  • Limit visitor access when safety is a concern.
Sensitivity: Increased soil saturation will increase the need for trail maintenance.
Strategy: Increase resilience of trail systems to saturated soils.
Tactics:
  • Inventory frequently saturated areas and prioritize changes in trail locations.
  • Measure groundwater where the greatest effects are expected (e.g., mixed rain-and-snow basins).
  • Reroute high-risk trails that experienced past problems with saturated soils.
Sensitivity: Increases in flooding, fire, and other natural disturbances damage infrastructure.
Strategy: Manage recreation sites to mitigate risks to public safety and infrastructure and to continue to provide recreation opportunities.
Tactics:
  • Determine which recreation sites and infrastructure are at risk from increased flooding and other natural hazards.
  • Invest strategically in developed recreation facilities, prioritizing those that will be viable in the future and accommodate changing use patterns.
  • Prioritize post-disturbance treatments, including relocation, arming, and other mitigation measures.
Sensitivity: Increasing length of snow-free season will increase demand for summer recreation access. Use patterns may also change with altered disturbances.
Strategy: Maintain safe access at the beginning and end of the summer recreation season.
Tactics:
  • Add language to concessionaire contracts to allow for seasonal flexibility.
  • Adjust recreation opportunities during the shoulder season, and communicate to users (e.g., with a phone app).
  • Educate the public about risks associated with early- and late- season access.
  • Engineer road and trail systems for wet weather movement (e.g., graveled trail open during shoulder season, roads to access targeted areas).
  • Establish defined season of use for ATVs and mountain bikes during shoulder season and monitor conditions.
  • Implement adaptive management; alter management as the length of the recreation season changes.
  • Limit access when public safety is a concern.
  • Open trails, campgrounds, and facilities earlier in the season.
  • Place gates in areas of concerns to close roads for resource protection.
Strategy: Maintain safe access by conducting risk management for developed sites.
Tactics:
  • Adapt to large flow events and geohazards to address risks (e.g., access roads near campgrounds, trails, streams, lakes, and steep slopes.
  • Develop hazard tree management strategies and vegetation management plans for campgrounds.
  • Plan for fire, flood, and geohazard evacuation and safety, and establish public safety and public use restrictions.
Strategy: Provide sustainable recreation options in response to changing demand.
Tactics:
  • Address user conflicts as use becomes concentrated in smaller areas.
  • Adjust capacity of recreation sites (e.g., enlarge campgrounds, collect additional fees, and install infrastructure such as fences, signs, and gates).
  • Adjust timing of actions such as road and trail openings and closures and special-use permits based on resource concerns.
  • Assess changes in use patterns and identify shifts in demand.
  • Develop a strategy to invest and divest in recreation sites based on a sustainable recreation plan.
  • Identify use and site capacity thresholds in relation to other resources.
Sensitivity: The seasonality of whitewater rafting will shift with increasing temperatures and shifts in the timing of peak streamflows
Strategy: Increase management flexibility and facilitate transitions to meet user demand and expectation.
Tactics:
  • Educate the public about changing river conditions.
  • Vary permit season to adapt to changes in peak flow and duration.
Sensitivity: Timing of availability of recreation sites may become less predictable with climate change. High-elevation sites may not have adequate carrying capacity to meet demands.
Strategy: Change staffing and management in highly variable shoulder seasons to accommodate flexibility in seasons, dates, and travel management; consider tradeoffs between flexibility and predictability.
Tactics:
  • Add gates to closed areas that may be muddy; use multiple gate system to open lower trails but close off higher elevation trails; harden roads that are likely to see muddy season use.
  • Develop flexible travel management plans and staffing to accomodate for flexible dates for road openings.
  • Use social media and real time information to communicate to the public the effects of out-of-season or non-seasonally appropriate recreations.
Sensitivity: Water demands from recreation may degrade habitat for aquatic and wildlife species.
Strategy: Manage recreation use and infrastructure to minimize effects with change in human use.
Tactics:
  • Inventory and track the heaviest use and/or damage in dispersed camp areas; prevent expansion by placing rocks or blocking access; mitigate effects; enforce occupancy limits.
  • Locate facilities and infrastructure based on anticipated future demands in light of climate change, recreation demand, and dispersed uses.
  • Manage riparian areas to keep water cool to sustain fish habitat.

Resource Area: Riparian Areas, Wetlands, and Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems

Sensitivity: Changes in the hydrologic regime will reduce the size and hydroperiod of wetlands, leading to changes in nutrient availability, productivity, and species composition.
Strategy: Maintain resilience of high-elevation wetlands.
Tactics:
  • Address water loss at water diversions and ditches.
  • Monitor changes in plant distribution, especially regarding invasive species.
  • Monitor functionality of existing wetlands.
  • Reduce direct human effect on sensitive wetland habitats.
Sensitivity: Changes in timing, type (rain versus snow), and quantity of precipitation may alter water supply during the growing season, thus altering biotic productivity and diversity in springs and wetlands.
Strategy: Manage for resilience of groundwater-dependent ecosystems, springs, and wetlands by considering the broader forest landscape, including uplands.
Tactics:
  • Assess the health of the system and potential resilience to changes in the water supply during the growing season; prioritize areas for management based on results of the assessment.
  • Control invasive species in groundwater-dependent ecosystems using early detection, rapid response.
  • Devise a protocol to assess spring flows and volumes in groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
Strategy: Manage water to maintain springs and wetlands; improve soil quality and stability.
Tactics:
  • Develop a national groundwater protection program.
  • Encourage spring development project designs that will ensure water flows for native species and habitat.
  • Maintain water on site through water conservation techniques such as float valves, diversion valves, and hose pumps.
  • Monitor recreation usage and manage effects.
  • Preserve cold-water refugia.
  • Reduce ungulate trampling with fencing and livestock use changes.
Sensitivity: Climate change stressors cross boundaries, forcing agencies to coordinate and work across boundaries.
Strategy: Work across jurisdictions at larger scales.
Tactics:
  • Align budgets and priorities for program of work with neighboring lands.
  • Communicate about projects adjacent to other lands, and coordinate on the ground.
  • Work across boundaries to preserve roads, trails, and access with increasing fire and flood events.
Sensitivity: Climate change will affect phenology and species interactions (e.g., predation, competition) of riparian and wetland species.
Strategy: Increase population resilience by reducing non-climatic stressors.
Tactics:
  • Increase habitat connectivity and heterogeneity.
  • Maintain hydroloic function of critical habitats.
  • Manage road, trail, and recreation effects.
Strategy: Increase resilience by preserving biodiversity.
Tactics:
  • Identify important habitat by linking functional resilience of current vegetation to climate change scenarios and phenology.
  • Identify important habitat manipulations based on monitoring.
  • Inventory and monitor plants in riparian areas and groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
  • Protect critical areas.
  • Through assessment process, identify locations appropriate for introducing or managing natural wildfire or mechanical work; embrace disturbance.
Strategy: Monitor and prioritize regions for wetlands management.
Tactics:
  • Focus monitoring on sensitive habitats and species in priority regions.
  • Periodically review and revise priorities.
  • Prioritize habitats for active management and protection across jurisdictional boundaries.
Sensitivity: Hydrologic regime shifts with climate change will include lower summer flows and higher, more frequent winter peak flows.
Strategy: Conduct education and outreach with involved parties.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with recreation specialists/managers.
  • Collaborate with watershed councils.
  • Increase communication networks for safety and awareness.
Strategy: Increase upland water storage by managing for beaver populations.
Tactics:
  • Accommodate and maintain larger beaver populations.
  • Trap and relocate beavers that create dams that flood trails.
  • Use riparian shrub planting and protection and riparian aspen restoration and management.
  • Use valley form analysis to assess potential sites for beaver colonies and channel migrations.
Strategy: Increase upland water storage.
Tactics:
  • Adjust livestock and recreation season of use, use numbers, and duration of use.
  • Maintain or restore channel form.
  • Use riparian shrub planting and protection and riparian aspen restoration and management.
Strategy: Maintain or restore natural flow regime to buffer against future changes.
Tactics:
  • Acquire water rights and use low-flow channel design.
  • Address water loss at water diversions and ditches.
  • Disconnect roads from streams to reduce drainage efficiency.
  • Protect groundwater and springs.
  • Reconnect and increase off-channel habitat and refugia in side channels and channels fed by wetlands.
  • Restore riparian areas and beaver populations to maintain summer base flows and raise water table.
  • Revegetate and use fencing to exclude livestock.
  • Use watershed analysis, watershed condition framework, etc. to develop integrated, interdisciplinary tactics associated with vegetation and hydrology.
Strategy: Plan and prepare for more frequent and severe flood events.
Tactics:
  • Assess the health and resilience of the riparian system and prioritize management areas based on assessment.
  • Avoid committing resources for restoration projects in areas with high flood risk; prioritize areas with low flood risk.
  • Control invasive plant species in flood-prone reaches.
  • Expand current restoration projects to mitigate increasing flood risk.
  • Monitor for and control invasive and undesirable invasive species in flood-prone areas, including the 100-year floodplain.
  • Restore native plant species in riparian areas.
  • Revise stream health protocol to capture flow regime change.
  • Use natural flood protection (e.g., vegetation or engineered logjams).

Resource Area: Soils

Sensitivity: A warmer, drier climate may decrease soil productivity.
Strategy: Identify vulnerabilities to soil processes including temperature, moisture, biological activity and carbon sequestration.
Tactics:
  • Maintain and protect soil cover (canopy and ground cover).
  • Promote native vegetation and minimize invasive species expansion.
  • Promote, maintain, and add soil organic matter.
Strategy: Increase soil resistance and resilience to climate change.
Tactics:
  • Categorize soils for their resilience to climate change through completion of soil climate vulnerability mapping at various scales.
  • Focus restoration efforts on areas that can support management objectives.
  • Maintain and increase soil cover within potential to mitigate heating of the soil to reduce carbon loss, evaporation, and runoff.
  • Promote native plant species and plant diversity that are adapted to the projected soil properties.
  • Use grazing management systems that can respond quickly to periods of drought and temperature increases.
Sensitivity: Change in soil organic carbon affects long-term soil productivity and carbon sequestration.
Strategy: Manage soils to maintain or increase soil organic carbon.
Tactics:
  • Conserve carbon and organic matter during soil-disturbing practices such as oil and gas development, vegetation management, and mining operations.
  • Maintain diverse native soil biology (bacteria, fungi).
  • Manage above ground vegetation and forest floor organic material within range of sustainability of soil productivity.
Sensitivity: Limited management capacity may inhibit efforts to address changes in soils due to climate change.
Strategy: Increase knowledge of soil resources and potential effects of climate change.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with other agencies to measure and monitor effects of climate change on soils.
  • Increase knowledge of soil resources through completion of soil and ecological site inventories.
  • Provide opportunities for soil trend monitoring to predict change.
Sensitivity: Soil erosion may increase with more extreme precipitation events and disturbance.
Strategy: Increase and retain ground cover to prevent to soil loss.
Tactics:
  • Ensure sufficient residual vegetation or micro-biotic soil crusts to resist wind and water erosion.
  • Maintain or restore biological soil crusts where they are ecologically appropriate.
  • Minimize the risk of severe wildfire by managing for a mosaic of smaller, more frequent fires and conducting fuel reduction treatments to mimic historical fire disturbance regimes (e.g., prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical fuel treatments).
Strategy: Restore areas of increased soil erosion through management activities.
Tactics:
  • Create mechanisms for increasing biological soil crusts.
  • Maintain and increase soil cover where appropriate.
  • Use grazing management systems that can respond quickly to periods of drought and temperature increases.

Resource Area: Water Resources and Infrastructure

Sensitivity: Changes in type and amount of precipitation will lead to changes in timing of water availability.
Strategy: Manage for highly-functioning riparian areas that can absorb and slowly release the flow of water off the landscape.
Tactics:
  • Design new infrastructure and rebuild existing infrastructure to accommodate flooding; place or relocate infrastructure outside of riparian areas; design stream crossings to minimize restriction of flow above bankfull; minimize impervious surfaces.
  • Implement active stream channel and riparian area restoration (e.g., natural channel design, log structures, reconnecting floodplains), or passive restoration (e.g., appropriate management of beaver populations, reduction or removal of activities that are detrimental to riparian function).
  • Preserve riparian area functionality through terms and conditions of permitted activities, and utilize best management practices for federal actions.
Sensitivity: Climate change may alter access to infrastructure for forest use.
Strategy: Increase the resilience of the transportation infrastructure to climate-related stressors, such as changing recreation demands, fire, and water effects.
Tactics:
  • Do not rebuild damaged roads in kind, but rather use specifications that account for climate-related changes (e.g., different levels and seasonality of use).
  • Identify changing traffic patterns and visitor use in relation to expected future temperature and precipitation, including altered seasonality.
  • Identify roads prone to flooding based on their location (e.g., in riparian areas) as well as roads with insufficient culverts or that are located on unstable surfaces.
Sensitivity: Climate change will cause altered flow regime, including earlier snowmelt and lower summer base flows.
Strategy: Restore function of watersheds, floodplains, riparian areas, wetlands, and groundwater-dependent ecosystems; restore water quality, quantity, and timing.
Tactics:
  • Conduct vegetation management (e.g., mechanical treatments, prescribed fire, and wildland fire use) to develop appropriate vegetation density and composition for optimal water balance and healthy watersheds (e.g., aspen/conifer and water yield).
  • Implement transportation system improvements (e.g., general best management practices, travel management implementation, culvert/bridge design with stream simulation, road relocation, permeable fill to encourage subsurface flow).
  • Improve water diversion and delivery systems for livestock and other uses.
  • Improve water diversions, delivery systems, and livestock distribution; divert only what is needed from the natural system and minimize effects on spring sources (e.g., use shut-off valves and splitters, locate troughs away from water sources, and locate head boxes away from spring sources).
  • Promote and increase beaver populations where appropriate.
  • Promote appropriate livestock grazing management and proper use standards.
Sensitivity: Climate change will likely result in decreasing monsoonal moisture in the summer, increased drought cycles, wetland and riparian reduction or loss, and increased fire activity.
Strategy: Improve natural water storage and retention through healthy watersheds, riparian areas, wetlands, and groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
Tactics:
  • Conduct vegetation management (e.g., mechanical treatments, prescribed fire, and wildland fire use) to develop appropriate vegetation density and composition for optimal water balance and healthy watersheds (e.g., aspen/conifer and water yield).
  • Manage special-use authorizations for water storage (dams on high elevation mountain lakes) and other water diversions.
  • Promote and increase beaver populations where appropriate.
  • Protect and manage water developments at groundwater-dependent ecosystems (springs, wetlands, fens, etc.).
  • Restore streams and meadows.
Sensitivity: Higher and earlier peak flows will lead to higher risk of damage to transportation infrastructure (roads and trails) and to stream channel function.
Strategy: Increase resilience of road system infrastructure to higher peak flows. Focus on stream crossings, and roads within 300 feet of channels.
Tactics:
  • Increase size of drainage structures; plan for greater than 100-year events.
  • Install more bridges and open-bottom culverts; use venting fill in floodplains.
  • Plan for more decommissionings and re-routings; review historical closures/decommissionings for adequacy.
  • Reduce hydrologic connectivity of roads to the stream system by outsloping, increasing rolling dips and cross culverts; improve surfacing, especially at approaches to crossings.
Strategy: Increase watershed resilience by restoring stream and floodplain structure and processes.
Tactics:
  • Increase stream crossing capacity (e.g., culverts, bridges) to accommodate high flows and aquatic organism passage.
  • Manage for deep-rooted riparian vegetation (controlling invasives) to increase channel stability.
  • Reduce road and trail density near streams.
Sensitivity: Higher peak flows and flood frequency may increase damage to trails and bridges, requiring more maintenance, replacement, and closures.
Strategy: Increase resilience of trail system to higher peak flows by repairing, replacing, and rerouting trails and trail bridges with high demand for access.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with hydrologists to consider future peak flows in design of new trails and bridges.
  • Focus on acquiring funding for high-profile projects (based on co-benefits of public demand and safety).
  • Increase long-range planning to prioritize trail and bridge repair, replacement, and rerouting.
  • Increase the height of bridges above waterways.
  • Request additional funding to prepare for more trail and bridge failures.
  • Reroute trails above waterways with the highest flood risk.
  • Upgrade trail bridges with stronger rot-resistant material.
Strategy: Leverage partnerships with recreational user groups to increase awareness of potential barriers to access, and adjust user expectations.
Tactics:
  • Collaborate with user groups to educate the public and increase political support and funding to maintain access.
  • Coordinate between agencies for a consistent message on access and climate change.
  • Improve outreach publically and internally.
  • Increase efforts to collaborate with volunteers and build capacity for trail maintenance.
Strategy: Reduce the system of trails and trail bridges.
Tactics:
  • Decommission trails with low use and high flood risk.
  • Reroute trails in locations that eliminate the need for trail bridges.
Sensitivity: Higher peak flows will increase vulnerability of points of diversion and damage or disrupt access to facilities and cultural and historical resources. The potential increased use of facilities may exacerbate safety hazards.
Strategy: Increase resiliency and protect recreation facilities, historic, cultural sites and points of diversion to peak flows; improve public safety.
Tactics:
  • Identify potential areas for early warning systems to notify visitors of dangers.
  • Move or structurally modify points of diversion where they are vulnerable.
  • Relocate recreation facilities.
  • Restore watershed function by reconnecting stream channels to floodplains, dispersing flow and reducing the intensity of flood events on campgrounds and other facilities.
Strategy: Increase resiliency of the floodplain.
Tactics:
  • Remove or modify infrastructure allowing channels to migrate within the floodplain.
  • Restore natural function of the floodplain, allowing waterways to migrate.
Strategy: Increase resistance of infrastructure and cultural and historical resources.
Tactics:
  • Consider increased use of engineered logjams to redirect flows.
  • Stabilize banks near resources with rip-rap or vegetation.
Sensitivity: Higher peak flows will lead to increased road damage at stream crossings.
Strategy: Facilitate response to higher peak flows by reducing the road system and thus flooding of roads and stream crossings.
Tactics:
  • Change user expectations with public education.
  • Convert use to other modes of transportation (e.g., from vehicle to bicycle or foot).
  • Decommission roads with high risk and low access.
  • Use the travel analysis process to prioritize road management.
Strategy: Increase resilience of stream crossings, culverts, and bridges to higher peak flows.
Tactics:
  • Complete inventories of culverts and bridges, including GPS locations of structures and accurate culvert data.
  • Consider a process for replacing culverts based on projected future, rather than historical, peak flows.
  • Consider prioritizing structure replacement in high-risk (mixed-rain-and-snow) watersheds.
  • Replace culverts with higher capacity culverts.
  • Reroute roads out of floodplains.
Strategy: Increase resistance of road surfaces to higher peak flows at stream crossings.
Tactics:
  • Install hardened stream crossings.
  • Perform a basin-wide assessment of current hydrological interactions with roads.
  • Use grade control structures, humps, and water bars to reduce velocity and redirect flow.
Sensitivity: Increased drought will lead to lower base flows, greater tree mortality, reduced rangeland productivity, loss of habitat, reduced soil moisture, wetland loss, and riparian area reduction or loss.
Strategy: Conserve water.
Tactics:
  • Better manage livestock water improvements.
  • Implement heat- and drought-tolerant landscaping (xeriscape) near facilities.
  • Provide conservation education.
Strategy: Develop policies for water rights.
Tactics:
  • Develop policies regarding ecosystem values and services (e.g., instream use).
  • Develop policies regarding ski-area water rights.
  • Develop policies regarding water use and water rights for livestock management.
Strategy: Store water.
Tactics:
  • Conduct meadow restoration and promote beaver dams.
  • Manage proposals for major reservoir construction and additions.
  • Manage special-use dams on high-elevation mountain lakes.
Sensitivity: Increased flooding of roads and culverts will cause increased sedimentation in streams
Strategy: Manage and reduce sediment generated by roads.
Tactics:
  • Evaluate road system for sediment input.
  • Reduce sediment input to streams by replacing culverts, and relocating and decommissioning roads.
Sensitivity: Increased flooding will damage campgrounds, leading to higher use of alternative campgrounds, higher use of fewer facilities, and reduced services.
Strategy: Accept loss of campgrounds and other recreational facilities.
Tactics:
  • Change the nature of decisions about access.
  • Change timing or route of access.
  • Close and abandon at-risk and damaged recreation sites.
Strategy: Increase resilience of facility and campground system to maintain access.
Tactics:
  • Abandon campsites in higher risk locations but add sites in other locations, conserving the total number of sites.
  • Consider appropriate changes in visitor use of facilities.
  • Educate the public about how funds are allocated to relocate sites (but total number of sites are conserved).
Strategy: Prevent flood damage to high-use campgrounds.
Tactics:
  • Accept higher maintenance costs associated with more floods.
  • Protect campgrounds from increased flood risk.
Sensitivity: Increased storm frequency and intensity will have broad implications for bridge and dam/canal/levee design and maintenance.
Strategy: Protect existing and future infrastructure by examining present and future hazards on dam infrastructure.
Tactics:
  • Evaluate existing inventory for capacity and structural integrity using projected climate models for extreme storm events
  • Facilitate partnering efforts between private, local, state, and federal jurisdictions.
  • Incorporate projected changes in extreme storm events in structure design and bridge location.
Sensitivity: Increased temperatures will have broad implications for road design and maintenance.
Strategy: Add guidance to existing design standards and consider adjustment of maintenance activities to account for climate change.
Tactics:
  • Anticipate where ice dam problems may occur in the future.
  • Design and implement heat- and drought-tolerant landscapes (xeriscape).
  • Design heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems for buildings that will be appropriate for higher temperatures.
Strategy: Increase resilience where roads and streams interact.
Tactics:
  • Consider revising design standards for roads and other infrastructure where future rain-on-snow events are expected.
  • Develop local risk assessments for roads and other infrastructure.
  • Perform road blading/grading activities during periods when natural moisture conditions are optimum, and use water trucks as needed to supplement.
Strategy: Protect existing and future infrastructure by examining present and future hazards.
Tactics:
  • Examine surroundings for hazard trees, and remove those that present hazards to facilities.
  • Follow recommended practices for keeping buildings safe from fires.
  • Monitor movement of ranges of potential insects; educate those living and maintaining buildings about the signs and risks of insects.
Sensitivity: Increased trail failures will be associated with erosion and landslides.
Strategy: Increase resilience of trail system to erosion.
Tactics:
  • Increase monitoring of groundwater to assess risk of landslides and slope failures.
  • Increase restoration and erosion control with revegetation projects.
  • Reduce erosion by building protection into trail design.
Sensitivity: Increased wildfire intensity will have broad implications for infrastructure design and maintenance.
Strategy: Protect existing and proposed infrastructure by examining present and future hazards due to increased wildfires and post-wildfire conditions.
Tactics:
  • Design bridge and culverts to minimize diversion potential.
  • Enhance existing public and private fire hazard education and mitigation as related to infrastructure design.
  • Increase defensible space around infrastructure and discourage development in the wildland-urban interface.
Sensitivity: Increased winter soil saturation leads to higher risk of landslides, affecting the road system, access, streams, water quality, human safety, and maintenance cost.
Strategy: Allow for increased landslide frequency by relocating roads and structures.
Tactics:
  • Close and decommission roads in areas of high landslide risk.
  • Collaborate with partners to compare data of current damage with data on soil moisture and landforms to identify sensitive areas.
  • Locate new construction or reroute roads away from areas of high landslide risk.
Strategy: Increase resilience to landslides by protecting roads and structures from higher landslide frequency, and reduce management activities that increase landslide potential.
Tactics:
  • Alter road surface type and grade.
  • Compensate for landslides by reducing weight on roads.
  • Elevate roads to allow landslides to pass underneath.
  • Improve drainage.
  • Increase maintenance frequency.
  • Locate/relocate roads in areas less vulnerable to landslides.
  • Redesign roads to avoid over-steep cut and fills, and to improve water drainage; design effective debris catches on major access roads.
  • Stabilize slopes mechanically or with vegetation.
  • Use seasonal road closures to keep visitors away during most hazardous times of year.
Sensitivity: Increasing length of the snow-free season will cause increased demand for access.
Strategy: Maintain safe access at the beginning and end of the summer recreation season.
Tactics:
  • Educate the public about risks associated with early- and late- season access.
  • Implement adaptive management; alter management as the length of the recreation season changes.
  • Limit access when public safety is a concern.
  • Open trails, campgrounds, and facilities earlier in the season.
Sensitivity: Lower summer flows and lower groundwater recharge will cause higher demand and competition for water by municipalities and agriculture.
Strategy: Address demands for water (including water rights) and improve water conservation.
Tactics:
  • Align consumptive uses (such as stocking rates in allotments) with available water resources.
  • Conduct integrated assessment of water and local effects of climate change.
  • Conduct vulnerability assessments for individual communities.
  • Design stream crossings that have a low-flow channel; use inset floodplains to maintain summer connectivity in the stream network.
  • Diversify sources of water; rely less on surface water, and consider using low volume wells.
  • Encourage communication and full disclosure of information.
  • Find better source locations for livestock and other uses.
  • Implement vegetation treatments in areas with high water retention.
  • Improve efficiency of drainage and ditches.
  • Treat roads where needed to retain water and maintain high water quality.
Strategy: Increase resilience through water conservation.
Tactics:
  • Change user expectations for water availability.
  • Close facilities when water is not available.
  • Educate the public about water shortages and conservation.
  • Implement gray-water recycling.
  • Install waterless urinals and low-flow, solar, and composting toilets.
  • Reduce campground capacity to decrease water demand.
  • Reduce water provided in campgrounds and other facilities.
Strategy: Maintain sufficient water supply to meet demand.
Tactics:
  • Attribute causes of potable water loss to determine appropriate response.
  • Consider constructing new wells, cisterns, and reservoirs.
  • Import water from other locations.
  • Increase water storage with artificial storage infrastructure (e.g., water towers).
  • Investigate alternative water sources (e.g., groundwater).
Strategy: Restore function of watersheds by connecting floodplains, supporting groundwater-dependent ecosystems, reducing drainage efficiency, and maximizing valley storage.
Tactics:
  • Add wood to streams and increase beaver populations.
  • Consider the effects of climate change during project analysis.
  • Improve livestock management to reduce water use (e.g., use a shut-off valve on stock ponds).
  • Reduce surface fuels and stand densities in low-elevations forests.
  • Restore meadows.
Sensitivity: Powerline infrastructure may be increasingly affected by ecological disturbances (e.g., wildland fire, hazard trees, invasive plants [cheatgrass], and geologic hazards).
Strategy: Create plausible risk scenarios to utilize in current permit management.
Tactics:
  • Communicate with existing powerline permit holders annually in wildfire exercises.
  • Map all powerlines in the region.
Sensitivity: Recreation events and trail infrastructure may experience increased risk from extreme climatic events (e.g., fire, snow, flooding, avalanche).
Strategy: Incorporate changes in extreme climatic events into recreation event planning.
Tactics:
  • Cancel events when human safety is at risk.
  • Change timing and location of events.
Sensitivity: Recreation residences may see increased risk from extreme climatic events (e.g., fire, snow, flooding, avalanche).
Strategy: Develop risk assessment tools, and address risk with holders and county emergency medical services.
Tactics:
  • Communicate with existing recreation resident holders.
  • Consider developing alternative recreation residences or recreation tracts.
  • Develop clear procedures for removing a recreation residence that exceeds a risk threshold.
Sensitivity: Soil saturation will increase, which will increase the need for trail maintenance.
Strategy: Increase resilience of trail systems to saturated soils.
Tactics:
  • Inventory frequently saturated areas and prioritize changes in trail locations.
  • Measure groundwater where the greatest effects are expected (e.g., mixed rain-and-snow basins).
  • Reroute high-risk trails that experienced past problems with saturated soils.
Sensitivity: Trail and bridge failures will increase risk to public safety.
Strategy: Minimize risks to public safety.
Tactics:
  • Coordinate with recreation user groups to educate the public about safety concerns associated with increased bridge and trail damage.
  • Evaluate and monitor timing of visitor use relative to hydrologic dynamics.
  • Limit visitor access when safety is a concern.
Sensitivity: Water temperature will increase during the summer low flow period.
Strategy: Increase habitat resilience by restoring structure and function of streams, riparian areas, and wetlands.
Tactics:
  • Maintain large wood in forested riparian areas for shade and tree regeneration.
  • Manage livestock grazing to restore ecological function of riparian vegetation and maintain streambank conditions.
  • Reconnect floodplains and side channels to improve hyporheic and baseflow conditions.

Resource Area: Wildlife

Sensitivity: A warmer climate will potentially convert drier ponderosa pine stands to grassland or Douglas-fir stands.
Strategy: Promote ponderosa pine resilience.
Tactics:
  • Increase understory burning.
  • Plant ponderosa pine where it has been lost.
  • Reduce competition from Douglas-fir and grand fir (thin, burn) in current mature ponderosa pine stands.
  • Retain current mature and older ponderosa pine stands.
Sensitivity: Altered disturbance regimes and water availability and increasing temperatures continue to enhance the spread of invasive plant species.
Strategy: Use an integrated approach to prevent the spread and establishment of invasive species.
Tactics:
  • Enhance the resistance and resilience of native plant communities by maintaining vigorous growth of native shrub, perennial grass and other perennial species through restoration activities, appropriate grazing techniques, and fire management treatments.
  • Use integrated pest management to control established infestations, including biocontrols and herbicides.
  • Use rapid response to treat and restore newly invaded areas to prevent establishment.
Sensitivity: Area of winter range for ungulate species will decrease.
Strategy: Conserve winter range for ungulate species.
Tactics:
  • Identify critical winter habitat for ungulate species.
  • Increase collaboration with partners to conserve critical winter habitat.
Sensitivity: Changes in alpine species composition (of both plants and animals) will occur with reduced snowpack, changes in timing of snowmelt, and increasing temperatures.
Strategy: Reduce non-climatic stressors in alpine habitats.
Tactics:
  • Maintain mountain goat poulations at levels that minimize adverse effects; remove goats if needed and discourage continued introduction of goats.
  • Manage human access (e.g., build trails, harden sites, use permit systems or outfitter guides).
  • Monitor distribution and abundance of plant species (including both conifers and invasive weeds); monitor movement of treeline.
Sensitivity: Changing human use patterns in low and high elevation habitats will result in longer periods of use, seasonal changes of use, increased access, and increased concentrations of use in particular habitats, which can affect resilience.
Strategy: Improve habitat resilience to human pressure.
Tactics:
  • Address high-elevation snow sports and recreation with travel management, seasonal restrictions, and area designations.
Sensitivity: Changing human use patterns will result in longer periods of use, seasonal changes of use, increased access, and increased concentrations of use in particular habitats, which can affect resilience.
Strategy: Improve habitat resilience to human pressure.
Tactics:
  • Address disturbance from extended human use in low- and mid-level elevation habitats with travel management, strategic recreation planning, and improving effectiveness of physical barriers closing roads and trails.
  • Address increased recreation use within riparian areas, such as dispersed camping and concentrated day use, with strategic, long-term recreation planning.
Sensitivity: Changing intensity and frequency of fire regimes will decrease area and connectivity of some habitats, notably late-successional and mature forest and big sagebrush.
Strategy: Maintain current habitat, restore historical habitat, promote potential future habitat, and increase resilience of these and surrounding habitats.
Tactics:
  • Identify areas that, in the future, will have disturbance regimes characteristic of late-successional forests, mature forests, and big sagebrush; manage to promote their development and resilience.
  • Restore disturbance regimes by reducing elevated fuel loads.
  • Strategically place fuel breaks to minimize risk to important habitats.
Sensitivity: Decreased streamflow will reduce riparian vegetation and affect food supply and habitat structure for riparian obligate species.
Strategy: Reduce the effects of decreased streamflow in riparian areas by storing more water on the landscape.
Tactics:
  • Increase beaver populations with translocation and trapping to create more wetland habitat.
  • Inventory current and potential habitat.
  • Restore riparian habitat by planting willows, managing grazing, and raising water level.
  • Use snow fences and reflective tarps to retain snow in critical areas.
Sensitivity: Higher temperature and increased disturbance will cause shifts in species ranges and loss of species functional types.
Strategy: Increase habitat connectivity and permeability.
Tactics:
  • Accept loss of some features of ecosystems to protect others.
  • Increase road closures and restrictions on access in critical habitats.
  • Increase use of conservation easements.
Sensitivity: Higher temperature and increasing drought will stress some species in moist mixed conifer forests, especially western larch.
Strategy: Maintain vigorous western larch and encourage its regeneration.
Tactics:
  • Create gaps in forest to reduce competition and increase western larch vigor.
  • Regenerate western larch with appropriate site preparation (e.g., prescribed burning, followed by planting).
Sensitivity: Higher temperature may increase stress for some species in cold upland and subalpine forests.
Strategy: Accelerate restoration of cold upland and subalpine forests where appropriate.
Tactics:
  • Increase the availability of nursery stock and seed for tree species in cold upland and subalpine forests where appropriate.
Strategy: Increase resilience of species that are currently dominant in subalpine forests.
Tactics:
  • Augment stressed populations of mountain goats.
  • Increase education and regulatory enforcement to prevent adverse human-wildlife interactions.
Strategy: Protect cold upland subalpine forests by restoring forests at lower elevations, thus reducing spread of large crown fires.
Tactics:
  • Create targeted fuel breaks at strategic landscape locations.
  • Thin dry forests to densities low enough to reduce fire intensity and spread.
Strategy: Protect rare and disjunct tree species.
Tactics:
  • Plant and encourage regeneration of rare and disjunct species in appropriate locations.
  • Plant whitebark pine genotypes that are resistant to white pine blister rust.
Sensitivity: Higher temperature will alter phenology and species interactions (e.g., predation, competition) of wetland obligate species.
Strategy: Increase population resilience by reducing non-climatic stressors.
Tactics:
  • Control spread of invasive species.
  • Increase habitat connectivity and heterogeneity.
  • Maintain functional hydrology in critical habitats.
  • Manage road, trail, and recreation effects.
Strategy: Increase resilience by preserving biodiversity.
Tactics:
  • Control spread of invasive species.
  • Identify important habitat manipulations based on monitoring.
  • Protect critical areas.
Strategy: Increase resilience to changes in temperature and hydroperiod by enhancing breeding sites.
Tactics:
  • Increase microhabitat structures (e.g., woody debris) for microclimate refugia, nesting habitat, and egg deposition.
  • Retain water levels in wetlands when controlled by reservoir systems.
  • Use vegetation to increase shading of wetlands and microhabitats.
Strategy: Monitor and prioritize areas that would benefit from wetlands management.
Tactics:
  • Focus monitoring on sensitive habitats and species in priority locations.
  • Periodically review and revise priorities.
  • Prioritize areas for active management and protection across jurisdictional boundaries.
Sensitivity: Higher temperature will increase prevalence of disease and fungal and bacterial infections, causing increased animal mortality.
Strategy: Increase resilience to disease and pathogens.
Tactics:
  • Educate the public about disease sensitivities.
  • Manage or limit recreation and other uses through closures or other means.
  • Use devices to retain snowpack near sensitive habitat.
Sensitivity: Higher temperatures will alter phenology (e.g., breeding, dispersal, pelage change).
Strategy: Identify species for which phenological mismatches are relevant, identify areas where mismatches are expected to be minimal, and prioritize those areas for protection; manage for habitat resilience.
Tactics:
  • Maintain and promote connectivity so animals can migrate to new habitats; consider facilitated migration where appropriate.
  • Maximize habitat quality and availability so the population is more resilient, which may help minimize effects of phenological mismatches.
  • Prioritize for protection those areas that remain phenologically matched.
Sensitivity: Higher wildfire frequency will cause increased mortality of shrub species and native grasses and increase dominance of invasive species.
Strategy: Determine most appropriate management strategies to reduce conifer encroachment in mid- and late-successional sagebrush.
Tactics:
  • Consider where sagebrush is likely to be viable in a warmer cliamte when determining action; minimize investment in managing for sagebrush where it is unlikely to persist.
  • Determine whether future fire is moving towards or away from historical regimes, and allow wildfires to burn for resource benefit where appropriate.
  • Use mechanical means to reduce pinyon-juniper; use fire to improve habitat for fire-resilient species.
Strategy: Increase resilience of native sagebrush-grass ecosystems.
Tactics:
  • Apply prescribed burning in the spring.
  • Manage fire to maintain desired habitat.
  • Prevent fragmentation of native habitat.
  • Promote the occurrence and growth of early-season native species.
  • Reduce grazing in July and August to encourage perennial growth.
  • Revise grazing policies, and review and evaluate grazing allotment plans.
Strategy: Maintain vigorous growth of native shrub, perennial grass, and other perennial species.
Tactics:
  • Monitor successional patterns of vegetative communities.
  • Plant seed of native species.
  • Remove encroaching conifers.
Strategy: Manage for soil conditions to avoid increased runoff.
Tactics:
  • Ensure that vegetative ground cover is as high as possible for local conditions.
Strategy: Manage grazing by livestock and ungulates to reduce effects on perennial grasses.
Tactics:
  • Find locations where late-season grazing has minimal effects.
  • Focus grazing on invasive species in spring; do not graze natives in summer.
Sensitivity: Increased duration and periodicity of drought and reduced soil moisture will stress vegetation and aquatic wildlife species.
Strategy: Restore and enhance water resource function and distribution at the appropriate watershed level; prioritize watersheds based on condition and a variety of resource values, including wildlife.
Tactics:
  • Increase water storage by managing for beaver populations using a comprehensive beaver strategy, and by reducing cattle effects on small water sources.
  • Protect headwaters, spring heads, and riparian areas.
  • Provide enhanced water distribution with appropriate wildlife-use designs and balance water use with wildlife needs.
  • Reduce biomass (thinning and other vegetation treatments) to reduce evapotranspiration and mortality resulting from water stress for groundwater-fed systems ; maintain shade for non-groundwater-fed systems.
Sensitivity: Increased fire frequency will result in loss of mixed-age aspen stands and loss of mature aspen and snags.
Strategy: Maintain and promote growth of aspen in the overstory.
Tactics:
  • Conduct public outreach to help manage for aspen snags; restrict firewood cutting; target ranchette owners with information; include aspen in public education; use “this is a wildlife home” and similar signs.
  • Protect and encourage regeneration using fencing and ungulate management by reducing numbers and revise the season of use to graze early.
  • Remove conifers with prescribed fire and harvest.
Sensitivity: Increased flooding will alter riparian habitats.
Strategy: Increase upland water storage by managing for beaver populations.
Tactics:
  • Accommodate and maintain larger beaver populations.
  • Trap and relocate beavers that create dams that flood trails.
Sensitivity: Increased summer temperatures and drought stress may cause changes in herbaceous vegetation in alpine and subalpine habitats.
Strategy: Increase connectivity of habitat islands.
Tactics:
  • Partner with adjacent lands to promote connectivity.
Strategy: Maintain current native vegetation on the landscape.
Tactics:
  • Collect seeds and create a viable seed bank.
  • Conduct monitoring to understand changes in resource conditions.
  • Designate natural study areas in alpine/subalpine habitat to more effectively monitor long-term.
Sensitivity: Increased temperature will cause fluctuating nutrient levels, episodic acidification, more disease, and decreased prey for the western toad.
Strategy: Maintain and enhance habitat quality to improve survival of all life stages.
Tactics:
  • Increase vertebrate prey resources.
  • Maintain burrowing mammal habitats.
  • Manage for toadlet migration.
  • Provide dispersal cover between aquatic and upland habitats.
  • Use decontamination procedures and consider microbial treatments.
Sensitivity: Increased temperatures and shifting hydrologic regimes will stress amphibians (e.g., yellow-legged frogs, Columbian spotted frogs, boreal toad).
Strategy: Maintain integrity and quality of remaining habitats or habitats that may become suitable as temperatures increase.
Tactics:
  • Manage for other related stressors; maintain healthy forests, rangelands, and riparian habitat.
  • Minimize diversion of water through range improvement.
  • Restore beavers and aspen; provide woody browse; consider restoring willow.
Sensitivity: Increased wildfire and other disturbances may lead to habitat type and species conversion (e.g., loss of big sagebrush after fire that never returns to big sagebrush).
Strategy: Manage to avoid repeated disturbances that can result in a habitat type/species conversion.
Tactics:
  • Break up fuel continuity to reduce wildfire spread.
  • Control invasive plants.
  • Identify the best remaining areas of habitat types; maintain and restore a diversity of types and seral stages across the landscape; monitor ecotones.
  • Manage motorized recreation, grazing, and other stressors.
  • Protect native bunchgrass and shrub-steppe habitats.
  • Remove invading conifers.
  • Respond rapidly to invasive species, including feral animals.
  • Use management techiques that reduce adverse effect of treatments (e.g., invasion by annual grasses following prescribed fire or wildfire).
Sensitivity: Increased wildfire may lead to loss of habitat structure and spatial heterogeneity.
Strategy: Increase resilience of late-successional habitat.
Tactics:
  • Identify areas on the landscape that are more likely to maintain late-successional and late-successional habitat.
  • Maintain landscapes that are likely to support mixed-severity fire: consider use of prescribed fire that mimics mixed-severity fire; use mechanical treatments to break up contiguous fuels prior to prescribed fire; increase use of wildland fire for resource benefit.
  • Protect, maintain and recruit legacy structures (e.g., large trees, snags, down wood): pull litter back from base of legacy trees prior to prescribed fire; reduce fuels before prescribed fire or wildfire; develop burn prescriptions with the intent of protecting large trees.
Strategy: Maintain spatial patterns that are resilient to disturbance; promote habitat and structural heterogeneity and diversity; maintain landscape permeability.
Tactics:
  • Develop landscape connectivity and permeability patterns for animal movement at multiple scales.
  • Develop prescriptions for stands and projects that maintain heterogeneity; maintain high quality early-seral habitats across the landscape.
  • Maintain landscapes that are likely to support mixed-severity fire: consider use of prescribed fire that mimics mixed-severity fire; use mechanical treatments to break up contiguous fuels prior to prescribed fire; increase use of wildland fire for resource benefit.
Sensitivity: Increasing temperatures may exceed physiological thresholds of faunal species.
Strategy: Provide thermal refugia and opportunities for movement.
Tactics:
  • Maintain landscape permeability for animal movement: provide passage structures across major highways; close roads; maintain connectivity across different elevations.
  • Maintain thermal and security refugia.
Sensitivity: Invasive species may result in loss and/or alteration of native aquatic and terrestrial habitats.
Strategy: Increase resilience of native communities to invasive species.
Tactics:
  • Conduct aggressive integrated weed management in shrubland and grassland communities using biocontrols, restoration, and new technologies (e.g., black fingers of death).
  • Increase surveillance for invasive species and diseases (e.g., white nose syndrome, zebra and quagga mussels, avian diseases such as West Nile virus and endoparasites) to identify and control outbreaks; conduct public education and outreach to reduce spread.
Sensitivity: Late-successional forest may decrease as result of fire, drought stress, and insect outbreaks.
Strategy: Protect late-successional forests.
Tactics:
  • Assess where late-successional forests are most at risk to fire and insects.
  • Reassess late-successional forest management plans.
Sensitivity: Loss of snowpack will alter the quality and area of suitable habitat.
Strategy: Develop mitigation measures and strategies to compensate for loss of snowpack location and duration.
Tactics:
  • Maintain thermal and security refugia.
  • Reduce effects from winter recreation as recreation becomes concentrated into smaller areas.
  • Retain snowpack where feasible; retain trees to slow the loss of snow; retain snowmelt by restoring meadows and wetlands.
Sensitivity: More insect outbreaks and fire will increase loss of late-successional forest habitat and connectivity.
Strategy: Increase monitoring of specialist species that are expected to be sensitive to climate change.
Tactics:
  • Adjust monitoring protocols to detect species responses to climate change.
  • Identify climate refugia.
  • Increase monitoring to attribute population changes to climate change versus other stressors.
Strategy: Increase resilience of late-successional habitat.
Tactics:
  • Accelerate development of additional late-successional habitat.
  • Allow shifts in native species ranges.
  • Collaborate with neighbors about priority areas for treatments, and increase extent of protected areas.
  • Consider more use of prescribed fire.
  • Consider policy changes to allow more management and adaptive management in late-successional reserves.
  • Increase diversity of age classes and restore patch mosaic.
  • Increase landscape biodiversity and heterogeneity by modifying species composition.
  • Increase monitoring of insects to anticipate and prevent outbreaks.
  • Increase protection of critical habitat structure (e.g., snags and nest trees).
Strategy: Maintain current late-successional habitat, restore historical habitat, and promote potential future habitat.
Tactics:
  • Conserve current late-successional habitat.
  • Maintain or create necessary structure for species that rely on late-successional habitat.
  • Restore understory to create future late-successional habitat.
Sensitivity: Reduced snowpack, reduced summer precipitation, and changing groundwater recharge and discharge will result in shifting plant species composition and reduced habitat quality in riparian areas, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, wetlands, and wet meadows.
Strategy: Mitigate changes in hydrologic regimes in order to retain species composition and ecosystem function.
Tactics:
  • Conduct monitoring to understand changes in resource conditions.
  • Create a viable native seed bank.
  • Create side channels into floodplains and conduct stream restoration.
  • Mitigate road effects by eliminating unnecessary roads and effects on wetlands.
  • Re-establish beaver populations.
  • Redesign road drainage to improve for water retention; reduce runoff and increase infiltration.
Sensitivity: Shifting hydrologic regimes will result in changes in wetland habitat quantity and quality.
Strategy: Identify, retain, and restore riparian/wetland habitat for wildlife.
Tactics:
  • Maintain and restore alpine wetlands for amphibian habitat.
  • Maintain and restore aspen habitat: remove conifer encroachment; manage grazing in sensitive areas to maintain wildlife habitat.
  • Maintain and restore streamside and habitats: manage grazing, recreation and other potential stressors in sensitive areas to maintain wildlife habitat; maintain riparian vegetation to provide wildlife habitat and stream shading; reintroduce beaver.
Strategy: Maintain connectivity and habitat quality to promote resilience of wetland habitats.
Tactics:
  • Actively restore, protect, and maintain functional wetlands.
  • Manage grazing to promote functional riparian habitats.
  • Reintroduce beaver; expand or restore habitat where appropriate.
Sensitivity: Tree encroachment in alpine habitats will reduce meadow area.
Strategy: Proactively manage wilderness areas.
Tactics:
  • Establish burn plans for wilderness areas.
Sensitivity: Tree establishment in subalpine meadows will decrease forage for American pika and marmot species.
Strategy: Maintain and protect summer alpine habitat for American pika and marmots.
Tactics:
  • Decrease visitor use in alpine and subalpine habitats.
  • Monitor soil development, biological soil crust, and herbaceous plant establishment in previously snow-covered and glaciated areas.
  • Monitor tree establishment in meadows.
  • Remove trees from meadows using fire and mechanical treatments.
Sensitivity: Uncharacteristic fires in ponderosa pine will result in loss of late successional-forest and snags.
Strategy: Maintain current habitat, restore historical structure, and increase mosaic structure (including snags).
Tactics:
  • Conduct thinning and prescribed fire treatments; use thinning from below; maintain structures (stem density, diversity) that will be resilient; reduce ladder fuels.
  • Manage grazing to discourage overgrazing of native plants and to maintain fine fuels to carry fire.
  • Plant ponderosa pine In locations where it is likely to persist in the future.
Sensitivity: Vegetation and wildlife will be stressed with altered timing and amount of precipitation, drought, and earlier snowmelt.
Strategy: Improve riparian habitats, wetlands, and water-table retention.
Tactics:
  • Improve management of existing seep and spring-water developments; design proposed developments to minimize ecological damage.
  • Maintain vegetative cover sufficient to retain snowpack within watersheds.
  • Restore and maintain healthy beaver populations.