The Future of Forests: Forecasting and Managing for Change

Robert M. Scheller, NC State University

Video Recording

Slides

Abstract

Future forests will be shaped by pervasive change and where, when, and how society manages landscape change. But there is debate about whether active management has the capacity to accelerate adaptation to novel conditions, maintain resilience, and ensure the provision of ecosystem services.  Many innovative solutions have been proposed, including facilitated migration, genomic interventions, restoration silviculture, and others.  Few of these innovations have been tested at landscape scales because of the difficulties of testing and replication at broad scales and because the full effects may not be known for decades.  Landscape forecasting using spatial models has emerged as a powerful tool to test innovative strategies for managing landscape change and to assess how these strategies may interact with climate futures and novel disturbance regimes.  Landscape forecasting also provides information about the potential trade-offs and costs before adaptive strategies are implemented.  Dr. Scheller will describe the landscape forecasting framework, LANDIS-II, that he has co-developed and deployed over the past 20 years.  Using LANDIS-II, he has assessed forest change worldwide and concludes that for any landscape, a range of landscape trajectories are possible and that comprehensive management efforts have the potential to redirect trajectories towards more positive outcomes.  However, barriers to managing landscapes for change remain; these include the costs, local cultural identity, and the fear of uncertainty. Nevertheless, processes, tools, and technologies exist for overcoming social and ecological barriers to managing landscapes for change, and continued investment in social and scientific infrastructure holds out hope for maintaining healthy landscapes even as we enter an era of unprecedented change and disruption.

Biography

Dr. Scheller is Professor of Landscape Ecology and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He grew up in Minnesota and received his B.S. from the University of Minnesota and Masters and Doctoral degrees in Forest Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on how landscapes have changed, how they will change, and why it matters. Anthropogenic change will transform many landscapes in the coming decades, in ways that exceed our imaginations. To understand past and future landscape change, he and his research group studies land use change and landscape history; forest and ecosystem and landscape ecology; anthropogenic drivers of change, particularly climate change; and policy and management. These diverse disciplines inform advanced forecasting tools developed by his lab, enabling local and regional decision-makers to assess the potential to manage for landscape change.