Forest, Fisheries and Biodiversity Management in the Pacific Northwest

Some scientists speculate that the forests and ecosystems in the northwestern regions of North America might already be showing some signs of climate change. In 2004, for example, 90 percent of the sockeye salmon that return to the Fraser River in Canada’s British Columbia to spawn were lost, and the consensus among scientists was that warm water was one of the causes.

Through glacier melts, changes in water flow, shifting forest cover and changes in species distribution, natural resources in the North American Northwest could be threatened by climate changes. In this project, we want to look at decision-making for forests, fisheries and biodiversity in the face of uncertainties in climate change.

These natural resources are already under immense pressure from increased harvests and competing use. There is always a tradeoff between resource development and conservation. Even without considering climate change, these natural resource management decisions are fraught with uncertainty. They are further complicated because they stretch across both short and long term time scales, are made at various management levels, and there are many stakeholders involved.

We recognize the crucial role of institutional management across different scales in fostering effective management decisions, and we will include it in our strategies. In our projects, we will focus largely on local contexts and seek the input of interested parties to build trust.

Forest Management in the Southwest Yukon, Given Uncertain Climate Changes

Biodiversity Management in Parks and Protected Areas

Conceptual Framework for Ecosystem Triage

Forest Management in the Southwest Yukon, Given Uncertain Climate Changes

Researchers: Aynslie Ogden and Tim McDaniels, University of British Columbia

In the southwestern region of Canada’s Yukon Territory, forests are showing effects of climate change. In certain areas, over the past decade, severe spruce bark beetle infestations have killed a large number of white spruce trees, the most abundant species in these forests. An overview report by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment calls this “the largest and most intense outbreak of spruce bark beetle to ever affect Canadian trees.” In 2004, two-thirds of the total forested area of 600,000 hectares in the southwest Yukon was affected.

This spreading infestation is linked to increasing average annual temperatures in the past few decades. In Alaska and Western Canada, winter temperatures have increased by as much as 3-4ºC over the past five decades. Warmer winters aren’t killing off beetles as colder temperatures normally would, while warmer summers have doubled their reproductive rate, resulting in more beetles. Drier climate has also made the spruce trees less resistant to beetle attack.

The beetles leave behind dead trees, which increase the risk of fire, and this risk is elevated with climate model predictions of drier and warmer summers ahead. In addition to increasing insect outbreaks and fire hazard, warmer climate will lead to many other changes in the southwest Yukon—slower tree growth and possible tree die-offs, changes in the plant and animal biodiversity found in the area as species migrate to more suitable climates, and changes in stream flows due to melting of glaciers and snow.

These environmental impacts lead to numerous socioeconomic impacts. For this project, we are focusing on a nearly three million hectare territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations (CAFN) people. The CAFN is a self-governing First Nation that depends heavily on the forest—they exercise subsistence rights to hunt and fish and are actively planning to develop the region’s timber resources. The effects of climate change on these forests could threaten the sustainability of the First Nations communities. Since forests provide timber and recreation, and support wildlife, climate change will influence the region’s tourism industry, as well as governments, landowners and consumers.

Uncertainties in climate change and its impacts add complexity to the already challenging work of forest managers, who are faced with making long-term decisions in the face of these uncertainties. We are working with the CAFN, Parks Canada, Environment Canada, the Yukon government and the Alsek Renewable Resource Council to help forest managers to adapt their decisions in response to climate change. With the assistance of forest scientists and local experts, we plan to assess the possible impacts of climate change on the forests, environment and communities of the southwest Yukon, and identify what management planning and policy options are suitable. We will provide this information to local decision-making authorities and analyze the extent to which they are willing to adopt it in their strategies.

Biodiversity Management in Parks and Protected Areas

Researchers: Lil Ronalds, Keith Baker and Tim McDaniels, University of British Columbia

Managing ecosystems to harvest natural resources threatens biodiversity through habitat loss and damages to air and water quality. This gives rise to constant tradeoffs between resource development and biodiversity conservation.

The goal of sustainable resource management strategies has therefore been to protect biodiversity while developing natural resources for agriculture, forestry, mining and other economical uses.

But current conservation strategies aren’t designed to cope with the effects that climate change will have on biodiversity. In northwestern North America, changes in climate are expected to impact biodiversity through varying water availability and quality, disease, frequent storms, habitat loss related to changes in spatial distribution of forest cover, and fire in forested areas. Decision-makers for park and protected area management can no longer base their policies on the assumption that plant and animal numbers and distributions will remain the same as these changes occur.

We want to examine how the possible effects of climate change may be considered in conservation efforts in the near term to provide greater biodiversity resilience to climate change over the long-term. We have chosen two park or protected area locations—both along the U.S.-Canada border—that are undergoing sustainable resource management decisions, offering the opportunity to look at the complex decision-making process. These three areas are rich in ecological resources, and, owing to their proximity to the rapidly warming Arctic region, are threatened by climate change.

We are trying to understand the process behind conservation efforts in these locations, and the pros and cons associated with current approaches. We are also trying to understand the uncertainty associated with climate change and its impacts. We plan to conduct surveys and interviews with scientists, forest managers, local experts such as hunters and landowners, as well as Yukon to Yellowstone NGOs. This will help us determine the effects of climate change that have occurred already, as well as predict possible future impacts on biodiversity. Ultimately, we want to see whether taking these effects into account helps park and protected area managers make better decisions.

Implications of climate change for ecosystem resilience, resource management and biodiversity protection

Researchers: Shannon Hagerman and Tim McDaniels, University of British Columbia

Sustainable resource management strategies have the broad mandate of protecting biodiversity while developing natural resources that we can use. These strategies typically rest on assumptions that species distributions and ecosystems will continue to live in their historical range. But changes in forests and ecosystems because of climate change will undermine these assumptions in the future.

Some approaches that have been developed to address these issues are: increasing landscape connectivity; managing the lands between parks and protected areas for biodiversity; and expanding protected areas to encompass predicted future distributions. But these approaches may be inadequate in cases where additional suitable range is not be available, political or social will is lacking, or the rate of change is too rapid for adaptation.

Currently, there is no framework that helps decision-makers set priorities for ecosystem protection and understand what ecosystem protection implies for natural resources management. We want to develop such a framework, considering both biophysical and socioeconomic resilience to climate change, in different resource management contexts.

Through expert elicitations, we plan to first establish the biophysical criteria for ecosystem resilience, and develop a scale of ecosystem vulnerability-resilience to climate change. We also want to elicit judgment on resource management alternatives in selected areas that will increase adaptive capacity, resilience and protection for systems of varying vulnerabilities. Finally, we will test our framework, along with its associated resource management alternatives, with stakeholders in order to examine the relationship between biophysical and social resilience, values, and socio-cultural context.