Policy, practice, and partnerships for climate change adaptation on US national forests

Climate change presents a challenge to land management agencies tasked with managing landscapes to protect natural resources and provide key goods and services in the face of ecological change, complexity, and uncertainty. Land management agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service, have developed multi-faceted strategies that utilize concepts like resilience and ecological integrity to guide adaptation. To address an extant research need, we conducted a qualitative case study, consisting of interviews with Forest Service staff in the Rocky Mountain Region, to explore how local federal land managers approach adaptation. Our goals were to understand what impacts managers are finding salient, perceptions of current agency strategies, and aspects of policy and practice that support effective adaptation planning. Interview participants anticipate impacts to disturbance regimes, wildlife species, and human uses. Participants intend to draw on agency policies, like its climate change scorecard and its land management planning regulations. However, the participants note that ambiguous concepts, uncertainty, and institutional variables make adaptation planning challenging in practice. A major theme apparent in the interviews was the use of partnerships with a range of other entities to address climate change. Ambiguity associated with concepts like resilience and ecological integrity allow them to function as boundary concepts; however, this ambiguity makes it challenging for managers to operationalize these concepts. These findings revealed that climate change adaptation is leading to and revealing the need for broader governance change. Moving forward, it will be crucial to adjust current governance structures to support long-term partnerships adept at translating scientific knowledge into actions and implementing complex boundary concepts.