Strategies for incorporating climate change into public forest management

Abstract

By analyzing interview and survey data from 1,640 US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service employees across three management levels, we assessed their perceptions, actions, concerns, and needs regarding incorporating climate change into managing the National Forests. We found that regional- and forest-level employees tend to think climate change presents new challenges and requires new approaches to address it, whereas on-the-ground managers tend to view it as a buzzword and want more flexibility to continue doing what they do. We found that forest managers have been engaged in conversation and thinking about climate change but few on-the-ground actions. Our study suggests a need for incorporating local staff knowledge into agency decisionmaking, establishing common ground within the agency by promoting climate change initiatives in the context of enhancing forest resilience, providing more scale-relevant data, research, training, and guidance, and developing strategies that enable forest managers to address management challenges that interact with climate change.