[Tony] Those that are just coming in,
just in terms of the goals of the session,
it's to highlight the NSRC funding,
what that does for supporting science,
and I think that at the end of the session,
there's some discussion around not just informative science
but also informing actual information
that managers can use and apply on the ground,
and so I think this project hopefully
is a good representation of that.
And so this was funded in 2022 by NSRC,
so it's a year and a half in.
So what you'll see is a bit of what we've been doing,
a little bit of what we've been producing,
and then what's coming next.
So there won't be a ton of results,
but we'll certainly show you some
of what we've been finding out and figuring out ways
to deal with these challenges as it relates
to climate change and facing insects and diseases.
And so the title of the project really is really meant
to reflect that the goal is not just
to develop more science but to get people
to actually apply that on the ground,
to deal on what the grand challenges that we're facing.
But I think just for some grounding,
not that anybody in this room is convincing that people
in the region are concerned about different aspects
of climate change and invasive species.
This is a survey that I've been fortunate to partner
with Rachel Schattman at the University of Maine
that surveyed over 338 foresters.
A chunk of those were rural foresters,
the other chunk were urban foresters,
and what this graph is just showing is their level
of concern with various aspects of global change.
So the dark bars are rural foresters,
the lighter bars are urban foresters,
and so they both agree on one thing,
that insects and diseases are their biggest concern,
which I think most of us can appreciate.
So we talk about climate change,
but in the front of our brain, often,
it's those immediate impacts
of invasive insects and diseases.
As you move along, we see some separation.
So the rural foresters, it's snow pack,
you know, not enough of it.
Vegetation competition, too much of it.
Extreme precipitation, again, too much of it,
region, not enough or (speaks indistinctly) too much,
you know, really, really dealing with what we
might experience in kind of a larger landscape
whereas the rural urban forester's really concerned
about things like heat, stress, you know,
things that might be more acute within an urban setting.
And so the only reason I'm showing this
is just to kind of highlight those, a diversity of concerns,
but generally, the consensus we need to be adapting
to those impacts and finding ways
to actually address them on the ground,
which is where this project really tries to fit in.
So the overall goal of this project, as I mentioned,
is not just to gain science information
but really to try to increase the application
of adaptation on the ground,
both to deal with insects and diseases
as well as to deal with climate change impacts,
and so there's two broad objectives I'll talk about.
One is that the science are really going out there
and evaluating what are people doing?
What are we seeing?
Is there evidence that this might actually even be effective
as a way to deal with climate change?
Other stressors, and then the second part
is that science translation piece,
developing that physician support
that people want to actually do this on the ground,
so co-producing site level best adaptation practices
with managers to really address these impacts.
And so before this session was organized,
we already had a workshop scheduled
for the afternoon for this project,
and so it'll be an opportunity that if you are interested
in getting more involved with the co-production piece.
We can talk through that,
but I'll at least highlight what we've been developing
as a team team to really address these issues.
And so as a team, it's definitely not just me.
It's definitely more others than me doing this,
and so I'm really fortunate to partner
with the US Forest Service,
Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science,
in particular Maria Janowiak and Danielle Shannon.
Sam Samantha Myers is with the University of Vermont,
but she also works with NIACS on this project.
Several folks here at UVM, including Tripp Whiting,
who supported, as I already mentioned,
as a grad student through NSRC.
Forest Stewards Guild, as well as several manager partners
that have helped with perspective
on just how we're developing these guides,
who we're talking to,
and how we're thinking about adaptation on the ground.
So I'm gonna go through just again, in this short timeframe,
just a little bit about how we're assessing adaptation,
like what are the outcomes,
where we're using for sites and information,
and then get into kind of that piece that I mentioned,
like how do we translate that into site level practice?
And it's a little bit ironic at the exact same time
as this talk,
there's another talk on designing restoration studies
to be adaptation experiments.
So if you people that skipped this one
are hopefully hearing similar messages,
but there are a lot of resources out there on the ground
that we can be learning from now
in terms of how people are approaching adaptation
and what the outcomes are of those adaptation actions are.
And so really, the cornerstone of a lot
of the work we're doing is taking advantage of the fact
that many of you, and I know many in this room
are some of these dots on this map,
have already been working on thinking about,
"How do I integrate climate change invasive species impacts
into my management and operationalize it on the ground?"
And in particular, for now 14 years,
the climate change response framework,
again being led by the Forest Service,
NRS, and other partners,
has been co-producing these adaptation experiments
and demonstration sites across the northern US.
And so what we decided for this project
was to really hone in on the 30
and then northern forest region that really intersect
with kind of our primary forest types,
northern hardwoods, mixedwoods, and spruce fir.
And so we're doing kind of two things at these sites,
one, kind of measuring and understanding kind
of what's happening there.
And some of these sites are actual experiments
that myself and others are involved with,
but also gleaning information from managers working
at those sites is how are you addressing this?
What are some of the barriers you're experiencing
so that we can get a better collection
of just what is that knowledge base that's out there?
What are people running into as issues,
and kind of what are they seeing out in the ground?
So what are we doing in these areas?
So I'm a vegetation person,
so most of what we're doing is measuring veg outcomes.
You know, if we quadruple the budget,
we could add in arthropods and wildlife.
Thankfully, other projects are looking
at other aspects of that, but most of what we're doing,
again, a lot of this is observational.
Some of it's experimental, but much of it's observational,
trying to understand, you know, structurally what do we see
when people are managing for adaptation?
What functions are provided by those forests,
both in terms of ecological values
but also potential adaptation pathways in the future?
Certainly if we're measuring diameters,
we can also be measuring carbon,
so bringing in that element of it,
but also understanding both what's naturally regenerating
as well as I'll talk about in a second, and, actually,
Matt will talk about a bit more with their work,
we're seeing this increase in people planting things,
and kind of what are they planting?
How are those plantings doing?
Are we getting a feel for why people are planting,
and does that give us a sense for what we might need
for additional nursery stock, more seed collection,
other things that are happening out there?
And then finally, you know,
can we actually get some evidence
that not only are they changing structure and composition,
but does this actually
confer some adaptation potential, right?
We know that they're changing things,
but does it actually do anything
in terms of addressing some of those challenges?
So what I'm gonna focus in on today
is a little bit of the work, again,
hopefully to queue up what Matt is talking about,
that we have been spending a lot
of time measuring seedlings,
both naturally regenerated as well as planted,
across a bunch of different sites,
and I'll give an example of one large planting project
that we've been able to measure in partnership
with a nature conservancy as part of this work,
just to give both perspective on what people are doing
as part of the planting projects
as well as how that's faring.
Now I'm first gonna start with just
how we're utilizing that network of sites just
to harness information as to why are people planting, right?
Again, most of us in this room know
not since the '20s and '30s, the old '20s and '30s,
there's been much interested in plant-
-(audience laughs) -(people speak indistinctly)
Yeah, so previous '20s. Why are people planting?
Not as much Norway spruce as Scots pine this time around.
So Pete Clark has been leading a bit of a survey
as part of the folks that we're working with
across these demonstration sites,
and you'll notice the sample size is bigger than 30.
So we're sampling kind of all of New England
plus New York to understand like why are people planting
or even interested in planting,
and what is kinda the flavor that they're approaching?
And so anything in dark blue
means they're already doing it, right?
And then anything that's at least some shade of blue means,
if they're not doing it now,
they're probably gonna on on doing it in the future.
And in general,
what we find is 93% of the people say they're gonna plant
more than they did in the past, right?
They're going there.
And then this is just the flavors of why people say
either they are planting now or plan to plant,
and so the majority are saying they're doing it
to restore keystone species.
So if we think about American chestnut, you know,
I think red spruce certainly is a keystone species
in the region, hemlock, you know, a lot of interest
in kind of restoring that to the landscape.
Likewise, this idea of a replacement species.
So, you know, an example might be if we're
gonna lose black ash from a wetland, can we swap white elms?
If we're gonna lose hemlock from an area,
can we plant other conifers to replace it?
So really trying
to kind of maintain that bump in replacement.
If we're gonna lose beech,
can we plant another map-producing species?
And then these last three where we get
into actually the assisted migration flavors,
so people actually articulating,
they're thinking about assisted migration.
So you notice a very large number do plan
on doing what we call assisted population of enrichment,
so planting species within their current range,
sometimes planting a southern genotype
of that species but definitely planting them.
A large proportion also talking
about assisted range expansion,
so planting beyond a species range in the area
that it would likely get to if you could sprint
as fast as climate's changing, and then many are interested
in kind of assisted species migration,
you know, long distance movement,
and I think that just generally reflects a lot
of our sentiment.
We're not comfortable with it.
Already did it with Norway spruce, Scots pine.
That's out there, but not (speaks indistinctly).
So giving us a feel for what people
are doing across the region.
Likewise, we can get a feel
from these experiments and demonstrations.
What are people primary planting now?
And so by 20 to one, red oak and white pine
are the most commonly planted species.
Couple things going on there.
Makes sense for some of these sites.
The other is anybody that buy seedlings knows
if you want a lot of seedlings
from the New Hampshire State Nursery,
those are the two species you can get a lot of.
Same with New York.
Red spruce, I know I have some red spruce fans in the room,
including myself.
If you wanna buy red spruce, really hard to get much of it,
but people want it and are planning for it,
so we're seeing a lot of red spruce,
and then many other species
that aren't necessarily long distance movement
but just trying
to kind of diversify a northern hardwood stands
and mixedwoods stands,
and then a few efforts to actually move stuff up.
You know, Dan from Missouri,
we're not gonna compete with you for barrel states.
You'll see my growth data in a minute on white oak,
but nevertheless, you know,
trying to at least think about some of these species
that might make sense functionally
or ecologically in the landscape.
So as I mentioned, a lot of what we're doing at these sites
is often observing what's already occurred.
We often don't have
like baseline data pretreatment information,
but some of these sites, including some of the work
that we've been able to partner with Nature Conservancy on,
they actually voiced some base level measurements
of what they did, and so we could actually survey kind
of a large planting project to get a handle
on like how is this turning out?
What's happening across the landscape?
And so on the very, very edge of this map
is the Tug Hill Plateau region.
This is a large landscape
that the Nature Conservancy manages,
and there's a portion of that where they're really trying
to do some ecosystem restoration work
of using patch selection harvest
and also thinking a little bit about climate adaptation
and what that might mean in terms
of diversifying species composition.
And so they're very ambitious.
I think it was just funded by Wildlife Conservation funds.
Planted 8,500 seedlings, ambitious by northern standards.
I know that's a day for people
in other parts of the country,
and we're primarily focused on red oak,
which is already in the landscape.
So we'd call it assisted population enrichment.
White oak, which is not currently in the landscape
but projected to gain habitat.
White pine, again, locally present, and then sugar maple,
they planted a southern seed source of that.
And so what we're seeing in terms of the outcomes of this,
this is some work that Peter Clark has been doing
that we're, you know, as we see everywhere,
red oak continues to do really well in these plant things,
but I think what's really striking
is how well it's doing in height growth.
This is absolute height growth
of white oak across the sites.
Again, Dan, don't worry, white oak, you know,
that height growth is maybe six months
in other parts of the country.
We're also seeing that southern genotype not doing well.
A couple things going on there, I think,
in terms of just a planting environment.
Like these are large patches.
Throwing sugar maple out into that,
probably wasn't a happy, happy tree.
So what we're also doing,
and if anybody has questions on this,
there's somebody else in the room that can answer them,
is besides being able to measure
like what are the outcomes of experiments,
we also wanna know does this actually mean anything in terms
of potential resilience of that forest of future change?
And so what we're doing is also sampling mature trees
from some of these areas
to evaluate non-structural carbohydrates.
It's a proxy for the resilience potential
of that tree to future stressors,
and this is really inspired by some work
that Audrey Barker Plotkin led with the Harvard Forest.
This is a graph just showing predicted probability
of survival during a spongy moth outbreak depending
on how much stored carbohydrates those trees had,
and so essentially, kinda the higher the concentration,
the higher kind of the resilience,
the ability to bounce back.
And so what Tripp's doing through his work
is sampling mature trees
and different adaptation type settings
to see are there other, some that have higher levels
of stores and higher ability to respond to that.
So these are definitely results
that are still in vials and in Tripp's computers,
so coming soon.
So the other part of this is, the plug for this afternoon
is that we wanna be taking this information,
both the science but also again manager experience
to co-produce like guidance on the ground.
And so we've been really fortunate, again, in partnership
with the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science,
USDA Climate Hub, Forest Stewards Guild
to now have a draft of a component
of a manager's guide adaptation in the region,
and the idea is that we've taken information
from all these adaptation demonstration sites,
all of the experiments, all of our discussions with managers
to start distilling down like what are some strategies
that make sense on the ground?
And so again, this afternoon,
if you wanna have feedback on this, here's an opportunity,
but the way the guide is set up
is that there are kind of three chapters,
you know, one for northern hardwoods,
one for mixedwoods, one for spruce fir,
as well as boilerplate information about vulnerability
for the region and adaptation strategies.
And so each section has kind of a general rating
of vulnerability, kind of drawing
upon the most recent vulnerability assessment.
We'll be updating this
with the forthcoming vulnerability assessment
in the next year or so.
Similarly, each section kind of gets
into these site level factors that may
or may not increase or decrease risk to climate.
So, for example, to the re-gen layers loaded with invasives
or you have earthworms or you have deer.
Obviously, your vulnerability in that site's
gonna be very different than a site
that it's just this flush with re-gen limited impact.
And then cross walking that down, so what do you do
to actually address those site level impacts?
And then tying that back to case studies
of people actually doing this on the ground.
So trying to connect that whole loop.
Also boilerplate information on species suitability
and then bringing in some of our information
on assisted migration for each of those species.
So as I mentioned, this is in year 1.5 of the project.
So we'll be finishing up this this summer,
but one thing that will be coming out
at NESAF in Burlington, different venue,
will be the final graph of that guide.
So if you wanna have input on it,
certainly today's not the only opportunity, but at three,
the workshop was already scheduled prior to this session,
but I think it reflects NSRC and our goal
to be working with managers, getting feedback.
We'll have a work workshop to give some perspective
on how we're addressing this,
what might be missing, and what could be improved.
So I'll thank the many people, West NSRC for the funding,
and US Forest Service, and take any questions.
[Audience Member] Hi, Tony.
As probably the only urban forester in this room,
I appreciate the shout-out to the urban forestry community.
Curious about the comment
about the New Hampshire State Nursery,
and it has been a hot topic
amongst our regional urban forestry community as well.
Just like has there been engagement
about this project or other projects,
and or what would be the hopeful engagement
about expanding their seedlings?
[Tony] Yeah, and Matt can speak to that.
I mean, they've been great to engage with,
but they, you know, it's like building their capacity.
You know, they received certainly some federal funding,
but yeah, we need way more than just New Hampshire.
So there's been some private,
like Redstar is a good example, that's, you know,
trying to build their own nursery capacity
to deal with these projects, but yeah,
we need a significant investment.
And so hopefully, there'll be some more thought put into,
you know, within the state of Vermont.
As in New Hampshire,
they've been really great about working with us.
I guess I'll point to Steve and John.
There's some work with, you know,
National Forest now to try to develop seed orchards
for different climate zones,
but we're way behind on so many, I'm not, yeah,
we don't have a lot of time to talk about that,
but even in terms of seed source control,
having diversity in our seed zones,
so really, really trying to grow that.
And then, again, you know, we're fortunate.
Within the Northern Research Station,
there's a reforestation specialist,
Carrie Pike and others, have at a broader scale.
This is not just a northeast thing.
We're just a little bit further behind the rest of the east
'cause we just have planted so rarely
that we just don't have like both the private growers
and the state nurseries to do it
for the seed collectors or, you know, all that stuff, but.
[Audience Member] Sorry if I missed this,
but for the range augmentation and the range expansion,
are you attempting to use material of local providence?
[Tony] Trying, yeah, and that's the-
[Audience Member] What's the deal with that
if you can't get it,
and what's the ramifications of like introducing seeds
from the Midwest or something to-
[Tony] Yeah, I mean,
I think that the seeds from the Midwest
have been introduced to the region for millennia,
you know, and so I often think about just
like the profitable pressure that, you know,
indigenous people, you know, were providing.
You know, we think about looking at mass producing species
and their distribution, kind of the correlation
with historic settlements and other things.
It's pretty amazing.
So I don't ever think about like if it's a red oak
from like Southern New Hampshire
and it's in Northeast Kingdom, Vermont,
that's gonna escape and totally poison the genetic.
I mean, it's already been, but yeah,
I'd love it if we could have like dialed
into that next southern seed zone.
It just doesn't exist for most species.
We're fortunate with red spruce, I'd say,
is the most precision we have right now.
I mean, we've done some work with collecting our own seed
to grow red oak and white oak
and actually some partnership again with NRS on that,
but yeah, we'd love to, and that would be best practice.
But I guess the reason I started
was we've been moving stuff for a long time.
We often ignore that, is, you know,
you think about just how much seed movement
has occurred historically, so there's a lot.
A lot's starting to happen. Yeah, Dave.
[Dave] what what's your thinking on planting red spruce
given that that's projected to be a climate change loser?
[Tony] I don't agree with the...
(audience laughs) So I always like to say,
"Even this year, the Patriots are losers,
they still won three games."
(audience laughs)
It's gonna keep winning on certain sites, and again,
you know, but most of ours,
it's people lump it into the boreal conifer.
Some people in the room that are far more expert in this,
but we're seeing recovery, and actually,
with red spruce just functionally,
there's just not a substitute for that in a lot of systems,
and so we're fortunate with red spruce being able
to plant like southern seed sources for that if we can.
But it's all about site.
Even sugar maple we used to think it was doomed.
Well, it's doomed on certain sites,
but there's other sites where it's gonna do well,
and so I'm a red spruce zealot.
I support your (speaks indistinctly),
but I think it, yeah, in many cases, it's recovering,
and I guess based even our climate projections,
it seems like this wet and kind of,
like the shoulder season wet, I mean,
this seems to to fit pretty well with it in certain areas.
Lack of snow could be a problem.
[Audience Member] Right, that's good to hear
'cause we're gonna be planting.
[Tony] Good, go for it. I endorse it.
(audience laughs)
Don't buy from New Hampshire 'cause I need those seedlings.
(audience laughs)
Only like 2,000.
-One final quick question? -Yeah, go ahead.
[Audience Member] Would you comment on the lack
of snow might be a problem thing?
I noticed snow is like the second biggest concern.
[Tony] Most of the respondents
are really focused in on operations,
but yeah, in terms of the insulation of the root system,
so we get like deep freezes without snow pack,
that I think that's the concern
or even like this snow we just got.
Just heavy, wet, you know, it's a probability of windthrow.
You know, damage is a lot higher
with those incidents as well,
but I think most of us view that more from a urban forester
that focus on operations and access, but yeah,
it's also just even protecting those root systems
and you're harvesting, let alone keeping 'em insulated.
So that would be the one, I guess,
dampering of my enthusiasm is that, yeah,
we'll be in trouble if we stop,
we really lose snow pack in some of these areas, so yeah.
But it's a huge, yeah, as you know, big, big issue.
[Moderator] Okay, thank you, Tony.
(speaks indistinctly)