- Rain events will not greatly impact the site,
due to gentle topography and well-drained soils.
And then the high end of the scale
says, heavier rain events will greatly impact the site
and lead to erosion on steep slopes
and flooding in low lying areas.
Another feature that helps users
decide how to ready themselves on these impacts,
is the small blue icons that can be clicked on
for some more specific information on each impact.
So then after reading their site on those 10 different
impacts, users give themselves an overall rating
based on what they surmise
from going through those other questions.
And then users move into the adaptive capacity assessment.
So they use a similar sliding scale here,
but this time to rate these various site characteristics
that contribute to assistant's ability to cope with
and adapt to changing conditions in the services.
So, whereas, a high rating on the impacts assessment
was a negative thing.
A high rating for these favor factors is favorable
and contributes to reducing overall vulnerability.
So for example, for the level of landscape connectivity,
the low end of the scale says that the site is small
and isolated or surrounded by agricultural
or developed land.
And the high end of the scale,
says that the site is part of a large complex of forest
or other ecosystems.
And then again,
after considering each of these individual characteristics,
users give themselves an overall adaptive capacity rating.
So that's the assessment.
And then after doing the work
of thinking really comprehensively about their stand,
users are presented with this results summary page.
So, the combination of those overall ratings from impacts
and adaptive capacity,
if the user final vulnerability rating,
which in this example case you can see it was moderate.
And then you can see
also that your answers place you within this matrix
that gives you a more nuanced sense
of that vulnerability result.
And then the ratings of the other individual components
in the assessment inform which of these issues of concern
appear on the results page.
And so in this case, you can see invasive plants
are favoring pests and pathogens,
and those are each clickable
and will bring you to an interactive page.
So, if you rated yourself really high on insect, pests
and forest disease impacts,
you'll be able to access some more information on that,
including potential adaptation approaches,
relevant resources, ideas related to monitoring,
and importantly, some on the ground examples
from other managers in new England
who are working on projects
where they're addressing specific pest and disease concerns.
(keyboard clicking)
Then when you scroll further down the results page,
you'll see a range of adaptation pathways presented,
including resistance, resilience, transition, and no action.
And so if you click on any one of these,
you'll access another interactive page
with an overall conceptual description of that pathway,
along with a table of potential adaptation actions
based on different site conditions.
So, these example adaptation actions
are largely based of a suite of resources created by NIACS
called adaptation menus.
And it's important to note that they're not recommendations
or prescriptions but rather options for professionals
to consider when they're making specific decisions
within their management context.
And then last but not least,
all of this information on the results page,
including the issues of concern pages
and these various adaptation pathways
are bundled up into a downloadable PDF report.
So that's something that's really handy and can be used
to inform management plans or reference with partners
and landowners.
So, that's an overview
of the Oak Resiliency Assessment Tool.
And if that was a little fast or you want to explore
further, I encourage you to visit the website
and try it out yourself.
And Logan is actually going to share it another opportunity
to familiarize yourself with the tool.
- Thanks, Maddy.
And yes.
So I just dropped in the chat window a few resources.
The first one is a link to the tool itself,
and there is a new tutorial on the website now
that you can watch to get a lot of the same information
you just received from Mandy, but more in depth.
Additionally, we are hosting a workshop Wednesday,
January 19th at 4:00 pm for a in-depth workshop
on how to use the tool and contribute data to the project.
And then lastly,
the last resource there is Oak resiliency resources
on the Forest Stewards Guild website.
And we have a collection compilation
of many different resources there,
both for landowners and resource professionals to explore,
to help us all think about Oak resiliency and the landscape.
I think that is all I have for that slide.
And we can move on to questions.
I just want to thank forest ecosystem monitoring cooperative
for all of it, their support,
as we develop this tool and project in Northern Institute
of applied climate science, my employer,
the Forest Stewards Guild.
If you want to get in contact with us,
my email is on the screen logan@forestguild.org
and Maddy's is as well, mjbaroli@mtu.edu.
You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter.
That is all we have for our presentation.
And we are happy to dive into questions at this point.
- Yeah, this is Jerry in New York.
I'm interested in,
have you a mass scenario-based results
from this survey or this form yet?
That would be really interesting to see.
And obviously any one of these things will be a temporal
window. The result would be a temporal window.
What, what do you, how do you anticipate that being used?
- Thanks for the question, Jerry.
So, to date there's 160 plus records in the tool itself.
However, most of those are test runs at this point.
This year, we've done a lot of work to get the tool ready
for public launch.
When we had our initial training back in July,
that was in beta form at that point.
And so a lot of the tests come from that and tool creators
as we thought about how the tool is going to work.
And so there's only a few records in there right now
in terms of that are spatially relevant, but you're right.
There's going to be some changes over time
with this as well. So it's really just a snapshot,
but once we get the tool out there
and we get people using it through these workshops
and other opportunities,
we're hoping to collect enough data records
to really show across the landscape
what Oak vulnerability looks like in the region.
- Yeah, thanks.
I just wanted to add, I work at a national level as well,
and the Midwest and Southeast foresters
are all really concerned about Oak decline there.
So it'd be really interesting to have your interaction
with any of them, get this kind of a tool
so that we have the same types of data being collected
for the whole Northeast and Midwest say.
- I'll defer to Maddy on that question.
- Yeah, that's definitely good.
Good thinking, Jerry. And I think that,
ideally this sets us up to go in that direction.
It's been really fantastic working with this team
and putting this together.
And so, yeah,
we're really just getting it off the ground in this region,
but hopefully through some of our lessons learned
through this process,
we can look at how this could be adapted
into other landscapes for sure.
- There's a question in the chat
that answer kind of answers it,
but it's do you folks envision being able to adapt this tool
for other tree species or geographies?
- Yeah. You know, we've tooled around at NIACS
with some other tools similar to this
that maybe are a little more focused
on like the Northern hardwoods community,
but I really can't speak to those too much
cause they're the charge of some other coworkers of mine,
but we definitely, you know, we integrated a lot of NIACS
resources into this process that we do have available
for other forest types.
So I imagine we could yeah. Iterate that process,
but I can't speak so much right now
to any projects that are like started currently.
This might not be a question that anyone has,
but I wanted to bring it up
cause I didn't include it in my section of the presentation,
but it can also,
the tool can easily be used on a smartphone.
So that's obviously a really great feature
when you're out in the field.
We had folks use it on a smartphone in the hybrid workshop
in July and it sounded like it worked really well.
So I just wanted to note that.
- And just to build off Maddy's thoughts on using it
on a smartphone,
there's also an opportunity here for consulting foresters
to use the tool live in the field with their clients,
as they're working together to figure out what objectives
they have for the property and in what issues might arise
in trying to reach those objectives,
working through the tool together
can be a great way to build that kind of communication
and collaboration around the stewardship
of the specific property.
Not hearing any other questions.
Another additional thought that I'll throw out there
is the report that it generates is a great addendum
to course management plan.
So, you can add to the life of the property,
the forest management plan developed by the consulting
foresters, a great resource for the landowner already,
but the PDF report is just an added value to that,
to really think about Oak resiliency itself.
Oh there's one, will we hear an update next year's FEMC
after more data have come in? I hope so.
It'd be great to be back here to share all the great success
that we've had given the tool out there
in the upcoming year.
Amanda, thanks for the question.
As we kind of wind down here, as we roll this tool out
and try to get more people using it on the ground,
we really wanna hear from you and how it's working for you.
And we really just want to get a lot of data collected
so we can get this big picture of the landscape
in terms of Oak resiliency
and how vulnerable they are to the various stressors
that they have impacting them.
So thank you all for being here today. We appreciate
the opportunity to present this to you.
- Yeah, it would be great to clear out that cache
of all the test runs at this point and yeah.
See some more real data points in there
and hear from folks on how they like the tools.
So, thanks everybody for tuning in today.