Forest Service outlines “Climate Change Roadmap”

On July 20, the Forest Service released their new Climate Change Roadmap, along with a new “scorecard” that will enable the national office to annually rate how each individual national forest is adapting to and mitigating for climate change.

The new measures are intended to, "ensure that our national forests and private working lands are conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change, while enhancing our water resources" according to a press release issued by the US Department of Agriculture.  

Below is an excerpt from the report with specific attention to water and watershed resources:

Forests and Watershed Stewardship
A primary purpose for reserving Federal forest land at the turn of the 20th century was to protect watersheds. Today, roughly one out of five Americans depends on a national forest for drinking water. The quantity and quality of America’s water, however, are affected by a changing climate. Rising air temperatures mean less snow, along with faster and earlier snowmelts. Greater variability in the volume and timing of precipitation means more floods and droughts. Warmer water in lakes and streams alters critical habitat, while increased vapotranspiration leads to drier vegetation and more fire, insects, and pathogens.

In an era of climate change, forests will play an increasingly vital role in protecting the Nation’s watersheds. Forests reduce erosion, recharge aquifers, regulate stream flows, moderate water temperatures, and protect water quality. Wild and scenic rivers on the national forests, with relatively little direct human impact, provide ecosystem connectivity along elevational gradients and serve as baseline watersheds for scientific study. As the climate changes, the importance of America’s forests is bound to grow as a source of clean and abundant water. A successful response to climate change will entail sound stewardship of America’s watersheds.

Reiterating Secretary Vilsack’s August 2009 vision, the roadmap states:

Through an all-lands approach, America will sustain and restore flourishing forest and grassland ecosystems capable of delivering clean and abundant water, carbon sequestration and storage, sources of renewable energy, habitat for fish and wildlife, opportunities for outdoor recreation, and all the other benefits that Americans want and need.  

The roadmap is directly tiered to the 2010-2015 USDA strategic plan that was released in June.  It’s nice to see the agency not only adopting a forward-thinking strategic plan, but also immediately outlining actions that are directly tiered towards implementing that strategic plan. 

Similarly intriguing is the companion “scorecard” that the agency released at the same time.  In the past, it’s usually been advocacy organizations that create scorecards to rate the agency on their work, not the agency itself.  Climate change appears to be different.  For the first time, perhaps, the agency has created a public tool for measuring their success at accomplishing performance measures and achieving strategic objectives.  The performance scorecard measures things like employee education, partnerships, and the development of tools and plans to address climate mitigation and adaptation, but relies on yes or no answers.  It’s not an ideal scorecard, therefore, in that it doesn’t include many questions to measure the effectiveness of climate change actions – e.g. what percentage of the forests are increasing adaptability and resiliency.  It is a step in the right direction, though.  For example, one of the yes or no questions is as follows:

Is information about the vulnerability of key resources, ecosystem elements, and human communities to the impacts of climate change being used in unit decisions? (Vulnerability assessment can be done at a regional scale and interpreted for the unit level.)

If such information is being incorporated into decisions, that would be a significant change from current practices.  Over time, perhaps the Forest Service will adapt the performance scorecard to measure how well their plans and actions are being implemented and if the implementation is resulting in the desired outcomes.

In the meantime, however, the agency is taking climate change seriously, and making plans for how to adapt their own activities and land management practices accordingly.   Hopefully it is fully in line with any potential recommendations from climate change scientists, but we haven’t read it closely enough, nor do we have enough climate change expertise, to comment on this aspect.  Nonetheless, we know watershed restoration will play an important role in the agency’s plans to address climate change.  We hope that reducing road densities and otherwise addressing the impacts of roads on watershed/fisheries health and terrestrial connectivity will be one of the key measures that the agency uses, in addition to what’s listed in their scorecard, to assess whether or not they are meeting their climate change objectives.