Adapting Silviculture to a Changing Climate in the Southern United States

Questions about how forests might respond to climate change are often addressed through planning, prediction, and modeling at the landscape scale. A recent synthesis of climate-change impacts on forest management and policy found that the earth is warmer than it has been in the recent past, and that 11 of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest since 1850 (Solomon et al. 2007). Projections are that global average surface temperatures will be 3.25–7.2°F warmer at the end of the this century, and the concern is that this will lead to an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disturbances such as wildfires, insect outbreaks, and disease epidemics (Dale et al. 2001; Malmsheimer et al. 2008). For many scientists, the question is not whether a changing climate affects forests, but how and when the effects might occur. Certainly, major regional shifts in climate have occurred before, but not since European settlement of North America and not with the world’s population at 7 billion. Within a global context, questions persist about whether climate change is a naturally occurring event, caused by human activity, or a combination of both. That debate is best conducted in academic and legislative circles, provided that sufficient and credible information is available to inform the policy decisions being considered about the ecological, economic, and social conditions that a changing climate could bring to modern society. On the other hand, from the perspective of foresters and natural resource managers working in the woods, deciding whether climate change is a natural or human-caused phenomenon does not help answer the question of what to do about it. One obvious response is that we must alter the species composition of our forests to account for the likelihood that the natural ranges of species could change. But practical issues are at play that will likely limit our ability to promote widespread changes in species composition at the landscape scale, especially in the forests of the Southern United States. 7