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Details

24-2-01-6
2025
12/16/2024
Accelerating Science to Action Partnerships (ASAP): Implementing science-driven adaptation strategies in the 2-3-2 Landscape
Problem Statement: The impacts of unnatural fuel-loading resulting from decades of wildfire suppression, extreme drought, and climate change-driven aridification have made forests and grasslands more vulnerable to insects, pests, disease, and high severity wildfires. Land managers are faced with the challenge of restoring forest resilience while balancing social and environmental constraints. Defensible decision making is only possible with knowledge and resources that inform the right work, in the right places, at the right time and operate within an adaptive management framework. In summary, the problem facing the 2-3-2 Partnership, as well as similar landscapes across the country, is how to craft management strategies that will foster adaptation and achieve the desired conditions.

Objectives: We propose a sciencemanagement partnership that will identify new adaptive management strategies for the 2-3-2 Partnership, a landscape-scale collaborative group that works together to prioritize, plan, implement, and monitor work on nearly 5-million acres in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Working closely with managers, researchers, practitioners, and others in the partnership, we will identify ecosystem vulnerabilities, review existing tools to model future climate, and develop strategies using those tools to respond to future threats in alignment with 2-3-2 Partnership objectives and desired future conditions.

Benefits: The benefits of the project will be both local and national. Locally, developing adaptive cross-boundary strategies will help protect ecological integrity, wildlife populations, water resources, economic opportunities, and communities. Additionally, collaborative processes that build and enhance science-manager partnership will increase implementation readiness and improve shared ownership of management outcomes in the 2-3-2 landscape. Nationally, demonstrating the utility of existing models and tools will help other collaboratives build their own adaptive capacity.
Alexander M. Evans
Forest Guild

Other Project Collaborators

Other Project Collaborators

Type

Name

Agency/Organization

Branch or Dept

Agreements Contact

Fallon L Grafe

Forest Guild

Budget Contact

Fallon L Grafe

Forest Guild

Co-Principal Investigator

Andrea E. Thode

Northern Arizona University

School of Forestry

Collaborator/Contributor

Blanca B Cespedes

New Mexico Highlands University

Natural Resources Management

Collaborator/Contributor

Jesse D Young

Northern Arizona University

School of Forestry

Collaborator/Contributor

Megan M. Friggens

Forest Service

RMRS-Forestry Sciences Lab-Albuquerque

Collaborator/Contributor

Rachel A. Loehman

USGS-Geological Survey

ASC-Alaska Science Center

Collaborator/Contributor

William T. Flatley

Northern Arizona University

School of Forestry

Project Locations

Project Locations

Fire Science Exchange Network

Southwest


Level

State

Agency

Unit

REGIONAL

Interior West

MULTIPLE

Final Report

Project Deliverables

Supporting Documents