Prioritizing tree species for conservation and management in changing times

PARTNERS: North Carolina State University (NCSU); USDA Forest Service Forest Health Protection, National Forest System Region 8 (Southern Region), National Forest System Region 6 (Pacific Northwest Region), Southern Research Station, and Forest Health Monitoring Program

SUMMARY: A variety of threats, most importantly climate change and insect and disease infestation, will increase the risk that forest trees could experience population-level or species-level extinction. Species, however, differ in important traits such as life-history strategies and population dynamics, which could drive widely varying responses to potential threats. To address this challenge, a cooperating scientist with the Eastern Threat Center is helping lead a national effort to implement a framework to prioritize forest tree species for conservation, management and monitoring in the face of multiple threats.

Scientists and natural resource managers from all three deputy areas of the USDA Forest Service are cooperating on the project, a national multi-scale prioritization of forest tree species and populations for genetic conservation and monitoring. Project CAPTURE (Conservation Assessment and Prioritization of Forest Trees Under Risk of Extirpation) establishes a framework for the categorization and prioritization of forest tree species for monitoring, conservation and management actions based on identified threats to species and their life history characteristics. The foundation of the effort is the Forest Tree Genetic Risk Assessment System (ForGRAS), which has been used to prioritize species for National Forest System conservation actions in the Southern Appalachian region and in the Pacific Northwest.

EFETAC’S ROLE: The project is supported by Eastern Threat Center funding.

STATUS: Ongoing

PROGRESS: Project CAPTURE consists of three phases. The first phase, which is near completion, focuses on the risk categorization and prioritization of 419 forest tree species of the contiguous 48 States and Alaska. This effort incorporates the participation and expertise of forest geneticists, ecologists, silviculturists, entomologists, and pathologists, who met at a 2014 workshop to evaluate the genetic resources of forest tree species through the application of a prioritization framework. A paper published in 2017 describes an assessment of the vulnerability of these species to climate change, and another is in preparation assessing their vulnerability to insects and diseases. In the second phase, which began in 2015, the assessment expanded to include the native tree species of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (561 species) and Hawai’i (304 species). The final phase focuses on the selection of high-risk species, within which scientists are identifying specific areas most in need of conservation activity and monitoring. A paper published in 2017 describes the prioritization of areas within the ranges of eastern hemlock and Carolina hemlock for gene conservation.

The prioritization framework aims to assess the relationship for each species between the severity of each of three distinct threats (Exposure to Pests and Pathogens, Expected Climate Change Pressure, and Lack of Structural Sustainability) and two intrinsic vulnerability dimensions (Sensitivity and Low Adaptive Capacity) associated with each of those threats. The Sensitivity and Low Adaptive Capacity vulnerability dimensions each consists of multiple species attributes, such as rarity and dispersal ability. Click image to enlarge.

Potter, K.M., B.S. Crane, and W.W. Hargrove. 2017. A United States national prioritization framework for tree species vulnerability to climate change. New Forests. 48(2):275-300. DOI: 10.1007/s11056-017-9569-5.

Hastings, J.M., K.M. Potter, F.H. Koch, M. Megalos, and R.M. Jetton. 2017. Prioritizing conservation seed banking locations for imperiled hemlock species using multi-attribute frontier mapping. New Forests 48(2):301-316. DOI: 10.1007/s11056-017-9575-7.

Westwood, M., A. Frances, G. Man, D. Pivorunas, and K.M. Potter. 2017. Coordinating the IUCN Red List of North American tree species: A special session at the USFS gene conservation of tree species workshop. Gene Conservation of Tree Species—Banking on the Future. Proceedings of a Workshop. R.A. Sniezko, G. Man, V. Hipkins, K. Woeste, D. Gwaze, J.T. Kliejunas, and B.A. McTeague, tech. coords. Chicago, Illinois, May 16-19, 2016. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-963. Portland, Oregon: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. pp. 12-23.

Devine, W., Aubry, C., Miller, J., Potter, K.M., and Bower, A. 2012. Climate change and forest trees in the Pacific Northwest: guide to vulnerability assessment methodology. Olympia, Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region. 49 p. http://ecoshare.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/CCFT_Methodology.pdf.

This research has been described in a number of presentations.

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