Summary of the 2009 National Silviculture Workshop
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The theme of the 2009 National Silviculture Workshop held in Boise Idaho in June 2009 was, “Integrated management of carbon sequestration and biomass utilization opportunities in a changing climate.” The session had a series of outstanding presentations and field tours focused on the theme of the meeting nationally, and with specific reference to the forests of the northern Rocky Mountains. There was consensus in the meeting that climate change will be the defining issue for this generation of resource managers. Silviculture will play a key role in the future of climate change, and it will be option-creating silviculture, not option-reducing silviculture. Silviculturists and decision-makers must use the best science regardless of how it tests the popular will and the politically easy decision—and this is no simple task in light of the administrative issues that govern forest management on Federal lands. An adaptation strategy for climate change will also require integrating the principles of landscape ecology modeled via landscape succession models with principles of forest ecology and silviculture modeled using tools such as the Forest Vegetation Simulator. Data from long-term experiments will be increasingly important to validate simulation outcomes. Finally, state-of-the-art science delivery programs will be needed to think about and develop silvicultural prescriptions that address climate change adaptation strategies in project-level decisions, and that are implemented spatially in a strategic way across the forested landscape.