As the effects of climate change accumulate and intensify, resource managers juggle existing goals and new mandates to operationalize adaptation. Fire managers contend with the direct effects of climate change on resources in addition to climate-induced disruptions to fire regimes and subsequent ecosystem effects. In systems stressed by warming and drying, increased fire activity amplifies the pace of change and scale of severe disturbance events, heightening the urgency for management action. Fire managers are asked to integrate information on climate impacts with their professional expertise to determine how to achieve management objectives in a changing climate with altered fire regimes. This is a difficult task, and managers need support as they incorporate climate adaptation into planning and operations. We present a list of adaptation strategies and approaches specific to fire and climate based on co-produced knowledge from a science–management partnership and pilot-tested in a two-day workshop with natural resource managers and regional stakeholders. This “menu” is a flexible and useful tool for fire managers who need to connect the dots between fire ecology, climate science, adaptation intent, and management implementation. It was created and tested as part of an adaptation framework used widely across the United States and should be applicable and useful in many fire-prone forest ecosystems.

In the past decade, several dedicated tools have been developed to help natural resources professionals integrate climate science into their planning and implementation; however, it is unclear how often these tools lead to on-the-ground climate adaptation. Here, we describe a training approach that we developed to help managers effectively plan to execute intentional, climate-informed actions. This training approach was developed through the Climate Change Response Framework (CCRF) and uses active and focused work time and peer-to-peer interaction to overcome observed barriers to using adaptation planning tools. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach by examining participant evaluations and outlining the progress of natural resources projects that have participated in our trainings. We outline a case study that describes how this training approach can lead to place and context-based climate-informed action. Finally, we describe best practices based on our experience for engaging natural resources professionals and helping them increase their comfort with climate-informed planning.

Climate change presents challenges for forest managers in determining strategies and actions to enable forest ecosystems to adapt to rapid and uncertain change. The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network emerged in direct response to an acute need for experimentally robust and professionally credible examples of climate-adaptive forest management strategies. The ASCC Network advances the field of climate adaptation by applying a replicated resistance–resilience–transition and no-action framework to test coproduced, operational-scale experimental trials that incorporate locally specific desired future conditions and adaptation tactics, tailored to different forest types. It exemplifies timely, practical, and scientifically rigorous application of climate adaptation actions while fostering manager–scientist collaboration. Given the collaborative framework, outcomes from the experimental treatments can directly inform local management actions for practitioners now and into the future while serving as a model framework for coproduction of adaptation science applicable to other contexts and ecosystems.

This article examined the influence of familiarity with and aesthetic evaluations of forest management practices on Colorado residents' (n = 416) approval of ni

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network is a collaborative effort to establish a series of experimental silvicultural trials across different forest ecosystem types. A variety of partners have developed trial sites as part of this multi-regional study researching long-term ecosystem responses to a range of climate change adaptation actions. We are currently implementing an affiliate trial within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a national park along the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities Metro Area of Minnesota.

Cities across the United States are feeling the heat as they struggle to integrate climate science into on-the-ground decisionmaking regarding urban tree planting and management.