Workshop Approach for Developing Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and Actions for Natural Resource Management Agencies in the United States

land managers and the international community. The National Forest System encompasses a wide range of different ecosystems and much of the country’s terrestrial biodiversity. In addition to biodiversity, other ecosystem services provided by the National Forest System include water, timber, and fiber (provisioning services); recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits (cultural services); regulating services that affect climate, floods, and water quality; and supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Climate change will likely impact all these ecosystem services provided by national forests. The US Forest Service is responsible for restoring, sustaining, and enhancing forests and grasslands while providing and sustaining benefits to the American people. Because of these responsibilities, federal scientists and land managers are tasked with reducing the negative effects of climate change on ecosystem function and services, while promoting and enabling beneficial aspects (US Forest Service 2008, 2009). Timely implementation of strategic and tactical adaptation options, with an emphasis on practical approaches that can be applied within the broader context of sustainable resource management, will be critical to meet both goals (Innes et al. 2009). Resource managers are expected to incorporate science and climate change adaptation practices into planning, and they have the skill and local knowledge to do so but have limited exposure to rapidly changing scientific advances on climate change and related impacts. Scientists have technical knowledge but often a poor understanding of management and regulatory, policy, and collaborative social processes for resource planning and decisionmaking. A clear need exists for these two groups of specialists to work together to develop and implement applied adaptation projects. However, lack of formal relationships and differences in work culture, time frames, and communication styles have limited this dialogue at all scales. In addition, with climate change, there is an overwhelming amount of information that managers are trying to absorb, a very steep learning curve with climate change science, and little time for learning given managers’ many responsibilities. Here, we offer an example of a successful workshop process that allowed quick dissemination of ideas and strategies for climate change adaptation in resource management through an interaction between scientists and managers. This interaction serves as an example of what might be done to promote collaboration between scientists and managers in climate change adaptation. In addition, because the development of adaptation tools and strategies is at an early stage, it is important that ideas and strategies are disseminated quickly to advance thinking and practice. Thus, our objectives were to describe and evaluate the process used in the workshop, the educational product, and the outcome of the facilitated dialogue of the workshop. In addition to describing the outcomes of interactions between scientists and land managers, the ideas discussed here build on existing principles of adaptation to climate change, such as the US Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.4 (Joyce et al. 2008), Millar et al. (2007), and Bosworth et al. (2008), by providing concrete and tactical ways for resource managers to adapt to climate change. The Workshop Process We convened a workshop with a novel format to develop Web-based educational materials on climate change and management options for adapting to climate change in the US Forest Service and natural resource management agencies in general. The workshop was organized as a retreat at a remote long-term ecological research station in the central Oregon Cascade Mountains (the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest). There, scientists and resource managers participated together in the final review of the course materials and took part in intensive discussion on climate change adaptation. We chose a workshop format because other studies have reported that managers do not have sufficient time to read refereed journal articles (one form of scientific outreach), and workshops provide opportunities to transfer information and facilitate interaction between managers and scientists (Schmoldt and Peterson 1991, Barbour 2007, Youngblood et al. 2007). The workshop not only served to transfer climate change science and adaptation information, but also gave managers the opportunity to ask the “so what” question when presented with climate change science information and heightened the managers’ participation in vetting current adaptation strategies. In addition, a workshop process seemed appropriate to address the issue of climate change adaptation, because multiple workshop participants can bring different expertise and perspectives on complex problems (Schmoldt and Peterson 2000). Finally, a workshop environment promotes two-way learning, where managers not only learn new science, but the scientists involved learn from managers about real-world science applications. We believe this event was significant because of the process used, group of people assembled, depth and usefulness of ideas generated, and quality and value of products delivered. The workshop was conducted over a 3-day period and was focused on two specific goals: (1) to develop and videotape a coordinated lecture series and related discussions on climate change, ecosystem response, and resource management to develop a multimedia, Web-based educational module and (2) to promote focused dialogue on climate change and management within a select group of resource managers and scientists and to capture the lessons learned from these interchanges. Organizers developed a list of relevant topics for the course, and then 12 key scientists from the US Forest Service and other federal agencies with expertise on the topics and contextual experience were invited to develop talks to address these topics for videotaping. Themes for the talks were climate variability and projections, ecological responses to climate variability, and management responses to climate variability. Lectures were targeted for land managers in the western United States. Many of the talks were based on previous presentations, so coordination, review, and vetting were well advanced. A group of 20 natural resource specialists and managers with expressed interest in climate change issues were invited to serve as reviewers and discussants for the workshop. After rehearsal talks were given by the scientists, both scientists and managers discussed the talks and provided critical review to improve relevance, clarity, and accessibility of the lectures. Discussions (along with general logistics) were managed by a designated facilitator, and three recorders took notes throughout the discussions. After each talk, respondents (scientists and managers) were also asked to develop questions and commentary that were used during formal videotaping. The questions and commentary were developed to be representative of what other managers might ask or comment on in response to the lectures. Based on critiques and comments, scientists then revised their talks and delivered the revised talk the following day for formal videotaping. Subse220 Journal of Forestry • June 2011 quent to the workshop, continuing critique, review, and revision of the videotaped lectures ensued. The final products from the workshop have been developed into educational modules for a Web-based short course (Furniss et al. 2009). The final short course product is described in more detail in the