Federal agencies have recently developed new guidelines to help manage the dramatic ecological changes that come with climate change, and CSP is proud to have supported this advancement with strong science. The Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework describes the decision space for managers grappling with non-stationarity of the resources they manage in a time of rapid climate change.
A recent article in the NY Times describes RAD framework application as “essentially ask[ing] park managers to think beyond resistance to change and begin considering transformation as the prevailing theme to be greeted and managed. In some isolated cases, resisting ecological change might work for a while. In other cases, losses must be accepted. But just as often, there may be room to shepherd changes in a less calamitous direction.”
The RAD framework will require new and innovative science. CSP’s Shelley Crausbay is working to develop science aimed at RAD decisions through her role as a Consortium Partner to the USGS North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, and as a science liaison to the Federal Navigating Ecological Transformation (FedNET) working group of five federal natural resource management agencies (NPS, USFS, FWS, BLM, NOAA) and the USGS, who worked with others to co-develop the RAD framework.