Putting climate adaptation on the map: developing spatial management strategies for whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Forest ecosystems are increasingly showing the impacts of climate change. Natural resource managers face the need to develop management strategies to adapt to projected future climates. Various frameworks for developing climate adaptation strategies exist, but there are few that detail where to place management actions in the landscape to be most effective under anticipated future climate conditions. We developed an approach to spatially allocate climate adaptation actions across heterogeneous landscapes and applied the method to the case of whitebark pine (WBP) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). WBP is expected to be vulnerable to climate-mediated shifts in suitable habitat, pests, pathogens, and fire....