Our objective is to develop scientific information that leads directly to effective land management strategies and tactics appropriate for rapidly changing environmental conditions. To accomplish this, we often work closely in a co-production model with partners in land management agencies including the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Colorado State Forest Service. Examples of current collaboration include:
- Taylor Park Adaptive Management Group and Science Team: this project represents a collaboration between the GMUG National Forest, Western, and a suite of stakeholders representing interests in forest management in the incredible Taylor Park country. We have helped inform vegetation management plans, develop long-term monitoring protocols and datasets, and new science to the effects of management interventions on ecological and social values. As one example, we are working with collaborators at CSU and the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station to develop an Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change site in Taylor Park.
- North Powderhorn Project: with the Gunnison Field Office of the BLM, we are characterizing and quantifying forest conditions and fuels on the Calf Creek Plateau and the Powderhorn Wilderness. Forests in this area have been strongly impacted by recent spruce bark beetle outbreaks, and may be at increasing risk of long-term changes, particularly under changing climate and increasing wildfire activity. Consequently, we are developing information that will inform strategies for fuels reductions treatments and prescribed fire.
- Wilderness and Prescribed Fire: with collaborators at the USFS Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, we are examining how contemporary fire management in Wilderness (mostly, initial attack or full suppression) may conflict with wilderness values and lead to undesirable outcomes under a changing climate and fire regimes. We ask whether and to what extent prescribed fire might be appropriate as a means to "untrammel" wilderness ecosystems increasingly impacted by direct and indirect anthropogenic effects.
- Pre- and post-fire management of southwestern US dry forests: over the years Dr. Coop and many lab members have conducted research on fire effects in southwestern US forests, especially in Bandelier National Monument, the Valles Caldera National Preserve, and Santa Fe National Forest of the Jemez Mountains. Here we have examined how fires may lead to long-term type conversion from forests to non-forest vegetation, such as oak scrub, but also how pockets of unburned forest, termed fire refugia, may play a critical role in post-fire landscapes. These findings are leading to new approaches to post-fire forest management and guiding reforestation efforts in this region and beyond.