By David Cleaves, U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Advisor
“Sound climate science is the foundation for an effective management response.” These were Chief Tidwell’s words to the participants of a Forest Service workshop on climate change adaptation this past April. Using science to help us deal with change is not new to us. We are a science-based organization. And the vast weight of scientific evidence – thousands of peer-reviewed studies – supports the conclusion that we have entered a period of rapid climatic changes with impacts already occurring in different parts of the country.