Collaborative Research: RII FEC: Intermountain Natural and Working Lands: Sustainable Practices for Ecosystems and Resilience Enhancement

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of food and fiber production and rural communities. However, there is potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land management practices that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in forests and soils. These land management practices create more resilient, climate-smart rural communities.

This project leverages the natural resources of Idaho and Montana to research and implement climate-smart forestry and agricultural solutions. The team will implement these practices in both jurisdictions to 1) fully study the carbon and climate impacts of the practices, 2) research the social barriers to implementation of these practices, and 3) determine the economic impacts of the adoption of these practices on rural and tribal communities.

The project's aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while partnering with local communities and tribes to effectively promote community resilience and adaptation to climate change. The team's activities and results will enhance the climate change resilience of their partnering rural and tribal communities, contribute to the creation of a diverse STEM workforce, and produce measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

This work will offer policymakers in Idaho, Montana, and other rural, western states a road map for successful, locally supported climate-smart infrastructure implementation.

Anthropogenic climate change has led to increasingly negative events impacting rural Idaho and Montana. These events include intensifying wildfires and persistent drought that are decreasing both ecological and community resilience. Climate smart land management solutions offer a path to both climate benefits and increased ecological and community resilience.

Through new and existing partnerships between the University of Idaho, the University of Montana, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and Salish Kootenai Tribal College, the team will implement climate smart land management practices in forests and farms in the region. The team will quantify the ecological, social, and economic impacts of the implemented solutions.

Through this interdisciplinary and community-based effort the team will provide: 1) improved knowledge on the efficacy and biogeochemical impacts of potential climate-smart management solutions, 2) novel, state-of-the-art methods for quantifying and predicting carbon storage potential (including field-based sample collection and process-based ecosystem modeling) for individual regions, 3) training and education programs for undergraduate, graduate, and early career scientists, including tailored recruitment and retention activities for underrepresented groups in STEM, 4) models for effective partnerships with practitioners and communities, 5) integration of Traditional Knowledge with Western Sciences, and 6) pathways that reduce barriers and risks identified by underserved and minority populations to adopt and implement climate-smart land management solutions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.