| Abstract | Determining appropriate actions to create or maintain landscapes resilient to
climate change is challenging because of uncertainty associated with potential effects of
climate change and their interactions with land management. We used a set of climateinformed
state-and-transition models to explore the effects of management and natural
disturbances on vegetation composition and structure under different future climates. Models
were run for dry forests of central Oregon under a fire suppression scenario (i.e., no
management other than the continued suppression of wildfires) and an active management
scenario characterized by light to moderate thinning from below and some prescribed fire,
planting, and salvage logging. Without climate change, area in dry province forest types
remained constant. With climate change, dry mixed-conifer forests increased in area (by an
average of 21–26% by 2100), and moist mixed-conifer forests decreased in area (by an average
of 36–60% by 2100), under both management scenarios. Average area in dry mixed-conifer
forests varied little by management scenario, but potential decreases in the moist mixedconifer
forest were lower with active management. With changing climate in the dry province
of central Oregon, our results suggest the likelihood of sustaining current levels of dense, moist
mixed-conifer forests with large-diameter, old trees is low (less than a 10% chance) irrespective
of management scenario; an opposite trend was observed under no climate change
simulations. However, results also suggest active management within the dry and moist
mixed-conifer forests that creates less dense forest conditions can increase the persistence of
larger-diameter, older trees across the landscape. Owing to projected increases in wildfire, our
results also suggest future distributions of tree structures will differ from the present. Overall,
our projections indicate proactive management can increase forest resilience and sustain some
societal values, particularly in drier forest types. However, opportunities to create more
disturbance-adapted systems are finite, all values likely cannot be sustained at current levels,
and levels of resilience success will likely vary by dry province forest type. Land managers
planning for a future without climate change may be assuming a future that is unlikely to exist.
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