Worldwide, many species are responding to ongoing climate change with shifts in distribution, abundance, phenology, or behavior. Consequently, naturalresource managers face increasingly urgent conservation questions related to biodiversity loss, expansion of invasive species, and deteriorating ecosystem services. We argue that our ability to address these questions is hampered by the lack of explicit consideration of species' adaptive capacity (AC). AC is the ability of a species or population to cope with climatic changes and is characterized by three fundamental components: phenotypic plasticity, dispersal ability, and genetic diversity. However, few studies simultaneously address all elements; often, AC is confused with sensitivity or omitted altogether from climate-change vulnerability assessments. Improved understanding, consistent definition, and comprehensive evaluations of AC are needed. Using classic ecological-niche theory as an analogy, we propose a new paradigm that considers fundamental and realized AC: the former reflects aspects inherent to species, whereas the latter denotes how extrinsic factors constrain AC to what is actually expressed or observed. Through this conceptualization, we identify ecological attributes contributing to AC, outline areas of research necessary to advance understanding of AC, and provide examples demonstrating how the inclusion of AC can better inform conservation and natural-resource management.

Natural resource managers worldwide face a growing challenge: Intensifying global change increasingly propels ecosystems toward irreversible ecological transformations. This nonstationarity challenges traditional conservation goals and human well-being. It also confounds a longstanding management paradigm that assumes a future that reflects the past. As once-familiar ecological conditions disappear, managers need a new approach to guide decision-making. The resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework, designed for and by managers, identifies the options managers have for responding and helps them make informed, purposeful, and strategic choices in this context. Moving beyond the diversity and complexity of myriad emerging frameworks, RAD is a simple, flexible, decision-making tool that encompasses the entire decision space for stewarding transforming ecosystems. Through shared application of a common approach, the RAD framework can help the wider natural resource management and research community build the robust, shared habits of mind necessary for a new, twenty-first-century natural resource management paradigm.

Intensifying global change is propelling many ecosystems toward irreversible transformations. Natural resource managers face the complex task of conserving these important resources under unprecedented conditions and expanding uncertainty. As once familiar ecological conditions disappear, traditional management approaches that assume the future will reflect the past are becoming increasingly untenable. In the present article, we place adaptive management within the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework to assist informed risk taking for transforming ecosystems. This approach empowers managers to use familiar techniques associated with adaptive management in the unfamiliar territory of ecosystem transformation. By providing a common lexicon, it gives decision makers agency to revisit objectives, consider new system trajectories, and discuss RAD strategies in relation to current system state and direction of change. Operationalizing RAD adaptive management requires periodic review and update of management actions and objectives; monitoring, experimentation, and pilot studies; and bet hedging to better identify and tolerate associated risks.

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Abstract. Rapid climate change, in conjunction with other anthropogenic drivers, has the potential to cause mass species extinction. To minimize this risk, conservation reserves need to be coordinated at multiple spatial scales because the climate envelopes of many species may shift rapidly across large geographic areas. In addition, novel species assemblages and ecological reorganization make future conditions uncertain. We used a GIS analysis to assess the vulnerability of 501 reserve units in the National Wildlife Refuge System as a basis for a nationally coordinated response to climate change adaptation. We used measures of climate change exposure (historic rate of temperature change), sensitivity (biome edge and critical habitat for threatened and endangered species), and adaptive capacity (elevation range, latitude range, watershed road density, and watershed protection) to evaluate refuge vulnerability. The vulnerability of individual refuges varied spatially within and among biomes. We suggest that the spatial variability in vulnerability be used to define suites of management approaches that capitalize on local conditions to facilitate adaptation and spread risk across the reserve network. We conceptually define four divergent management strategies to facilitate adaption: refugia, ecosystem maintenance, ''natural'' adaptation, and facilitated transitions. Furthermore, we recognize that adaptation approaches can use historic (i.e., retrospective) and future (prospective) condition as temporal reference points to define management goals.

The golden‐cheeked warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) is a federally listed endangered species with an extremely limited breeding range (Edwards Plateau, Tex., USA) and specific habitat requirements. Although localized habitat composition and structure correlate well with golden‐cheeked warbler occurrence and nest location, the effects of landscape composition and structure are largely untested. To investigate landscape‐scale influences on habitat occupancy, we surveyed 202 point locations for golden‐cheeked warbler presence. We used logistic regression to compare the relative influence of 4 landscape‐scale variables (largest patch index, percent of the landscape in woodland, mean‐nearest neighbor, and edge density) measured at 4 spatial scales (3 ha, 12 ha, 50 ha, and 200 ha) in predicting occurrence. The amount of mature juniper‐oak (Juniperus ashei and Quercus spp.) woodland in the landscape was the single most important variable across spatial scales and average values of woodland cover remained stable across scales. Golden‐cheeked warblers occurred in a local habitat only when landscape composition exceeded 40% woodland and the likelihood of occurrence was greater than 0.5 only when landscape composition exceeded 80% woodland. By contrast, common measures of habitat fragmentation, including edge density and mean‐nearest neighbor, were poor predictors of species occurrence across all spatial scales. Our results suggest that golden‐cheeked warblers may be less sensitive to fragmentation then they are to overall habitat loss, which may be due to natural habitat heterogeneity related to the variable terrain. Our results do not preclude a relationship between habitat fragmentation and overall habitat quality as measured by nesting success, survival, and recruitment. While our results hold promise for increasing the reliability of predicting species occurrence, future studies are needed to determine the influence of landscape composition and structure on the ultimate measures of habitat quality. (WILDLIFE SOCIETY BULLETIN 34(2):473–479; 2006)

Earth is experiencing widespread ecological transformation in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems that is attributable to directional environmental changes, especially intensifying climate change. To better steward ecosystems facing unprecedented and lasting change, a new management paradigm is forming, supported by a decision-oriented framework that presents three distinct management choices: resist, accept, or direct the ecological trajectory. To make these choices strategically, managers seek to understand the nature of the transformation that could occur if change is accepted while identifying opportunities to intervene to resist or direct change. In this article, we seek to inspire a research agenda for transformation science that is focused on ecological and social science and based on five central questions that align with the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework. Development of transformation science is needed to apply the RAD framework and support natural resource management and conservation on our rapidly changing planet.

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