A team of natural resource specialists from the Ohio Hills, regional managers, and scientists came together for a three-day workshop in May 2022 to develop the study design for the ASCC project site. Overarching management goals for the Vinton Furnace and Zaleski State Forest include:

1. Manage for a compositionally and structurally diverse sustainable oak ecosystem
2. Consider visual aesthetics where timber harvesting is recommended
3. Support Ohio’s timber industry by promoting important commercial species such as white oak
4. Mitigate risks of invasive species establishment or spread
5. Sustain and promote organismal and functional diversity
6. Protect known or discovered archaeological resources
7. Employ all applicable water quality best management practices during timber harvest
8. Support and provide recreational opportunities, including hunting and wildlife watching, through diversifying forest age and structure
9. Support demonstration and science delivery

Each ASCC site utilized three adaptation options (resistance, resilience, and transition), as well as a control or “no action” treatment where no management takes place. The team developed a set of Desired Future Condition statements, Objectives, and Tactics for each major climate adaptation trajectory. These three trajectories are briefly summarized below:

Resistance:

• Maintain an oak-dominated stand where understory matches overstory
• Protect state endangered and threatened wildlife species (bats, birds, and timber rattlesnakes)
• Resistant to disease (oak wilt and future novel diseases)
• Regeneration matches composition of the overstory

Resilience:

• Multi-cohort stand with diversity of ages, structures, species, and light conditions within natural range of variation
• Natural regeneration of oaks and hickories
• Resilience to wind, drought, ice storms, fire, and disease
• Maintain large oaks
• Promote wildlife habitat and herbaceous understory
• Introduce fire throughout treatment
• Low incidence of invasive plant species
• Protect state endangered and threatened wildlife species

Transition:

• Complex, multi-aged, variable structure
• Native and novel future-adapted, drought-tolerant oak and pine species
• Maintain white oak in canopy
• Maintain productive forests that align with future conditions
• Accommodate mixed to high severity levels of disturbance (drought and fire)
• Low incidence of invasive species
• Resistance to disease
• Protect state endangered and threatened wildlife species