We are excited to announce that Alison Ainsworth has joined our NW CASC Advisory Committee! Alison Ainsworth is a science advisor and ecologist for the National Park Service (NPS) and an affiliate assistant professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington (UW). Ali serves as a co-director of the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit, providing a suite of federal partners access to university-based applied natural and cultural research, technical assistance and education. She has represented NPS on numerous committees and panels, and has a professional focus on plant community ecology, tropical fire ecology and climate adaptation science.
Prior to working in the Pacific Northwest, she spent three years as the terrestrial ecologist at Death Valley National Park and over twenty years in Hawaiʻi working in conservation for multiple NPS units and the State of Hawaiʻi. Throughout her career, she has worked closely on conservation issues with Indigenous and native communities throughout the Pacific Islands, Mojave Desert and currently in the Puget Sound watershed. Ali earned a bachelor’s in resource ecology and management from the University of Michigan, a master’s in fire ecology from Oregon State University, and a doctorate in botany from the University of Hawaiʻi. She has authored numerous journal articles, is currently serving as a review editor for Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution and represents the NPS on the guidance committee for the USGS Biodiversity and Climate Change Assessment.
What led you to work in the field of climate adaptation?
Lava-ignited wildfires in the Hawaiian rainforest! I was drawn from the Midwest to the Hawaiian Islands by the incredible fern diversity in the 1990’s. As a new field biologist, I learned that the rainforests, with their abundant tree ferns, were too wet to carry wildfire despite decades of continuous lava ignition sources. This conventional wisdom was soon proven incorrect with the rapidly increasing wildfire frequency and severity observed over the next three decades. Non-native plant invasions coupled with unprecedented droughts and shifting climatic conditions have contributed to these novel patterns and subsequent habitat type-conversions. After fighting these fires, I completed my master’s degree on the post-fire recovery and predicted pathways leading to non-native fern and grass fire cycles. Unfortunately, this pattern may now be playing out in temperate wet forests of the Pacific Northwest. I hope to apply some lessons learned from other systems to support novel climate adaptation science in this new region facing the daunting threat of increasing frequency and severity of wildfire in systems previously known to have very long fire return intervals. I am also particularly interested in the vulnerability of high-elevation plant species to shifting climatic conditions.
What does your day-to-day work look like?
Ultimately, my goal is to ensure that federal land managers have access to the best available science, technical support and educational opportunities by connecting their natural and cultural resources management and social science needs with university, state agency and non-profit partners through the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit. Primarily, as an employee of the National Park Service, I focus on the needs of NPS Units, but in my co-director capacity at the UW, I also support the other federal partners (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Department of Defense) with this mission. This translates into a lot of matchmaking. Specifically, I attend many meetings, participate in multiple landscape scale partnerships, work closely with financial assistance staff and continue to research and learn as much as I can about current and future predicted needs and advances in climate adaptation science.
How do your organization and work support climate resilience in the Northwest?
The National Park Service, like USGS, has a strong emphasis on building climate resilience within all park units. Activities in the Pacific Northwest NPS units range widely, some examples include: high-elevation meadow protection and climate modeling, documenting glacial retreat, focused seed genetic testing and storage, endangered butterfly rearing and habitat protection, intensive dam removal projects with full watershed restoration in collaboration with multiple Tribes, and state and federal agency climate-adapted road construction efforts.
Currently, the NPS is recruiting for two postdoctoral fellows in the Northwest to assess climate resilience by (1) mapping and modeling old growth forest vulnerability and by (2) developing an effective ecosystem service valuation tool for sagebrush steppe and other at-risk ecosystems that will inform and help prioritize management actions. While there are notable efforts underway, it is more critical than ever that agencies, Tribes and non-federal partners work together to share knowledge and resources to build climate resilience on the appropriate temporal and spatial scales.
What is your favorite thing about your work?
All the amazing people across so many disciplines that I engage with and learn from. It is thrilling to see how fast climate adaptation science is advancing and the creative way managers are applying this science on the ground. I am inspired by the ease with which the younger generations navigate new technologies and look forward to future green advancements. I hope in my science advisor role to help with critical technology transfer between researchers and land managers. It is essential to ensure that new information is available for management application and simultaneously that new challenges and questions from the field are transferred to those continuing to rapidly advance climate adaptation science.