Step off a sunlit road into an old forest on a hot August day and the change is immediate: the air turns cool and damp, the light goes green and the ground underfoot is soft with moss. That shelter is more than a pleasant break from the heat. The cool, moist conditions beneath a forest canopy, what scientists call microclimate, shape seedling success, refuge for sensitive wildlife and recovery from wildfire. As the Pacific Northwest warms and more frequent fires alter sub-canopy conditions, land managers increasingly want to use information about microclimates to aid in forest management decisions. However, microclimate is measured in many different ways, so a manager looking at a microclimate dataset today has no reliable way to answer the basic question: what does this mean for my forest?

Through his NW CASC project, Cole aims to close that gap by building interpretive tools alongside the managers who need them, in partnership with the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Washington Department of Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy. He will draw on rich microclimate datasets from research forests in the Pacific Northwest, including the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Ellsworth Creek Preserve, to compare the ecological interpretations of different monitoring approaches. Through convening  two co-production workshops, Cole will work with managers to identify the measurements that could make the most difference to climate-adaptive management. Using the feedback from these workshops, Cole will develop decision making tools to help managers apply recent microclimate research to the decisions in front of them. These products will include a compiled microclimate dataset spanning a broad geographic range across Oregon and Washington along with a plain-language “so what?” brief and decision tree.

The products developed through this project will be tailored to address climate impacts on Northwest forests, including choosing sites for post-fire reforestation, assessing habitat for climate-sensitive species and prioritizing fuel treatments. By giving managers a clear way to translate microclimate data into on-the-ground choices, the project sets out to make a fast-growing body of forest climate science actionable, helping agencies and organizations steward more resilient forests as the region grows warmer and more fire-prone.