Presented by: Gregor Schuurman, Ecologist, National Park Service’s Climate Change Response Program Abstract: Strong climate trends and other modern human drivers effectively place ecosystems in new contexts with new challenges for managers and society. Mounting costs of restoring past conditions or even “holding the line” to preserve current conditions are increasingly likened to paddling upstream. This situation is both a practical and a philosophical challenge for managers because an assumption of stationarity—i.e. “the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability”—underlies traditional conservation and natural resource management. This assumption is expressed in widespread reliance on ecological baselines to guide protection, restoration, and other management. In this brave new non-stationary world, resisting change is not always the most effective approach for achieving long-term management goals. In fact, unexamined resistance may lead to misinvestment of limited management resources and loss of opportunities for more effective action. Managers are therefore expanding their toolkit. Resisting change continues to be a valid approach where careful consideration shows it to be strategic (i.e., feasible and cost-effective), but is increasingly complemented by options to instead “go with the flow” and either accept the trajectory or intervene to direct it towards preferred new conditions. New thinking in the National Park Service along these lines encourages managers to consider the full range of potential decisions, as expressed in the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework. The RAD framework, the product of long-term collaboration among a diverse set of partners, helps managers make informed, purposeful choices about how to respond to the trajectory of change. This presentation will describe the challenge of strong ecological trajectories and transformations and introduce the RAD framework and illustrate its application alongside other important tools and concepts. About the speaker: Dr. Gregor Schuurman is an Ecologist with the National Park Service’s Climate Change Response Program, which is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado. He works with parks and partners to understand and adapt to a wide range of climate change impacts. Specifically, his work focuses on 1) helping incorporate climate projections into management and planning, 2) producing and synthesizing management-relevant science, and 3) developing climate adaptation tools and concepts. Gregor received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington's Zoology Department and his M.S. from University of Minnesota’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior.