Stephen Handler

As a Climate Change Specialist at the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, my primary project is to coordinate the Northwoods Climate Change Response Framework. Most of my work occurs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, building partnerships, coordinating vulnerability assessments, planning outreach and education events, and working with land managers on real-world adaptation demonstration projects. I work on topics such as silviculture and forestry, wildlife management, and indigenous perspectives on climate adaptation. In all aspects of my work, the focus is to help people put climate information into practice. I work with a wide array of partners, including National Forests, state agencies, tribes, conservation organizations, private landowners, and consulting foresters.

Climate change is going to have profound impacts on the forests in the Great Lakes region in the coming decades. New data and modeling approaches are continually expanding our understanding of what these changes might be. Forest managers need to be informed of the threats that climate change will pose to forest ecosystems, as well as management strategies that can help forests adapt to a changed climate. The Climate Change Response Framework is a new model to connect climate science to forest management, which will hopefully serve as a model for climate change adaptation and mitigation both regionally and nationally.