Overview
This episode features an interview with Dr. Jake Courkamp, who is a rangeland and weed ecology research scientist at Colorado State University. Jake shares about his experience as a researcher in the field of range science, and how his work supports practitioners in facing ecosystem challenges like weed removal. He justifies the need for active management of weeds in rangelands, and explains the importance of having good, “specific” management objectives. He then details the pitfalls and paths for the potential improvement of rangeland management tools, like ecological site descriptions. In parting, Jake shares how some of the ecosystems he’s visitedand worked in bring him hope and invites listeners to consider exploring range science professionally. Check out the definitions and resources included below for more information about episode topics; and be sure to look for new episodes every other Monday!
Check out these definitions and resourcesfor information about topics discussed in this episode:
Definitions
According to the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) an Ecological Site Description (ESD) is a report “that provide detailed information about a particular kind of land - a distinctive Ecological Site.” In doing so, ESDs “provideland managers [with] the information needed for evaluating the land as to suitability for various land-uses, capability to respond to different management activities or disturbance processes, and ability to sustain productivity over the long term.”
Per a publication by the Jornada, a state-and-transition model (STM) is a diagram “that organize large amounts of data and local knowledge.” These are often included within an ESD.
According to the New Mexico State University Plant Clinic, Russian Thistle (Salsola tragus) (AKA a tumbleweed) is a non-native summer annual that can be toxic to livestock.
According to USDA Plants, leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula)is an invasive, noxious weed that can negatively affect livestock.
Per Nature author Sarah M. Emery, Clementsian succession refers to the theory posed by ecologist Frederick Clements in the 1900s that change in vegetation was predictable over time. Clements “proposed the concept of a climax state forcommunities, which represented the final, or permanent, end-stage of succession. […] Climax communities [are] the assemblage of characteristic plants thatdefine an ecosystem, such as tall grasses in a prairie, or mature trees in a forest. Clements held that, after a disturbance, any given ecosystem would eventually return to its characteristic assemblage of species.”
According to Sarah M. Emery, Gleasonian plant community assembly refers to the alternative ideology posed by ecologist Henry Gleason, “that communities were individualistic; that is, communities were only the fortuitous assembly of species, and that there was no such thing as a climax state for ecosystems.” This argument is counter to Clement’s theory and recognizes “that the environment, and species’ movements, had an important role in regulating species assemblages, and that community changes were not nearly as predictable as Clements had proposed.”
Desired future conditions“express the ecosystem conditions that are preferred by stakeholders and managers” (Nagel et al., 2025).
Resources
The ASCC Network about page.
Forest and Rangeland StewardshipDepartment at Colorado State University. home page
CSU Rangeland Measurements course syllabus link.
Overview:
For the first episode of this series, we want to introduce who we are and what we do! In this episode I’m joined by Dr. Linda Nagel, who is the co-founder and leader of the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network. First, we discuss Linda’s connection to silviculture, and how the field relates to climate adaptation. We then chat about the Network’s conceptualization, and the many bright minds involved in its creation. Afterwards, we dive deep into the Network’s purpose and protocols, and end by discussing the Network’s recently published paper: Ten Years of Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change: An Applied, Co-Produced Experimental Framework. Check out the resources below for help with terminology and more information about the Network, where we work, and what we do; and be sure to look for new episodes every other Monday! You can read the transcript for this episode on the ASCC Network website linked here.
Check out these definitions and resources for information about topics discussed in this episode:
Definitions:
Ecophysiology as defined by ScienceDirect is “the study of the complex relationship between an organism’s internal environment and external environmental factors, focusing on how organisms respond to and adapt to specific ecological pressures.”
Spectroradiometer as defined by Taylor & Francis is “an instrument that quantifies the energy of light waves at different wavelengths [and] is used to measure the intensity of optical radiation and its spectral distribution.”
Forest assisted migration is the human-assisted movement of future climate-adapted tree species, populations or genotypes to areas outside of their historical distributions to maintain biological diversity or ecosystem function in response to climate change (Palik et al., 2022).
Desired future conditions “express the ecosystem conditions that are preferred by stakeholders and managers” (Nagel et al., 2025).
Resources
The ASCC Network’s recent paper published in Bioscience: Ten Years of Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change: An Applied, Co-Produced Experimental Framework.
The ASCC Network about page.
The ASCC Network’s experimental design (RRT + no action) web page.
The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) about page.
The National Advanced Silviculture Program (NASP) home page.
The Climate Change Response Framework (CCRF) home page.
Summary of the 2009 National Silviculture Workshop.
Music Attribution
The intro and outro music used in this podcast is from the song Harmony by artist Ketsa. The track used is licensed under Creative Commons License BY 4.0.