Forest tree genetic risk assessment systesm (ForGRAS)

A variety of threats, most importantly climate change and insect and disease infestation, will increase the risk that forest trees could experience population-level or species-level extinction. Species, however, differ in important traits such as life-history strategies and population dynamics, which could drive widely varying responses to potential threats. Determining how to prioritize species for management and conservation activities in the face of these threats will pose a particular challenge in species-rich regions. To address this challenge, a cooperating scientist with the Southern Research Station’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center has developed a framework that allows managers to assess the relative risk of genetic degradation to forest trees affected by multiple threats. This assessment framework serves as a tool for planning management activities and conservation efforts, for evaluating species’ genetic resources, and for detecting vulnerabilities. It has the advantage of accounting for multiple threats that may result in the most severe genetic impacts. Only by considering population-level extirpation as a synergistic process of external threats and intrinsic biological traits will we be able to make predictions of risk that approximate reality for most species. Known as the Forest Tree Genetic Risk Assessment System (ForGRAS), the framework has been used by the Forest Service Southern and Pacific Northwest Regions to identify species at risk as a step towards developing management plans. The flexibility of this approach allows for its application at multiple scales and across any area for which data exist on the population dynamics and distribution of the species of interest.