What is RAD?
Park managers today face growing challenges. As climate change interacts with other stressors such as land use change, pollution, and nonnative species, ecosystems are changing beyond the bounds of historical variability. These changes are increasingly difficult to resist. Thus, managers are thinking more broadly about how to effectively conserve resources in this rapidly changing world. In this context, the resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework helps decision makers make informed, purposeful, and strategic choices. This tool is simple and flexible, complements other important climate change adaptation approaches, and applies to a wide range of decisions that managers must make as they steward transforming ecosystems.
In short, one can respond to the trajectory of change by resisting (working to maintain or restore based upon historical or acceptable current ecosystem conditions), accepting (allowing an ecosystem to change without intervening), or directing (actively shaping ecosystem change toward preferred new conditions).
Consider the analogy of a sailboat being pushed away from its home port by strong winds (right). Each option differs in terms of costs and outcome:
- To accept is to lower the sails and allow the boat to move with the winds, arriving wherever they lead.
- To direct is to use the winds, via sails and rudder, to steer the boat to a specific new, preferred destination, both far from home port and from where the winds alone would take it.
- To resist is to lower the sail and fight the prevailing winds, using a motor to attempt to return to home port.
Where does the RAD framework come from?
The RAD framework emerges from efforts by the NPS and partners since 2015 to hone a tool to foster strategic thinking and clear communication about how to steward transforming ecosystems. It builds on the Resist-Accept-Guide framework first proposed in Beyond Naturalness (2010), though the NPS and partners replaced "Guide" with "Direct" to explicitly recognize the potential for strong intervention at key points to foster preferred new conditions. Initially, the NPS experimented with "Accommodate" in place of "Accept," and this formulation appears in NPS publications as early as 2016 (e.g., Coastal Adaptation Strategies Handbook, Resource Management and Operations in Central North Dakota). Ultimately, Resist-Accept-Direct was chosen because each option may require associated management actions.We continue to share, develop, and apply the RAD framework with a broadening circle of partners. The RAD framework has helped structure the work of the Federal Navigating Ecological Transformation (FedNET) working group, where representatives from federal natural resource management agencies collaborate to develop guidance for stewarding transforming ecosystems.
The NPS and partners have:
- Shared the framework in Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD)—A Decision Framework for the 21st-century Natural Resource Manager
- Incorporated the framework as a key element of Planning for a Changing Climate, alongside Climate-Smart principles and scenario planning
Learn more about RAD
The RAD Framework has also been central to numerous recent collaborative efforts that have produced the following:- Managing for RADical ecosystem change: applying the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework
- Responding to Ecosystem Transformation: Resist, Accept, or Direct?
BioScience Special Edition
The following articles are from the BioScience RAD special section of January 2022:- RAD: A paradigm shifting
- Navigating ecological transformation: Resist–Accept–Direct as a path to a new resource management paradigm
- Management foundations for navigating ecological transformation by resisting, accepting, or directing social-ecological change
- RAD adaptive management for transforming ecosystems
- Responding to ecological transformation: Mental models, external constraints and manager decision-making
- A science agenda to inform natural resource management decisions in an era of ecological transformation
RAD in action
Showing results 1-8 of 8
- Denali National Park & Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve: Resisting Permafrost Thaw Impacts on the Denali Park Road
- Locations: Denali National Park & Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve faces an escalating challenge due to climate change: the historically slow but steadily accelerating collapse down a hillside of the Denali Park Road. This 92-mile scenic route is the only road across six million acres of Denali National Park and Preserve wilderness, and it is an important transportation route for park staff and visitors
- Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park is taking action to resist, accept, and direct change
- Locations: Rocky Mountain National Park
At Rocky Mountain National Park, climate change is intensifying the impacts of drought, invasive species, and wildfire, and stressing the ecosystems that rely on natural processes to remain consistent. Read more about how RMNP is using the RAD framework to adapt to their changing landscape.
- Locations: Capitol Reef National Park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Glacier National Park, Haleakalā National Park, Indiana Dunes National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park
- Offices: Inventory and Monitoring Division, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, Pacific Island Inventory & Monitoring Network
Click the link above to read some in-depth examples of national parks choosing to resist, accept, and direct change.
- Locations: Haleakalā National Park
- Offices: Climate Change Response Program, Inventory and Monitoring Division, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, Pacific Island Inventory & Monitoring Network
Hawaiʻi is home to some of the most diverse and unique wildlife on the planet, including the Hawaiian honeycreepers, a group of forest birds found nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately, human-assisted arrival of avian malaria—worsened by climate change—and other factors have brought Hawaiian honeycreepers to the brink of extinction. Read more about how Haleakalā National Park is using innovative methods to save the 17 remaining species of Hawaiian honeycreepers.
- Capitol Reef National Park
Rangeland restoration and the RAD framework at Capitol Reef National Park
- Locations: Capitol Reef National Park
Rangeland restoration is underway at Capitol Reef National Park, but climate change-driven drought and heat stress are challenging the transition from old grazing allotments into healthy ecosystems. Learn more about how Capitol Reef National Park is taking action to resist, accept, and direct change.
- Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park Directs Change
- Locations: Glacier National Park
In Glacier National Park, water temperatures are warming due to climate change-driven loss of glaciers and increasing air temperatures. Bull trout reproduction, growth, and survival require the coldest water temperatures of any inland salmonid species, and without action, Glacier bull trout may vanish from the park because of climate change. Discover how GLAC is using the RAD framework to direct change for Glacier bull trout.
- Locations: Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve
- Offices: Central Alaska Inventory & Monitoring Network
Deciding how to act in the face of climate change can be overwhelming. Yet any park can act to begin integrating climate change considerations into their operations. Read how Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program, and their partners advanced the park’s efforts to understand, adapt to, mitigate, and communicate with the public about climate change. Alaska Park Science 22(1), 2023
- Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Climate Impacts in Cuyahoga Valley
- Locations: Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Northeast Ohio gets seven more inches of annual precipitation than it did in 1960, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers. This often falls as rain during storms that have become more frequent and more intense. Temperatures are warming too. Climate change affects all aspects of life in the valley, across America, and globally. Learn more about how Cuyahoga Valley and other national parks are responding with a Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) approach.
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resist-accept-direct
Last updated: January 8, 2025