The ADAPT Project

The ADAPT Project

New England’s predominantly forested landscapes provide many important goods and services, including timber, water resources, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities. New Englanders also face a critical challenge: as one of the most heavily forested, densely populated and agriculturally limited regions in the United States, its nearly 15 million residents rely on food from outside the region to meet approximately 90% of consumption needs. These conditions threaten our region’s capacity to adapt to change.

ADAPT explores the potential for agroforestry to provide a climate-smart and sustainable strategy for expanding agricultural production in New England while simultaneously promoting important forest-based goods and services—including climate adaptation and resilience to change. ADAPT integrates research, extension, and education to reach multiple audiences, including farmers, landowners, natural resource managers, policy makers, students, and the general public.

 ADAPT’s research component focuses on designing and testing three agroforestry systems suitable for the New England landscape: food forests, forest farming, and silvopasture. These systems are being established on university lands and cooperator farms, where they will be monitored over several years to determine their environmental, economic, and social benefits and tradeoffs.