Planning for a Changing Climate - USFWS/NOAA

Target Audience:

The class is directed at those interested in learning methods and tools to incorporate climate information into their existing and future conservation planning and management efforts. The target audience includes conservation practitioners, planners, resource and facility managers, and natural resource managers working at multiple scales to ensure the ongoing effectiveness of their work in an era of climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change .

Summary and Objectives:

This 3.5-day class provides participants with the skills and tools needed to demystify climate adaptation for application to on-the-ground conservation. This course will provide participants with guidance on how to act with intentionality while managing for change, not just persistence. Individuals will work in teams on regionally focused projects to apply the climate-smart conservation cycle. Activities will include the development of climate-informed goals and objectives, scenarios to address uncertainty, the evaluation of vulnerability of targets/focal resources in multiple potential futures, and the development/evaluation of adaptation actions to address identified vulnerabilities. A real-world case study will be used throughout the course to practice provided frameworks and summarize planning results.

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate conservation goals from a climate change perspective, and align adaptation strategies with climate-informed goals.
• Explain how climate change vulnerability and climate projections inform adaptation actions.
• Complete the basic steps of scenario planning to explore uncertainty by constructing situation-appropriate scenarios for future climatic, social, and ecological conditions.
• Identify possible adaptation options based on vulnerability information and other management considerations across one or more possible future conditions.
• Integrate climate adaptation into existing planning and decision-making processes.
• Tell a clear and compelling story of how a conservation project is designed or can be modified, to increase the potential for climate adaptation.

Competency Addressed: 

Decision Making - Intermediate, Managing Change - Intermediate, Planning for Uncertainty - Intermediate, Vulnerabilities Assessment - Intermediate, Climate Science - Intermediate, Climate Change Adaptation - Intermediate, Monitoring, Evaluating, and Knowledge Management - Basic