Completed

The City of Oakdale, Minnesota received funding in 2017 to conduct a vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning project. The Population Vulnerability Assessment and Climate Adaptation Framework report includes a review of past and projected climate change impacts, and the identification of community vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies. Climate changes experienced over the last 50 years will are detailed, as well as climate change projections through 2100 for the Midwest region as a whole, the State of Minnesota, and the City of Oakdale. 

The Southern California Climate Adaptation Project was initiated to improve understanding about the vulnerability of important southern California habitats to climate change and to develop adaptation strategies designed to reduce vulnerabilities and/or increase resilience of habitats. This project used a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process that involved soliciting input from land and resource managers, conservation practitioners, scientists, and others from federal and state agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations.

The Midwest and the Mississippi Alluvial Valley currently contribute the greatest nutrient load to the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. Modifying the design or shifting the location of conservation practices can provide benefits for wildlife, water quality, energy and agriculture, making program dollars go farther and appeal to more land managers.

This year-long research project from ACT (the Adaptation to Climate Change Team) at Simon Fraser University’s Pacific Water Research Centre focused on the Still Creek watershed, which is shared between the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby. One of only two daylit creeks (i.e. creeks free of culverts and paved channels) remaining in Vancouver, Still Creek underwent significant environmental degradation as a result of urbanization.

In the fall of 2016, a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, and the Southeastern Connecticut Enterprise Region convened a group of over fifty stakeholders from Southeastern Connecticut to discuss the impacts of rising sea levels, extreme weather, and changing social and economic conditions on the resilience of the region and its communities.

An increasingly common post-disaster mitigation approach, home buyout programs are generally intended to reduce vulnerability to future disasters. However, to date, there has been virtually no quantitative evaluation of whether or not coastal buyout programs are successful in reducing vulnerability. Through a change in vulnerability analysis, this study quantifies the success of the Staten Island buyout program in reducing the nationwide vulnerability of people and property to coastal flood hazards.

The BaltSeaPlan project was a US$3.8 million (€3.7 million) project aimed at gaining as much practical experience and understanding of integrated maritime spatial planning in the Baltic Sea region as possible, as well as providing recommendations for the development of national maritime strategies for seven Baltic Sea countries (Germany, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Denmark). Fourteen partners from these countries worked together on the BaltSeaPlan framework, including:

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources recognizes that the presence of natural features such as marshes and coastal forests can reduce the impact of inundation and erosion on the state’s coastal communities. These habitats dampen waves, stabilize sediment, and absorb water, thereby providing residents with more time to select and implement other adaptation strategies. To better understand the resiliency benefits of existing natural features, the Department partnered with The Nature Conservancy to conduct a Coastal Resiliency Assessment.

The North-central California coast and ocean is a globally significant and extraordinarily productive marine and coastal ecosystem that boasts an array of local, state and federal protected areas and other managed lands. Despite this richness and attention to conservation, this region is still vulnerable to the effects of climate change.