Guides & Toolkits Dashboard

Find comprehensive, curated adaptation guidance and toolkits in a new interactive and easy to access format.

 

This toolkit focuses on the natural resources and habitats within marine and coastal protected areas in North America. It aims to make climate adaptation planning a simple and direct process for protected area managers to help them identify the most appropriate adaptation strategies for their sites. You’ll find guides and worksheets to help evaluate site vulnerability to climate change and over 200 searchable case studies, reports, and other foundational resources that address specific climate stressors and impacts for a habitat or location. You’ll also have access to a network of experts who can offer technical guidance.

The Climate Registry for the Assessment of Vulnerability (CRAVe) is publically accessible registry that includes hundreds of climate vulnerability assessments (VAs) pertaining to species and ecosystems, built environments and infrastructure, cultural resources, and socioeconomic systems. Although the registry is no longer being updated, this database contains valuable historical information on the vulnerability of various regions, sectors, and habitats that can be used to inform updated vulnerability assessments and other climate adaptation work moving forward.

Sector Addressed: PolicyConservation, Restoration; Habitat: Freshwater; Region: Midwest

Climate adaptation strategies are key to helping the Great Lakes region prepare for and respond to climate change by decreasing vulnerability and increasing resilience. This interactive guide provides an overview of the climate change impacts occurring in the Great Lakes region–specifically those to freshwater resources–and presents the results of EcoAdapt’s efforts to survey, inventory, and assess adaptation activities. Examples and case studies of commonly-used approaches are separated into four categories: 1) capacity building, 2) policy, 3) natural resources management and conservation, and 4) infrastructure, planning and development. The guidebook ends with a discussion of the challenges to and opportunities for climate change adaptation in the Great Lakes Region.

Sector Addressed: Public Health; Region: United States

Across the country human morbidity and mortality rates are rising due to extreme heat events and changing patterns of water-borne and vector-borne diseases, and healthcare infrastructure is at risk from extreme events. EcoAdapt partnered with the Natural Resources Defense Council to assess the state of climate adaptation planning and implementation for climate-related threats to public health in 16 U.S. states. That is, if and how climate change is being integrated into activities at state public health departments. This guidebook makes it easy to compare states and find climate action plans, health department climate plans, mitigation plans, and case studies about how practitioners are integrating climate change into public health.

Sector Addressed: DevelopmentInfrastructure; Region: United States

Climate change poses significant threats to the physical, cultural, spiritual, social, and economic displacement of communities around the world. EcoAdapt partnered with the Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge to determine if and how people working to address displacement pressures are considering climate change. Use this guidebook to explore the survey results and learn: 1) to what degree anti-displacement practitioners are thinking about climate change in their work, 2) about emerging practices and policies that aim to reduce climate risks and displacement pressures, 3) about the needs, opportunities, and barriers in reducing those pressures, and 4) what urban communities are doing to address these challenges.

Sectors Addressed: FisheriesTransportationConservation; Habitat: Marine; Region: Coasts

Coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP) is a dynamic science-based, collaborative process used to sustainably manage resources, interests, and activities among diverse users and sectors. It integrates the long-term impacts of climate change into the planning and management of resilient coastal and marine environments. Regardless of whether your focus is efficient and sustainable harvest, conservation, or achieving clarity about possible zoning for marine transportation and energy, climate change has the potential to affect everything. This guide is presented in a series of steps and concrete actions and provides case studies, articles, and tools related to climate change, ocean acidification, and CMSP to support coastal and marine management and decision making.

Sector Addressed: Fisheries; Habitat: Marine; Region: United States

Climate change is affecting marine and coastal ecosystems in the United States, including commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries and aquaculture. Its impacts threaten fish species, critical nursery and breeding habitats, and the sustainability and management of fisheries as a whole. Despite the wide range of potential changes that may occur in U.S. fisheries, there are management options that can help address these changes. This guidebook presents the steps to understanding fisheries challenges and approaches for management success. It examines climate impacts on marine and coastal fisheries, assesses related challenges to fisheries management, and presents examples of actions taken to decrease vulnerability and/or increase resilience.

Sector Addressed: Conservation, RestorationPolicy; Habitat: MarineCoastal; Region: North America

Climate change threatens the success and longevity of conservation, planning, and management, especially in marine and coastal environments, which affect species, habitats, infrastructure, cultures, and economies. In 2011 EcoAdapt reported on the state of marine and coastal adaptation in North America. This guidebook builds on that foundation and presents a summary of climatic changes and impacts on marine and coastal systems, examples of common barriers noted by practitioners, and lessons learned from completed projects. Explore numerous case studies grouped by geographic region that address four adaptation categories: 1) capacity building, 2) governance and policy, 3) infrastructure, planning, and development, and 4) natural resource management and conservation.

Sector Addressed: Conservation, Restoration; Habitat: ForestMarineFreshwater; Region: Northwest

In this user-friendly guidebook, explore a variety of spatial datasets relevant to the conservation and management of natural resources within the context of climate change adaptation in the Pacific Northwest. Resources include a glossary of key terms, links to download data and documentation, a summary of how the dataset was created, guidelines for interpretation, assessment of uncertainties along with evaluation of caveats and simplifying assumptions, and information about potential and actual conservation applications. Collectively, this information provides natural-resource managers with “snapshots” of datasets representing diverse processes and conditions, including climate projections, changes in hydrologic conditions, vegetation and fire-regime shifts, animal habitat changes, species movements, and topographic and soil conditions relevant to climate change.