Land trusts are witnessing the effects of a changing climate on their lands and seeking opportunities to accommodate new challenges in conservation and stewardship activities.
The Quick Start Guide to Adaptation Planning for Land Trusts provides a framework to design and implement adaptation actions in conservation and stewardship activities. The guide builds upon the five-step Adaptation Workbook process (published in Forest Adaptation Resources: Climate Change Tools and Approaches for Land Managers) to assist land trusts in considering how climate change will affect their lands and associated goals for land conservation and stewardship.
By intentionally considering the potential impacts, challenges, and opportunities brought about by a changing climate, land trusts can identify actions that can enable ecosystems to cope with stressors and adapt to changing conditions, while also addressing conservation priorities.
Download The Quick Guide
Example of each step of the Quick Start Guide to Adaptation Planning for Land Trusts
Step 1: Define project goals and objectives
Clearly stated goals and objectives are important for helping you and your partners and stakeholders describe exactly where you want to go. As you set up a new project, consider two fundamental questions:
- Where is your project located?
- What do you want to achieve?
| Management goal | Management objective |
|---|---|
| Improve accessibility for passive recreation. | Build 5 miles of trail that take into account resource protection and wildlife viewing opportunities (5 years). |
| Reduce invasive species cover to allow canopy trees to regenerate in natural areas. | Reduce area covered by invasive buckthorn from 10% to no more than 5% (10 years). |
Step 2: Assess climate change impacts and vulnerabilities
Climate change will affect our natural landscapes and the human communities that depend upon them in many ways.
Although we have a wealth of information about climate change impacts nationally and regionally, climate change will affect each area differently based on the local characteristics that are unique to that place.
There are many regional vulnerability assessments that may apply to your area.
After describing local climate change impacts, you can rate your level of vulnerability based on the vulnerability assessments and your knowledge of site conditions:
- Low Vulnerability – Ecosystems are expected to readily cope with potential climate change impacts. Climate change is more beneficial to ecosystems than disruptive.
- Moderate Vulnerability – Climate change impacts are expected to alter ecosystems, but ecosystems will be able to cope with some impacts.
- High Vulnerability – Climate change impacts are expected to exceed the ability of the ecosystem to cope with impacts. Ecosystems may undergo changes that will disrupt important ecosystem functions and key environmental benefits.
| Regional | Local and project-level impacts |
|---|---|
| Increased average precipitation/periods of flooding. | Many low-lying areas in the preserve are already prone to flooding and wet trail conditions. |
| Increased late-season drought. | Drought stress could exacerbate existing on-site issues with pests and diseases. |
Step 3: Evaluate goals and objectives
Once you have identified the climate change impacts on your project area, consider how these impacts could influence the goals and objectives that you identified in the first step.
Four questions can be useful to help you evaluate your project goals and objectives in the context of climate change:
- What new or different challenges need to be addressed as a result of climate change and related stressors?
- What new opportunities might be available as a result of anticipated changes?
- Are your current management practices enough to overcome the challenges and meet your management goals and objectives?
- Do any of your goals or objectives need to change?
Once you have thought about how climate change may create challenges to, or opportunities for, your project, you may realize that there may be conditions where it may no longer be feasible to meet some of the goals and objectives that you identified in Step 1. If this is the case, this is an appropriate time to revise your goals or objectives before moving on to the next step.
| Challenges to meeting project goals/objectives from climate change | Opportunities for project meeting goals/objectives from climate change |
|---|---|
| Flood conditions could limit suitable locations for trail building. | Increasing the length of shoulder seasons could allow more time for trail building and trail use. |
| Increasing climate-caused disturbances could open areas to colonization by invasive species. | Drier late-season conditions could allow for new windows to conduct prescribed burning. |
Step 4: Identify and implement adaptation actions
You may need to alter your management practices to address new or increased challenges associated with a changing climate and environmental conditions.
Identifying potential challenges and opportunities will position you to take action and adopt practices that will maximize the benefits your natural areas provide for ecosystems, wildlife, and human visitors.
There are several resources and adaptation menus that can help you brainstorm potential actions.
| Adaptation tactic action (timeframe) | Adaptation strategy or approach | Benefits, drawbacks, and barriers |
|---|---|---|
| Construct new trails away from frequently saturated areas and use boardwalks to provide access to wildlife viewing areas (in 5 years). | Relocate existing infrastructure and opportunities to areas with less risk of climate-exacerbated damage. | Boardwalks will increase costs but also minimize visitor impact on resources. |
| Use repeated physical removal of buckthorn along stream corridor to promote regeneration of native species and inhibit downstream spread (over 10 years). | Prevent the introduction and establishment of invasive plant species and remove existing invasive species. | Potential to use volunteers for buckthorn removal. |
Step 5: Monitor and evaluate effectiveness
Monitoring is about asking the right questions that will help you ensure desired outcomes over time.
There are different types of monitoring that you’ll encounter in science and management. In scientific research, we may have a question and a hypothesis, and with quality replication, we can judge deviation through time.
This level of rigor can be challenging to implement because of the financial costs, and time and effort involved.
Instead, the focus should be on evaluating whether you are achieving the goals and objectives that you identified at the outset of the project and to what extent your actions were effective in helping you meet those goals and objectives.
| Objective or adaptation tactic | Monitoring item |
|---|---|
| Construct new trails away from frequently saturated areas and use boardwalks to provide access to wildlife viewing areas. |
Number of days of trail closure due to wet conditions. Number of user-reported problems. |
| Reduce the area covered by invasive buckthorn from 10% to no more than 5%, prioritizing locations along the stream corridor. < /th> | Percentage of buckthorn cover at 2 and 5 years following treatment. |
Citation
Janowiak, Maria; Shannon, Danielle; Schmitt, Kristen; Baroli, Madeline; Brandt, Leslie; Handler, Stephen; Butler-Leopold, Patricia; Ontl, Todd; Peterson, Courtney; Rutledge, Annamarie; Swanston, Chris. 2022. A quick guide to adaptation planning for land trusts. NRS-INF-40-22. Madison, WI: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 14 p. https://doi.org/10.2737/NRS-INF-40-22.
Acknowledgements
This publication was developed in partnership with the Land Trust Alliance’s Land and Climate Program, and the Northern Institute for Applied Climate Science and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) a collaborative, multi-institutional partnership led and supported by the USDA Forest Service.