Climate-smart agriculture and forestry benefit communities and help mitigate climate change. Climate-smart practices, which include reduced tillage, wildlife habitat planting, and prescribed grazing, can make working lands more profitable by increasing productivity and yield and decreasing water and energy use. Climate-smart practices can also mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage. In some cases, practices can make working lands more resilient to the ongoing effects of climate change.
In Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, 26 percent of lands are privately owned working lands. These lands, which include rangelands, forests, and farms, offer significant opportunities for implementing climate-smart practices. However, a nationwide 2017 survey showed that USDA NRCS staff do not feel confident incorporating climate change considerations into planning and management. The survey demonstrated a need to integrate locally relevant climate information into existing NRCS professional services and programs to increase staff confidence. The Northwest Climate Hub will address this gap by providing NRCS staff with climate change information specific to their region.
Project summary:
The USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) helps land managers implement conservation practices on private lands. The Northwest Climate Hub is partnering with the USDA NRCS to increase climate literacy among NRCS staff in the Northwest so that they are better able to support implementation of climate-smart practices.
As of Summer 2024, the Northwest Climate Hub has:
- Hired an ORISE fellow to develop educational materials for NRCS staff that include locally relevant climate information
- Obtained input from NRCS staff in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington about what information and tools they need to help increase landowner implementation of climate-smart practices
- Identified sectors with the greatest potential to increase climate change mitigation through climate-smart practices
- Developed a three-part training program in response to that input, focused on:
- Past and projected climate change at regional and state levels
- Past and projected climate change impacts on agriculture, rangelands, and forests at regional and state levels
- Effective strategies to communicate the importance of climate change mitigation with farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners
The Northwest Climate Hub will present this three-part training program to NRCS staff in each state in late 2024 – early 2025. The Hub will evaluate NRCS staff before and after the program to determine whether their participation increased their confidence in incorporating climate information into their work.