Find Adaptation Planning Support

Natural resources planning activities are constantly changing to accommodate new challenges, and it is becoming increasingly important that conservation and land management activities intentionally consider a changing and uncertain climate. This Quick Guide to Adaptation Planning for Natural Resources Professionals provides a starting point to help design and implement adaptation actions in natural resource planning work, with a focus on the project level.

The toolkit guides municipalities through the process of creating a climate change-related vulnerability assessment and developing local climate resilience strategies, as required by changes to New Jersey’s Municipal Land Use Law signed into law in February 2021.

This interactive mapping tool using ESRI technology was created by the City of Richmond Office of Sustainability as part of RVAgreen 2050, the City of Richmond’s equity-centered climate action and resilience planning initiative. 

The North Central Climate Collaborative (NC3) is working to increase the flow and usability of climate information for Extension, farmers, natural resource managers, and communities by hosting bimonthly webinars on climate and water.

These webinars include presentations that, among other topics, summarize drought decision calendars for specialty crops, animal agriculture in a changing climate, weather-ready farms, conservation drainage, and the Missouri River Basin flood outlook.

This website offers a downloadable 39-page guide in PDF format, with step-by-step instructions and worksheets for managing drought on the ranch.

It also provides:

Every spring, ranchers face the same difficult challenge—trying to guess how much grass will be available for livestock to graze during the upcoming summer. This innovative forecast tool can help producers in the Great Plains reduce this economically important source of uncertainty.

This tool was developed to quantify the relative impact of expected climate change effects for terrestrial vertebrate species. The SAVS uses 22 criteria related to expected response or vulnerability of species in a questionnaire to provide a framework for assessing vulnerability to climate change. The questionnaire is completed using information gathered from published materials, personal knowledge, or expert consultation. Scores generated can be used to inform management planning.

PINEMAP—which stands for "Pine Integrated Network: Education, Mitigation, and Adaptation Project"—contains 13 tools related to planted loblolly pine forests in the southeastern United States across four categories: Environment, Establishment, Management, and Production.

CHARM is a mapping application that gives local officials, stakeholders, and citizens the power to map and analyze growth with real-time feedback. When used with the weTable—a low cost, do-it-yourself, interactive tabletop approach for public engagement (instructions provided on the CHARM website)—it forms a powerful planning tool for engaging the public and gathering their values about the community’s future. The application is supported with a library of mapping data, including data on urbanization, storm surges, conservation, public facilities, and coastal resources.

Over 130 million acres of America’s forests are located in our cities and towns. These urban forests include parks, street trees, landscaped boulevards, gardens, river and coastal promenades, nature preserves, shelter belts of trees, and working trees at former industrial sites. Urban forests boost public health, safety, sustainability, and economic growth.