Prioritize & Plan

Climate change is a growing concern for forests across Minnesota. Foresters, land managers, and landowners are considering how to prepare for future conditions and how to evaluate risks for particular sites.

This guide, a downloadable PDF, highlights key information that can be used during field visits or forest planning. The developers hope that the guide will help foresters consider climate change risks together with local site characteristics, and help people design adaptation actions that meet management goals.

Populations at Risk (PAR) is a free, quick, and easy-to-use web-based tool to generate reports on demographics within areas of interest. The reports can help decision makers learn which populations are more likely to experience adverse social, health, and economic outcomes due to their race, age, gender, poverty status, and other socioeconomic measures. 

This guide provides a process that communities can use to assess the costs and benefits of green infrastructure to reduce flooding. The framework can be adapted for their own purposes to inform planning-scale assessments and spark discussion about green infrastructure options to mitigate flooding and provide other watershed benefits.

Populations of forest trees and other native plants are genetically different from each other, and adapted to different climatic conditions. Therefore, natural resource managers must match the climatic adaptability of their plant materials to the climatic conditions of their planting sites. Generally, local populations are optimally adapted to their local climates, or nearly so; thus, local seed sources are usually recommended for reforestation and restoration.

This website provides a “how-to” approach to develop an Urban Forest Management Plan (UFMP)—a roadmap that creates a shared vision for the future of a tree canopy. A UFMP is a tailored plan that guides tree care professionals to proactively and effectively manage and provide for maximum, long-term benefits to the community.

Federal government agencies have been directed to fully consider the impacts of climate change and to prepare for potential weather and climate disasters in their regions as they develop and implement national security policies and plans.

This website retrieves data from on-farm, grower-owned weather stations throughout the Northeast and in a number of other locations across the U.S. These data are combined with data from existing observations and forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide integrated pest management (IPM) and crop production model results and tabulated weather data summaries to growers. Currently, 30 IPM and crop production tools and 13 degree-day tools are freely available from the NEWA website.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Creating Resilient Water Utilities Initiative provides water sector utilities with the practical tools, training, and technical assistance needed to adapt to climate change by promoting a clear understanding of potential long-term adaptation options. The program website includes resources to help water utilities plan for extreme weather, assess vulnerability, get training, and access other resources.

Climate change is likely to exacerbate the economic challenges that many communities already face. Having a climate-resilient economy—one that can withstand or recover quickly from climate impacts in the short and long terms—is essential to a community's long-term well-being. Starting to plan now with climate and economic resilience in mind will help a community and its businesses:

This resource guide was developed to provide federal government-wide resources for tribal resilience in a standard framework across all federal agencies and programs that provide tribal and/or resilience support.