Download the Wetland and Stream Mitigation: A Handbook for Land Trusts as well as other resources from the ELI website.
]]>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently establishing region-based Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) throughout the United States. These management-science partnerships will inform management actions addressing climate change and other stressors. LCCs may assist partners, such as land trusts, in developing a shared vision for conservation across the landscape that best protects biodiversity over the long term. The LCC program is open to participation from local and state governments, federal agencies, and NGOs. Funding opportunities are available.
Eight regional DOI Climate Science Centers (CSCs) deliver basic climate change impact data within their regions across the United States. The network of CSCs will also provide tools for studying climate change impacts and managing land, water, fish and wildlife resources. The centers focus on regional climate change impacts and adaptation strategies. Learn more at the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center website.
The Digital Coast is a partnership led by NOAA Coastal Services Center that addresses coastal management issues, including land use, coastal conservation, hazards, marine spatial planning, and climate change. Digital Coast provides access to data, training, tools, and application examples relevant to coastal resource management. Learn more at the NOAA Coastal Services Center website.
The EPA Climate Ready Estuaries program works with the National Estuary Program and other coastal managers to assess climate change vulnerabilities, develop and implement adaptation strategies, engage and educate stakeholders, and share the lessons learned with other coastal managers. Learn more by visiting the Climate Ready Estuaries website, which offers information on climate change impacts in different estuary regions, access to tools and resources to monitor changes, and information to help managers develop adaptation plans for estuaries and coastal communities.
A number of states are engaging partners in the process of updating their State Wildlife Action Plans to address the impacts of climate change on wildlife and habitats. You can learn more about your state's Wildlife Action Plan by visiting the Wildlife Action Plans website, and selecting your state from the Explore the Action Plans dropdown list on the right.
Find information about federal, regional, and state initiatives here.
]]>The following recommendations will help land trust managers develop conservation easements that are adaptable and resilient, and thus more likely to retain their conservation values in the face of climate change.
Be clear about the purposes of the easement. Identify the conservation values that warrant protection, link easement restrictions to the protection of these values, determine which values might be impacted by climate change, and develop a management plan that will help conserve those values over time. Scenario planning may be useful here.
Provide comprehensive and detailed, project-specific background information. Ensure that the reader (eg. a judge in an enforcement action) will be able to readily understand the restrictions, conservation values and importance of the easement. This is especially important if the restriction or reserved right is unusual.
Conditions and needs may change with time, especially as a result of climate change. Do not assume that environmental conditions, social pressure, or resource needs will remain constant. Discuss the need for flexibility with the easement grantor, and determine how much flexibility successor landowners will need in order to adequately respond to climate change. Distinguish between restrictions that will be strictly applied and those that allow for flexibility in interpretation. Then, negotiate and draft the easement so that it incorporates the necessary flexibility, while continuing to protect the land’s conservation values in perpetuity. Scenario planning may be useful here.
Clarity and lack of ambiguity make it easier for a landowner to understand and accept easement terms, and for a land trust to monitor and enforce those terms. Be clear about what an easement prohibits and permits, what approvals an owner must seek before undertaking certain activities, and what notice(s) the owner must provide to the holder under certain situations.
Review the draft easement for terms that should be defined (in the easement, or by reference to a different source). Ensure all terms are consistent with their definitions.
Performance standards may be appropriate in some circumstances, because they offer a flexible goal. In these cases, combine prescriptive and performance standards so that easement goals are more likely to be met as conditions change due to climate change and/or emerging scientific knowledge or technological capabilities. Determine whether some reserved rights should float based on changing best practices in agriculture, forestry or land management. If so, define the criteria for this in the easement, identify a recognized source of rules which will guide this change, and specify the path for land trust approval of all changes. Include a copy of the rules with the management plan.
Conditions will change with time. Prevent easement obsolescence and allow for the adaptation to changing conditions by defining the criteria and procedures for amending or modifying the easement.
If so, attach a copy of the law as an exhibit. If the easement is ever challenged in the future, this will provide proof of the relevant law(s) at the time of easement creation.
Draft restrictions so they support the primary purpose(s) of the easement. Remember that conservation easements are limited interests in land, and are best used to prevent harmful activities rather than to prescribe affirmative land management activities. If the restrictions strip most or all economic value from the land, include strong explanatory recitals so that all the parties understand the rationale for the restriction.
Landscape features, such as shorelines and river channels, as well as ecological conditions, may change over time with temperature, water and other influences. Flexible management plans and zone boundaries may help. Scenario planning may be useful here.
Carefully define how the easement can be terminated or modified.
Provide for easement termination or modification contrary to its stated purposes only in accordance with all state and federal laws, court approval and full proportional compensation of the easement holder, to be used for similar conservation purposes.
Scenario planning is used to develop long-term plans that are resilient under a variety of potential future conditions or scenarios. Planners consider a range of scenarios, and then select the plan that is most robust across several or all scenarios.
In brief, scenario planning can be broken into three steps:
Many land trusts already use scenario planning. For example, when deciding upon a piece of land to protect, a land trust might consider several variables, such as:
Land trusts cannot eliminate uncertainty. But, by considering the impacts of potential variables, land trusts are able to identify parcels that are a good choice in a wide range of future conditions. Scenario planning helps land trusts plan for uncertainty, and select resilient parcels for protection.
When planning for climate change, it can be easy to get entangled with the details of specific projections. But, for the purposes of land conservation, it is often more useful to focus on the broad implications of climate change for a particular region, area or land parcel. This allows land trusts to develop scenarios for various climatic conditions, and to then apply those scenarios to land conservation planning.
Potential scenarios to consider when planning for climate change include any climate change impacts that are projected to affect the land trust’s region, such as:
Adaptive management involves implementing a management strategy, closely monitoring its effects and then adapting future actions based on the observed results. In this way, planners simultaneously apply management practices and learn from those management practices.
In brief, adaptive management can be broken into six general steps:
Adaptive management is a cyclical process, running continuously through these steps. The first two steps involve establishing goals for the management process, while steps three through six represent the actual implementation and evaluation of the process. In practice, many adaptive management plans run through steps 3-6 several times before returning to steps 1 and 2, which may involve a reassessment of the entire management plan, including target goals.
Land trusts may choose to apply adaptive management practices whenever unanticipated changes affect the conservation value of their protected land. For example, if an invasive species is unexpectedly introduced to the area, the land trust may choose to modify their management practices in order to reduce the likelihood of the invasive species reaching its protected land.
One of the greatest challenges with planning for climate change is the fact that so much remains uncertain about future climatic conditions. By applying adaptive management techniques, land trust managers are able to move forward with land management plans, and then respond if conditions change in an unanticipated manner. For example, if decreased precipitation and warmer temperatures combine to increase the risk of extreme fires, a land trust may need to adapt its management practices in response.
Although land trusts may choose to develop a new management plan when adopting adaptive management (eg. starting with Step 1, as described above), this approach is not necessary. Land trusts may also modify existing land management practices to be more responsive through adaptive management (eg. starting with Step 4, as described above).
Learn More about Adaptive Management
Because it is impossible to predict future climate change impacts with complete certainty, land trust managers must plan for uncertainty when developing land management plans. Two approaches can be used to plan for uncertainty, either separately or together:
Planning for vulnerability to climate change generally involves three steps:
a. Exposure to the impacts of climate change.
b. Sensitivity to the impacts of climate change.
c. Ability to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Note: Responses to climate change may vary with the actual amount of change being considered. For example, some plants or animals may respond positively to a small increase in temperature, but will then respond negatively as temperatures increase further.
It is useful to think of climate change adaptation as a process, not an outcome. As such, planning for vulnerability to climate change is similar to planning for the vulnerability of resources to other threats, such as urban development or water pollution. As we learn more about predicted climate change impacts, land trusts will be able to anticipate and plan for these impacts. For example, in order to protect cold-water fish, a land trust may look to remove barriers that currently prevent upstream migration, thus allowing those fish to reach cooler waters.
Efforts to assess the vulnerability of species and natural areas to climate change are increasing, and this is rapidly becoming an area of major focus for many federal and state agencies, universities and NGOs. Many resources are available, such as:
Conservation planning that is integrated, considers multiple spatial and time scales, and that includes a process for learning and re-planning, will help us make sound decisions in a changing world.
Conservation planning for climate change may involve working with a wider diversity of partners. For example, land trusts may collaborate with partners from other sectors of government that will also be developing plans for climate change adaptation. In this way, the benefits of ecosystem adaptation plans can be optimized across sectors. Integrated planning also ensures that actions taken by one sector will not conflict with another sector’s resources of concern.
Read more about planning for and implementing climate change adaptation across multiple sectors.
Climate change is global, but the impacts and management decisions are typically local or regional. In order to plan for climate change, management decisions should be coordinated at a regional scale, with a broader ecological, social, and economic landscape context in mind. Collaboration with neighboring land trusts and/or local wetlands and conservation commissions, and state departments of natural resources may be required to protect conservation targets.
Read more about planning for and implementing climate change adaptation across multiple spatial scales.
Land trusts regularly plan for the short-term (e.g. 5-10 years), but climate change adaptation requires the consideration of both short and long-term timeframes. Because long-term climate change impacts are more difficult to predict than near-term impacts, land trusts will need to manage for the short-term, while planning for the uncertainty of the long-term.
Read more about planning for and implementing climate change adaptation in the short-term and the long-term.
Climate change is rife with uncertainty — How much will sea level rise? How will coastal species respond? How will humans respond? — which makes it difficult to develop climate change adaptation plans. As a result, many planners rely on scenario planning to determine potential ecosystem responses to climate change. This involves looking at “if-this-then-that” scenarios with a number of variables, and allows planners to select management actions that appear to be the most robust under most or all of the possible scenarios.
Learn more about scenario planning.
Adaptive management — essentially monitoring the effectiveness of land conservation activities, learning from the experience, and refining management plans based on those results — allows land trusts to move forward with management plans even when all the information is not yet available. Because adaptive management plans are inherently adaptable, land trusts can readily change management policies and strategies in response to climate change.
Learn more about adaptive management.
Land trusts will benefit by examining their project selection criteria and conservation focus areas with climate change in mind. This process may guide future changes in land trust priorities and management practices. For example, the relative important of selection criteria may vary based on the anticipated vulnerability of land trust focus areas to climate change.
Conservation areas should be large enough to accommodate and recover from catastrophic disturbances, such as floods and fire, and support the home ranges of priority species. Because many land trusts focus on relatively small areas, land trusts may increase their effectiveness by collaborating with local and regional land conservation programs and organizations. In this way, land trusts will contribute to the conservation of core habitats and regional-scale ecological processes, while allowing for priority species to shift their ranges in response to climate change.
Learn more about planning for climate change at the landscape level.
Wildlife corridors and interconnected habitats allow species to respond to changes in their environment by migrating to an area with more favorable conditions. For example, species with narrow temperature tolerances may respond to climate change by seeking cooler temperatures, which would generally require shifting their range northward or to higher elevations. Land trusts can facilitate these range shifts by prioritizing lands for acquisition that connect with habitats that are already protected. Note, however, that not all species will move neatly in these directions, so careful evaluation is needed.
Learn more about protecting the interconnectedness of wildlife habitats when planning for climate change.
As the effects of climate change progress, it may become difficult or impossible to maintain historic conditions in a given area. In particular, fires, floods and storms are expected to become more frequent and extreme. Land trusts can increase the resilience of ecosystems to these projected disturbances by maintaining and restoring healthy ecosystem processes, such as fire regimes and hydrological cycles. For example, by protecting land that serves the existing ecological function of an intact floodplain, a land trust would likely benefit many fish and wildlife species long into the future, regardless of future climate changes.
Anderson and Ferre (2010) recommend protecting a diverse and resilient network of conservation stages (geophysically diverse lands) rather than focusing entirely on the actors (current species composition). By protecting geophysically diverse areas — places that vary in altitude, climate or soil chemistry, such as sandy coasts and rocky highlands — land trusts will protect lands that will support large numbers of species, even if the species' composition changes in the future due to climate change.
These concepts can help land trusts identify and protect lands that will likely be critical to wildlife under future climatic conditions. Conserving a network of these lands across a spectrum of latitudes and elevations may maintain an important stage for many species, under both current and future conditions.
Learn more about protecting ecological functions when planning for climate change.
Small changes can lead to dramatic, ecosystem-wide consequences for plants and wildlife, habitats and ecological processes. Learn more.
Climate change is a complex process with long-term implications for natural and cultural resources. Learn more about preparing your land trust’s holdings for climate change.
Discover how to assess, plan for, and possibly reduce the vulnerability of priority species to climate change. Learn more.
Explore two techniques — scenario planning and adaptive management — for anticipating and reducing the risk of uncertainty when planning for climate change. Learn more.
Flexibility, clarity, and long-term planning are just some of the ways land trusts can adapt conservation easements for greater resilience to climate change. Learn more.
Federal, state and regional initiatives provide funding, resources and support to assist land trusts with climate change planning, management and public education projects. Learn more.
]]>The science of climate change is clear. The climate is already changing, and additional changes are unavoidable. This is because greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide and methane, for example — persist for a long time in the atmosphere, which allows the gases to accumulate over time. This also means we will experience a lag between when we reduce emissions and when we actually feel the benefits of that emissions reduction. Even if we halted all climate changing emissions tomorrow, the world would continue to experience accelerating climate change for years to come.
Since we cannot stop climate change, we must embrace climate change adaptation as a new and permanent element of conservation and land trust management plans. This means that some land trusts may even need to revisit their mission statement, conservation goals and selection criteria in order to maximize their positive impact in a climate changing world.
Balancing climate change with other threats to conservation priorities will prove challenging. However, many of the conservation strategies that land trusts have used over the past several decades to support the health of natural, agricultural and cultural resources are still relevant and useful when planning for climate change. In fact, since we cannot stop all the impacts of climate change, sometimes the best action may be to reduce other stressors in the ecosystem. For example, we cannot prevent sea level rise from flooding coastal marshes, but we may be able to increase the resilience of those marshes by reducing water pollution or protecting nearby natural areas from development.