Repeatable approaches to work with scientific uncertainty and advance climate change adaptation in US national parks

Responding to Ecosystem Transformation: Resist, Accept, or Direct?

“…This will require engagement of key stakeholders who strive to reach agreement on measurable and achievable objectives and relevant management actions across jurisdictional boundaries and through time. The use of support tools (e.g., scenario planning; Runyon et al 2020) will be useful for promoting stakeholder dialog and clarifying management priorities. Because management resources are always limited, long‐term datasets designed to detect system shifts and increases in variability, as well as data flows supporting mechanistic understanding of system dynamics (i.e., how and why systems are changing), may be high priority for provisioning managers with the information they need to both address transformations and select adaptation actions.…”

Rapid assessment to facilitate climate‐informed conservation and nature‐based solutions

“…Tools used in the U.S. conservation community include, for example, the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) Adaptation Workbook (Swanston et al, 2016), the Climate-Smart Conservation Cycle (Stein et al, 2014), and the Adaptation for Conservation Targets framework (Cross et al, 2012). These tools, along with other approaches such as scenario-based planning (Rowland, Cross, & Hartmann, 2014;Runyon et al, 2020) and the design of ecosystem-based adaptation initiatives (Donatti et al, 2019), require extensive resources, scientific information and expertise, and time to assess climate risks and vulnerabilities at a local scale. These planning approaches generally rely on a cycle of steps to define purpose and scope, assess climate impacts and vulnerabilities, review/revise goals, identify and evaluate possible actions, implement priority actions, assess effectiveness, and then iterate to incorporate emerging information.…”

Fisheries Volume 46 Number 1 January 2021

“…This will require engagement of key stakeholders who strive to reach agreement on measurable and achievable objectives and relevant management actions across jurisdictional boundaries and through time. The use of support tools (e.g., scenario planning; Runyon et al 2020 ) will be useful for promoting stakeholder dialog and clarifying management priorities. Because management resources are always limited, long-term datasets designed to detect system shifts and increases in variability, as well as data fl ows supporting mechanistic understanding of system dynamics (i.e., how and why systems are changing), may be high priority for provisioning managers with the information they need to both address transformations and select adaptation actions.…”