Approach

• Establish effective long-term science-management partnership involving agencies and stakeholders to assess climate change science and its implications for biophysical and social resources.
• Conduct vulnerability assessment of priority resources and develop associated adaptation options to help build resistance, enhance resilience, and facilitate ecological transitions for the CMWAP assessment region. Potential assessment topics include:
  • climate trends
  • water resources
  • infrastructure
  • fisheries
  • wildlife
  • vegetation and disturbance
  • riparian, wetlands, and groundwater-dependent ecosystems
  • recreation
  • ecosystem services
• Peer review and publish the assessment and adaptation options providing the scientific foundation for mainstreaming climate change in planning, ecological restoration, and project management.
• Engage and educate with partners, stakeholders, decision makers, planners, and resource specialists to:
  • Build an enduring partnership to facilitate application of climate-smart management.
  • Provide tools to implement adaptation options in assessment, planning, projects, and monitoring.
• Conduct a workshop with scientists, land managers, conservation practitioners, and other stakeholders to review the vulnerability assessment.
  • Downscale information from the assessment to identify the most significant vulnerabilities to climate change for priority resources in each management unit.
  • Identify adaptation strategies and tactics to reduce resource vulnerabilities. Adaptation strategies and tactics will be linked to corresponding management operation levels at different spatial and temporal scales.

Partners

• 

  Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
  Mount Hood National Forest
  Willamette National Forest
  USFS Pacific Northwest Region
  USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station
  Office of Sustainability and Climate
• 

  Northwest Climate Hub
• 

  University of Washington
  School of Environmental and Forest Sciences