Urban green roofs help keep cities cool and manage stormwater during extreme weather events, while reducing electricity costs and improving air quality. Photo Credit: Pontafon

Climate Adaptation & Resilience

While climate change is driven by global emissions, its effects are highly localized. Communities, therefore, constitute the frontlines in experiencing and responding to impacts ranging from sea-level rise, inundation and flash-flooding to drought and extreme heat events – and the associated risks to everything from public health to the ecosystem services that support communities.

This element of the SCLA – which includes both the national Climate Leadership Academy on Adaptation & Resilience and regional programs in New England Municipal Sustainability Network and the Western Adaptation Alliance – builds the capacity of communities to better assess, prepare for, manage, and respond to increasingly volatile climate variability and change.

Climate Adaptation & Resilience Resources

  • Resource Guide

    Promising Practices in Adaptation & Resilience

    This Resource Guide represents a synthesis of the best available information we were able to find about the ways in which experts and practitioners across the country are working to meet the challenges outlined above. The Resource Guide is intended to help practitioners in cities and metropolitan regions resolve local issues, by showcasing promising practices in climate adaptation and resilience, and by providing efficient access to some of the very best information and resources that are available. Produced in partnership with the Center for Clean Air Policy.
    Download
    Sep 20, 2010
    Boston, MA

  • Case Study

    From Forests to Faucets Partnership

    The Denver Water –U.S. Forest Service "From Forests to Faucets Partnership" is an example of emerging efforts to monetize "ecosystem services" – in this case the value provided by forested lands within mountainous catchment basins for the quantity and quality of water used by the City and County of Denver.
    Download
    Mar 19, 2012
    Denver, CO

  • Case Study

    Mitigating Fire Hazards at the Wildland–Urban Interface

    The Village of Ruidoso, New Mexico has developed a forest health and fire management plan to manage its extensive wildland-urban interface. This community based, multi–stakeholder process has evolved since the mid–90s, and has been recognized with both Firewise Communities USA and National US Forest Service Rural Communities Assistance Spirit awards in 2003 .
    Download
    Mar 19, 2012
    Ruidoso, NM
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