The document discusses climate change vulnerability assessments for conservation. It defines vulnerability as the extent a species or ecosystem is susceptible to harm from climate impacts. Vulnerability assessments can help prioritize management actions, develop adaptation strategies, and efficiently allocate resources, but do not make conservation decisions. Key steps include determining objectives, gathering data, assessing vulnerability components, and applying results to adaptation planning. Approaches include modeling, indices, and expert elicitation. Results can help prioritize vulnerable species/systems and design management strategies to reduce sensitivity, exposure, and enhance resilience.

1. Climate Change
Vulnerability Assessment
for Conservation:
An Overview
Patty Glick
Senior Climate Change Specialist
National Wildlife Federation

2. Climate-Smart Conservation Cycle

3. Defining Vulnerability
Climate change vulnerability refers to the extent to which a
species, habitat, or ecosystem is susceptible to harm from
climate change impacts
• What things are most vulnerable
• Why they are vulnerable

4. Why Assess Vulnerability?
Vulnerability assessments can help:
• Prioritize species and systems for
management actions
• Develop management strategies to
address climate change
• Efficiently allocate resources
What vulnerability assessments
don’t do:
• Make a conservation decision for
you

5. Key Steps for Undertaking a
Vulnerability Assessment
1. Determine objectives and
scope
2. Gather relevant data and
expertise
3. Assess the components of
vulnerability
4. Apply assessment results in
adaptation planning

6. Overarching Considerations for Vulnerability
Assessment
Scenarios
• Climate change
• Other factors
Scale
• Spatial
• Temporal
Resources
• Data needs, cost, time

7. Key Components of Vulnerability
Ecological
tolerances,
specialized
habitat
Climate variables,
associated impacts
(e.g., hydrology,
SLR)
Intrinsic
factors,
extrinsic
factors

8. Approaches for Putting the Pieces Together
• Detailed modeling efforts
– In-house or commissioned
• Vulnerability indices
– e.g., NatureServe Index
• Expert elicitation
– Supplement and/or supplant modeling

9. Using Vulnerability Assessment Results
Help prioritize species and systems
• Address most vulnerable? Least?
• Base on ecological/economic
importance?
Help design management strategies
• Reduce sensitivity
• Reduce exposure
• Enhance adaptive capacity
Help allocate resources efficiently
• Set research priorities?
• Consider triage?

10. Potential Strategies
Promote connectivity:
• Are you connecting the “right”
habitats? Will target species/systems
actually move?
Reduce other stressors:
• Do existing stressors increase vulnerability to
climate change? Does climate change
exacerbate other stressors?
Enhance “resilience”:
• Resilience “of what” “to what”?

11. Other Adaptation Questions
What if you can’t reduce
vulnerability?
• Do we still do what we are already
doing to try to “buy time”?
• Do you decide to “let nature take its
course”?
• Do you actively facilitate a transition
to some new state?
• Should we change our conservation
goals?