Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Coastal Habitats

This document outlines the process of applying for an account and setting up a project in the ClimateVulnerability.app.

Changes in climate have direct effects on ecosystems and also interact with current stressors to impact vital coastal habitats. Adaptive capacity, either natural traits of the system or potential management actions, can lessen the impacts of climate change. The Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Coastal Habitats utilizes a facilitated expert elicitation process to assign numerical scores for the potential impact of climate change (e.g. change in CO2, temperature, precipitation, sea level, and extreme climate events) and environmental stressors (e.g. invasive and pest species, nutrients, sedimentation/erosion, and environmental contaminants) on the habitat and adaptive capacity potential into a spreadsheet-based decision support tool. This pdf provides an overview of the tool and ClimateVulnerabilty.app.

This Climate Vulnerability application was created to provide guidance for organizing large amounts of information into a repeatable, defendable climate vulnerability assessment process. It is intended to draw on diverse sources of information including literature searches, conceptual modeling, GIS analysis, and expert elicitation. This type of analysis inherently requires significant time commitment, and it should not be expected that the CCVATCH process or ClimateVulnerability.app will provide a quick, easy assessment that can provide actionable information.

The presentation bekol is an overview of how the app can be used to facilitate a vulnerability assessment by following an example project.

Excel workbook file used to help with scoring.

Example process agendas for multi-day and single day CCVATCH scoring applications.

This was a survey developed to streamline the CCVATCH scoring sessions in New England and to capture some necessary feedback from the group regarding next steps in the process. It was administered to participants prior to the initial scoring session.