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Background Projected trajectories of climate and land use change over the remainder of the twenty-first century may result in conditions and situations that require flexible approaches to conservation planning and practices. For example, prescribed burning is a widely used management tool for promoting longer-term resilience and sustainability in longleaf pine ecosystems of the southeastern United States, but regional stressors such as climatic warming, changing fire conditions, and an expanding wildland-urban interface may challenge its application. To facilitate the development of fire management strategies that account for such changes, we surveyed nearly 300 fire managers to elicit information on the criteria used for prioritizing burn sites, current burning practices and constraints, and expectations for changes in burning opportunities, including those pertaining to climate change and urban growth. Results Respondents noted that their most common criteria for selecting longleaf pine stands for burning were fire history, ecosystem health, and fuel reduction, with the presence of threatened and endangered species also given priority by public land managers. Many respondents (38%) cited recent burn frequencies that fall short of historic burn intervals. Barriers to burning included legal, institutional, and managerial constraints, such as proximity to human developments, public concerns, and risk aversion, as well as environmental and resource constraints, including weather, air quality restrictions, and lack of personnel, equipment, or funding. Roughly half of all respondents expect that opportunities to burn will be reduced over the next 30 years, particularly during the growing season. Fire manager perceptions of factors that will limit prescribed burning in the future include a similar suite of constraints, many of which will be affected by projected regional changes in land use and climate. Conclusions On an organizational level, burn window availability and resource limitations constrain prescribed burning practices. More broadly, policy and legal frameworks coupled with trends in urbanization and climate change are expected to interact with operational constraints to challenge managers’ abilities to implement landscape-scale burning strategies and achieve restoration goals. Additional research and engagement with fire managers are needed to investigate opportunities for introducing policy flexibility, leveraging shared management interests, and developing creative solutions to expand burning opportunities.

In the US alone, there are over 200 tools that support climate adaptation planning, along with a large number of case studies documenting their use. Case studies frequently document positive results. Systematic assessment of processes can provide important benefits, including justification for action and expenditures, promotion of learning and adaptive management, accountability, and ensuring “fit” with other goals. There are very few such assessments in the context of climate adaptation planning, despite of the emphasis on the development and use of planning tools by federal and state agencies, university researchers, and non-profit organizations. We undertook an effort to assess the outcomes resulting from fourteen applications of the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, which we helped develop and implement. VCAPS is designed to facilitate information exchange, co-production of knowledge, and stakeholder collaboration while helping communities appraise climate change-related risks and devise strategies to manage them. Using qualitative interviews we explored the perceived value and the measurable performance outcomes of VCAPS at both individual and community scales occurring 3–10 years after the processes were conducted, allowing participants to take a broader view of “success” and reflect on how different forms of success emerged over time. Although the assessment of each case is based on a small number of interviews, we learned that VCAPS informed plans and decisions of municipalities, informed actions and decisions of other public and private actors, generated broader support for subsequent actions, helped efforts to secure/seek funding for climate adaptation actions, developed material resources to support planning, and promoted learning among participants. This assessment also reinforces prior work showing that deliberative planning tools/processes are conducive to developing adaptive capacities; processes should be closely coordinated with regular governance activities to impact policy and action; adequate time for deliberation needs to be budgeted; participants need support to “think outside the box” and consider adaptation strategies that are both incremental and transformational as well as highlight potential undesirable consequences of adaptation; and processes, like VCAPS, produce actionable outcomes when participants agree on the immediacy of the issue. We conclude with observations about the need for evaluation of participatory processes and the challenges of defining success of tools to support municipal climate change adaptation planning.

Recent studies have characterized individually experienced temperatures or individually experienced heat indices, including new exposure metrics that capture dimensions of exposure intensity, frequency, and duration. Yet, few studies have examined the personal thermal exposure in underrepresented groups, like outdoor workers, and even fewer have assessed corresponding changes in physiologic heat strain. The objective of this paper is to examine a cohort of occupationally exposed grounds and public safety workers (n = 25) to characterize their heat exposure and resulting heat strain. In addition, a secondary aim of this work is to compare individually heat index exposure (IHIE) across exposure metrics, fixed-site in situ weather stations, and raster-derived urban heat island (UHI) measurements in Charleston, SC, a humid coastal climate in the Southeastern USA. A Bland-Altman (BA) analysis was used to assess the level of agreement between the personal IHIE measurements and weather-station heat index (HI) and Urban Heat Island (UHI) measurements. Linear mixed-effect models were used to determine the association between individual risk factors and in situ weather station measurements significantly associated with IHIE measurements. Multivariable stepwise Cox proportional hazard modeling was used to identify the individual and workplace factors associated with time to heat strain in workers. We also examined the non-linear association between heat strain and exposure metrics using generalized additive models. We found significant heterogeneity in IHIE measurements across participants. We observed that time to heat strain was positively associated with a higher IHIE, older age, being male, and among Caucasian workers. Important nonlinear associations between heat strain occurrence and the intensity, frequency, and duration of personal heat metrics were observed. Lastly, our analysis found that IHIE measures were significantly similar for weather station HI, although differences were more pronounced for temperature and relative humidity measurements. Conversely, our IHIE findings were much lower than raster-derived UHI measurements. Real-time monitoring can offer important insights about unfolding temperature-health trends and emerging behaviors during thermal extreme events, which have significant potential to provide situational awareness.

With the increase in severity and frequency of natural hazards due to climate change, developing a holistic understanding of community resilience factors is critically important to disaster response and community support. Our investigation of small business survey responses about COVID-19 impacts finds that they are conduits of national support to their local communities. Small businesses that have demonstrated high levels of pre-disaster local involvement are more likely to take an active role in community resilience during a disaster, regardless of their own financial security. In addition, businesses with natural hazard experience before or during COVID-19 provided help to more community groups than hazard inexperienced businesses. While community resilience models often characterize small businesses as passive actors using variables such as employment or financial security, this research suggests that small businesses take an active role in community resilience by providing critical local support. The pandemic presented an opportunity to consider small business’ role in community resilience nationally, which was utilized here to identify the multi-dimensional factors that predict small business operators’ community disaster support. This study improves upon previous research by studying the small business-community resilience interface at both regional (n = 184) and national (n = 6,121) scales. We predict small business’ active involvement in community resilience using random forest machine learning, and find that adding social capital predictors greatly increases model performance (F1 score of 0.88, Matthews Correlation Coefficient of 0.67).

Vibrio species are marine bacteria that occur in estuaries worldwide; many are virulent human pathogens with high levels of antibiotic resistance. The average annual incidence of all Vibrio infections has increased by 41% between 1996 and 2005. V. vulnificus (Vv), a species associated with shellfish and occurring in the US Southeast, has ranges of temperature (16-33 °C) and salinity (5-20 ppt) dependencies for optimal growth. Increased water temperatures caused by atmospheric warming and increased salinity gradients caused by sea level rise raise concerns for the effect of climate change on the geographic range of Vv and the potential for increased exposure risk. This research combined monthly field sampling, laboratory analysis, and modeling to identify the current occurrence of Vv in the Winyah Bay estuary (South Carolina, USA) and assess the possible effects of climate change on future geographic range and exposure risk in the estuary. Vv concentrations ranged from 0 to 58 colony forming units (CFU)/mL, salinities ranged from 0 to 28 ppt, and temperature from 18 to 31 °C. A significant empirical relationship was found between Vv concentration and salinity and temperature that fit well with published optimal ranges for growth for these environmental parameters. These results, when coupled with an existing model of future specific conductance, indicated that sea level rise has a greater impact on exposure risk than temperature increases in the estuary. Risk increased by as much as four times compared to current conditions with the largest temporally widespread increase at the most upriver site where currently there is minimal risk.

In recent years increasing attention has been focused on understanding the different resources that can support decision makers at all levels in responding to climate variability and change. This article focuses on the role that access to information and other potential constraints may play in the context of water decision making across three U.S. regions (the Intermountain West, the Great Lakes, and the Carolinas). The authors report on the degree to which climate-related needs or constraints pertinent to water resources are regionally specific. They also find that stakeholder-identified constraints or needs extended beyond the need for data/information to enabling factors such as governance arrangements and how to improve collaboration and communication. As climate information networks expand and emphasis is placed on encouraging adaptation more broadly, these constraints have implications not only for how information dissemination efforts are organized but for how those efforts need to be informed by the larger regional context in a resource-limited and fragmented landscape.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) planning is an iterative process involving numerous actors and institutions at multiple levels of governance. This study investigates how cross-level differences may be a potential barrier or enabler of adaptation activities. It focuses on five potentially divisive issues: the level support for adaptation planning, adaptation goals, preferences among adaptation strategies, the desired role for the state vis a vis local leadership/control in supporting adaptation, and elements to include state level adaptation plans. The analysis is based on 138 questionnaires from coastal planners (local, state, and NGO) in Alaska, Florida, and Maryland. Findings reveal topics of agreement and disagreement in CCA planning across levels of management and study areas. State and NGO planners are significantly more likely than local planners to favor near-term planning activities and allocation of resources. This mismatch in timing is a potential barrier for adaptation. There were also significant differences in priorities motivating the development of plans among state, local, and NGO planners, though some differences may provide opportunities for the negotiation of planning priorities that have positive synergies. Although most planners indicated the state should play some role in local-level CCA planning, local planners desired a significantly lower level of involvement – a key threshold difference that represents the common and long-standing tension between state-level regulation and the desire for local control. The high proportion of all planners who have started to consider the development of CCA strategies and the desire for state-level adaptation plans to include support for risk and vulnerability assessments highlight potential synergies and opportunities to increase adaptive capacity and implement adaptation strategies. Few differences were detected among preferences for adaptation options. Analysis across multiple study areas provides additional insight into the stability and variation of cross-level differences.

This study examines support for climate adaptation planning and the role of perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust on adaptation of U.S. coastal communities. This assessment is based on the analysis of web-based questionnaires ( n = 137) among state, local, and non-government organization (NGO) planners in Alaska, Florida, and Maryland. Ordinal regression and correlation analysis were used to assess which factors are related to support for adaptation during two planning stages. Findings from this study suggest the influence of perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust on support for climate change adaptation (CCA) varies across two stages of adaptation planning (support for the development of plans and willingness to allocate human and financial resources to implement plans). The disaggregation of planning entities into different study areas and levels of management revealed significant differences in the relationship between perceived risk, uncertainty, and trust and support for CCA planning. These findings have implications for the design of communication and engagement strategies.

This paper analyzes the information dissemination pathways that support climate-sensitive decisions in North and South Carolina. The study draws from over 100 online questionnaires and follow-up interviews with leaders in the forestry, natural resources management, planning and preparedness, tourism and recreation, and water supply management sectors. Participants represented subregions within each state, different types of organizations, and organizations working at different geographic scales. The cross-sector comparison demonstrates diverse information uses across multiple time horizons and a wide range of sector-specific needs and factors that influence how and where decision makers obtain climate information. It builds upon previous research regarding climate decision making by providing a comprehensive view of the patterns of information exchange within a given region. Although all sectors draw from a common pool of federal agencies for historical and current climate data, participants consider sector-specific and local sources to be their key climate information providers. Information obtained through these sources is more likely to be trusted, accessible, and relevant for decision making. Furthermore, information sharing is largely facilitated via subregional networks, and accessing relationships with colleagues and local agency personnel is a critical component of this process. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of how climate information use varies across sectors and time frames and the decentralized nature of existing networks. These findings have important implications for future efforts to provide climate decision support to state- and local-level decision makers and highlight the need for networks and processes that meet diverse regional and sector concerns and contexts.

Risk-based management approaches to climate adaptation depend on the assessment of potential threats, and their causes, vulnerabilities, and impacts. The refinement of these approaches relies heavily on detailed local knowledge of places and priorities, such as infrastructure, governance structures, and socio-economic conditions, as well as scientific understanding of climate projections and trends. Developing processes that integrate local and scientific knowledge will enhance the value of risk-based management approaches, facilitate group learning and planning processes, and support the capacity of communities to prepare for change. This study uses the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, a form of analytic-deliberative dialogue, and the conceptual frameworks of hazard management and climate vulnerability, to integrate scientific and local knowledge. We worked with local government staff in an urbanized barrier island community (Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina) to consider climate risks, impacts, and adaptation challenges associated with sea level rise and wastewater and stormwater management. The findings discuss how the process increases understanding of town officials’ views of risks and climate change impacts to barrier islands, the management actions being considered to address of the multiple impacts of concern, and the local tradeoffs and challenges in adaptation planning. We also comment on group learning and specific adaptation tasks, strategies, and needs identified. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

Climate adaptation has emerged as a mainstream risk management strategy for assisting in maintaining socio-ecological systems within the boundaries of a safe operating space. Yet, there are limits to the ability of systems to adapt. Here, we introduce the concept of an "adaptation frontier", which is defined as a socio-ecological system's transitional adaptive operating space between safe and unsafe domains. A number of driving forces are responsible for determining the sustainability of systems on the frontier. These include path dependence, adaptation/development deficits, values conflicts and discounting of future loss and damage. The cumulative implications of these driving forces are highly uncertain. Nevertheless, the fact that a broad range of systems already persist at the edge of their frontiers suggests a high likelihood that some limits will eventually be exceeded. The resulting system transformation is likely to manifest as anticipatory modification of management objectives or loss and damage. These outcomes vary significantly with respect to their ethical implications. Successful navigation of the adaptation frontier will necessitate new paradigms of risk governance to elicit knowledge that encourages reflexive reevaluation of societal values that enable or constrain sustainability. © 2013 by the authors.

A mail survey of community water systems (CWS) managers in South Carolina and in Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River Basin addresses perceptions of climate vulnerabilities. Managers report the nature of vulnerabilities to 10 weather and climate events. More detailed analysis of droughts, lightning strikes, and floods shows that the most significant concerns reflect financial and technological challenges. Neither water system size nor water source is a consistent indicator of perceived vulnerability. Regarding droughts, the expected severity of impacts relates significantly to experience with prior droughts, expectations of financial problems, and difficulty meeting water quality requirements. In order for vulnerability analysis to better inform adaptation processes, further research is needed into the management challenges resulting from the interaction of diverse climate events, technological systems, and public expectations.

This article reviews progress in understanding climate variability and change and how such understanding might better contribute to decision processes and the design of decision support tools. We emphasize the value of collaborative engagement between climate information users and scientists to continue innovation in this area. Our assessment presents opportunities for geographic perspectives and insights that can increase understanding of the physical processes causing interannual variability and improve climate model output for climate impact assessment. As decision-makers’ interests expand to address adaptation, nature-society research can also contribute significantly to understanding the diversity of climate information users, their evolving needs, and to the development of strategies for communicating risk and uncertainty.

Technological hazards research, including that on oil spills and their aftermath, is giving greater attention to human dimension impacts resulting from events and response. While oil spill contingency planners recognize the importance of human dimension impacts, little systematic attention is given to them in contingency plans. We introduce an approach to identifying human dimensions impacts using concepts from hazard and vulnerability assessment and apply it to the Bouchard-120 oil spill in Buzzards Bay, MA. Our assessment covers the spill, emergency response, clean-up, damage assessment, and mid-term recovery. This approach, while still exploratory, did demonstrate that the spill produced a range of positive and negative impacts on people and institutions and that these were mediated by vulnerabilities. We suggest ways in which the framework may help spill managers to learn from events and improve contingency planning by anticipating risks to social systems and identifying strategies to reduce impacts.

Losses from an oil spill in 1992 differed substantially among coastal resource users on the Malaysian island of Langkawi. Even among the small-scale fishers, those generally considered to be the most vulnerable to such an event, losses varied significantly. This investigation of vulnerability examines causes for the distribution of losses, including fishers' ability to mediate their exposure to risks and the variety of coping strategies they adopted. Explanations for differences in vulnerability are found both in the everyday interactions of processes shaping vulnerability and in the ways in which the "extraordinary" circumstances of a disaster alter those everyday processes. Keywords: fishers, hazards, Malaysia, oil spill, vulnerability. One of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and one of the most difficult to navigate, the Strait of Malacca poses numerous challenges for marine transportation safety (Morgan and Fryer 1985; Robinson 1997) (Figure 1). Oil-spill response planning efforts in the strait have focused on the potential for accidents involving the numerous tankers in transit from the Middle East to Japan and to other growing Pacific Rim economies. A significant effort has involved the identification of areas and occupations along the coast that are particularly susceptible to the impacts of oil spills (Jothy 1982). The small-scale fishers who live along the strait are one vulnerable group, for they depend on coastal and fishery resources that are at risk (Chia 1988). Assessment of social risk, or vulnerability, is based heavily on understanding the source of the fishers' exposure: their dependence on vulnerable resources. Any such assessment, though, pays little attention to factors that shape the coping capabilities in fishers' communities and households, strategies that can influence the scale of losses. After the Nagasaki Spirit oil spill in 1992, I conducted research in a Malaysian fishing community on the island of Langkawi, examining variation in scale and locale of hazard impacts and assessing how coping strategies drew on both local and international emergency oil-spill response supports. This study of the impacts of and vulnerability to an oil spill revealed everyday social life as an important aspect of response to exposure and of subsequent coping. Also important were individual and institutional coping capabilities, which come into play in extraordinary situations and which helped determine how losses were distributed in the aftermath of the spill. Vulnerability depended on gaining relevant information, access to international and local coping resources, and the range of individual assessments and response. EXPLANATIONS OF VULNERABILITY Awareness of the array and uneven distribution of environmental hazards in the world, from local pollution and land degradation to changes in the global climate system, has led scientists, politicians, and citizens to a renewed consideration of the nature of vulnerability (NRC 1987; Liverman 1990; Blaikie and others 1994; Adger 1996; Cutter 1996). Researchers looking to explain patterns of vulnerability find a multitude of theories and factors that capture parts of the scene but leave the whole picture in fragments (Timmerman 1981; Liverman 1990; Dow 1992; Cutter 1996). A major divide separates explanations that focus on vulnerability as a quality intrinsic to everyday life, embedded in structural processes, and those that, instead, consider vulnerability as a unique response to an extreme or unprecedented event. The term "extraordinary" is developed based on articles by Kenneth Hewitt (1983) and Paul Susman, Phil O'Keefe, and Ben Wisner (1983), which conceptualize hazards as extensions of everyday life. "Natural" and technological hazards are "[neither] isolated misfortunes" nor "unplanned hole[s] or rupture[s]" (Hewitt 1983, 12-13). The built-in potential for failure in complex technological systems, including marine transportation, leads some to refer to these events as "normal accidents" (Perrow 1984). …