Assessing Social Vulnerability to Climate Change in Human Communities near Public Forests and Grasslands: A Framework for Resource Managers and Planners

Abstract

Public land management agencies have incorporated the concept of vulnerability into protocols for assessing and planning for climate change impacts on public forests and grasslands. However, resource managers and planners have little guidance for how to address the social aspects of vulnerability in these assessments and plans. Failure to assess social vulnerability to climate change during management planning could compromise land management agencies’ adaptation strategies as well as public support for these strategies. We provide a framework for understanding and assessing social vulnerability to climate change in US public lands contexts. We describe types of information that can be used in social vulnerability assessments and ways this information can be gathered. The practical information that we provide is intended to help resource managers and planners meet current policy requirements for assessing potential impacts of climate change across diverse local social and ecological conditions for which one-size-fits-all approaches are not likely to be useful.