Abstract
Climate change will alter opportunities and demand for outdoor recreation through altered winter weather conditions and season length, climate-driven changes in user preferences, and damage to recreational infrastructure, among other factors. To ensure that outdoor recreation remains sustainable in the face of these challenges, natural resource managers may need to adapt their recreation management. One of the major challenges of adapting recreation to climate change is translating broad concepts into specific, tangible actions. Using a combination of in-depth interviews of recreational managers and a review of peer-reviewed literature and government reports, we developed a synthesis of impacts, strategies, and approaches, and a tiered structure that organizes this information. Six broad climate adaptation strategies and 25 more specific approaches were identified and organized into a “recreation menu”. The recreation menu was tested with two national forests in the US in multi-day workshops designed to integrate these concepts into real-world projects that were at the beginning stages of the planning process. We found that the recreation menu was broad yet specific enough to be applied to recreation-focused projects with different objectives and climate change impacts. These strategies and approaches serve as stepping stones to enable natural resource and recreation managers to translate broad concepts into targeted and prescriptive actions for implementing adaptation.
Highlights
Outdoor recreation is an essential way that people engage with their natural and cultural heritage
Climate change will alter the dynamics of outdoor recreation and the infrastructure that supports it in a number of ways, and these effects will vary greatly by season, geographic location, and population demographic
We tested the recreation menu on two national forests in the United States, the Green Mountain and the San Bernardino, to gage whether it captured the range of potential strategies likely to be employed in outdoor recreation management and whether it was useful to aid in brainstorming particular tactics
Summary
Outdoor recreation is an essential way that people engage with their natural and cultural heritage. Per capita participation in certain activities, such as interpretive site visitation, motorized and non-motorized water-based activities, and fishing, is expected to increase in certain regions given the projected impacts of climate change [5,8] With increases in both the numbers of recreationists and the length of the warm-weather recreation season, the capacity of public lands to accommodate demand will be tested both in terms of staff, who are often seasonal hires, as well as infrastructure. Much of this infrastructure was constructed in a manner that restricted stream-channel flow and reduced floodplain connectivity, which today has produced an inability to adequately accommodate higher peak flows and flooding, especially during extreme precipitation events [10] While these roads and trails have become the principal means of recreational access to public lands, hydrologic extremes have become more frequent, creating a situation in which access is increasingly compromised by interrelated climate change impacts [10]. We sought feedback from a large audience of outdoor recreation managers and adaptation professionals through a half-day meeting at a national meeting (see Supplementary Materials for agenda)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
